I think most of the BGS right now runs like this :
Peacetime/Elections : Grab your Beluga or PAX Anaconda and fill up.
Fairly little time needed, lots of +++++Inf potential due to easy stacking and especially the Economy-Independent Passenger Mission Board being a quite reliable source of Missions.
Just compare that Influence Potential per hour (the Alpha and Omega of anything BGS) to :
- Haulage Missions (good Inf potential - BUT even a T9 can only stack 4 big Missions)
- Mining Missions (one can get lucky with pre-mined stuff, but it has limits... and the time needed almost kills it)
- Combat Missions (actually not bad Inf potential - but the time needed and potentially extremely limited availability limit that; let's not even talk about Kill x Targets Missions)
- Planetary Data Link Missions (usually good on the Inf - but again, getting to each location takes its due time. Some IF "I'm sorry" trips increases the time factor additionally)
- Courier Missions (depending on location, can be a very useful tool - but with plenty of common neighbor Systems within 20LY now it'll be a bunny-hopping exercise weighting heavy on the time factor)
- Wing Missions (upto 1000% the effort for similar Rewards... enough said... Wing Assassination Missions likely the best available ones for BGS purposes)
- Exploration (okay potential, but only R2R or similar "Cherry runs"... and time needed is high, no matter how you put it. Even going full R2R soon consumes nearby spots. Best to have a string of Deep Space Explorers in the team)
- Salvage Missions (okay'ish potential, but the time delays of Deep Space USS RNG, Planetary Approaches weigh down heavily on the time required factor)
- Bounty Hunting (rather poor potential, unless you can field an "army of ants")
Wartime (supporting other Systems where Faction is present) :
- ever since Combat Bonds were castrated for Exporting purposes, Bounty Hunting and Combat Missions became the new king
-> but Combat Missions aren't always available, even their fundamental effect was disputed
-> Bounty Hunting sits on the low side of effectiveness, even with the most pristine Bounty Hunting Grounds available. No good BH locations in Control Systems? Well, good luck then finding USS.
- at least Combat Bonds in the Conflict System do their thing just nicely. Inputs * Volume, hit it off big with a few runs and you'll see stuff moving big. The way it's supposed to be.
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In a nutshell, the "Time needed vs. +Inf potential" is massively distorted once you compare all available Options, the typical time required to execute them and how well those could be stacked for chain execution.
You can go with the Meta the Efficiency dictates - or lose out.
Notably, this has been that way since a long time now.
I wouldn't say things must change - but a healthy rebalancing clearly is in order IMHO.
PS.
Maybe the even bigger issue remains the incredible shortcomings of the Mission System itself.
- zero Missions available
- zero Faction State matching Missions available
- still plenty of +Inf-useless Missions (wrong Faction State) carrying a false Mission description, rendering them entirely ineffective for BGS/Inf purposes
That's definitely not helping. There's sure a place for those "Faction State unfitting" Missions for Independents and Freelancers that don't care about Influence - but there must be a minimum supply of BGS-relevant Missions as well, at anytime.
Otherwise, the whole thing falls apart without anyone doing anything wrong - the Mission System simply fails.
