I've got a few minutes so want to ramble about this.You mean on the bulletin board? I would beg to differ and say with new mission types, the number of missions (total and new ones generated per cycle) should be larger (and shorter respawn time means even more cases where you look at a mission, check the map, check our other missions, open the bulletin board again and the mission is already gone). For example, I was trying to do large scale delivery missions with a big hauler (pure trading Cutter). Found one to move 126 tons for 444k. Next stop, nothing, so loaded with some normal cargo and dropped it off somewhere else, without mission. No useful missions there, either. The same as the 2 stops that came after that.
It's really a bit frustrating. Arrive at a starport in a Cutter, and the missions are like "courier this tiny package", "kill the war hero of neighbour system XYZ 12345" (issued by the local government which belongs to the same major faction as the target), "bring us 2 tons of osmium", "kill 5 civilians" (issues by civilian corporation), "salvage 3 tons of stolen cargo from a wreckage". So I am sitting there, in a Cutter* with 700 tons of free cargo space and rarely does anyone even request the services of such a vessel.
*Really applies to anything that can carry more than a T6 or Asp; this is about the point where you can still reasonable combine multiple smaller missions, and where rarely ever does a mission task you to transport more than fits into your ship.
I agree with the mission respawn time opinion. We need enough time to do some research before missions vanish.
The comment on large traders and combat ships I think speaks to what missions they should get. Cargo ships should have some standing but low payoff hauling missions generated from the background sim and matching the flow of goods on the galaxy map trade flow view. This would be realistic. The lone ship captain pulling in cargo on speculation should face higher risk/reward than delivery missions for massive cargo- but those missions should still exist. Corporations should regularly post jobs to ship 200 tonnes of X to starport Y. This would reflect regular trade route flow and NPCs should be seen running these routes. It would be good to see convoys or caravans of traders leaving port and jumping together as well. I typically do not see large gatherings of ships in anything but combat zones.
In concert with above, large trading ships should not be able to outgun or outrun a mid-level attack ship or wing of small fighters. Compare to piracy of tanker ships and trader ships on the high seas today where 1-2 relatively tiny powerboats allow boarding and takeover. I still struggle in a tricked out Viper against the maneuverability, shield strength and armament of big traders outfitted to medium spec. The bigger cargo ships need detailed damage models as shown for the Anaconda in the early videos so lesser damage can still result in serious effects (and higher repair cost) like the cargo hold becoming fully exposed.
Large trade ships should also get smuggling buffs if they are hiding a single special container among 100 tons of grain. For smugglers, small ships go fast and silent, big ones hide stuff.
For gunboats, similar thing. Corvette missions should make sense - directing players to systems with active conflict zones or taking down a major pirate. If there is no military skulduggery going on in a system then perhaps there will not be big payoff missions for a Corvette. As players traverse systems this should become obvious through the mission boards and where they are sent. And major reward pirates may not respawn every 10 minutes- sorry there are few Blackbeards and many petty thieves. The game needs to help rich bounty-hunters find the Blackbeards more easily; any Pilot's Federation member that registers a wanted commander's ship name should throw alerts up on mission boards immediately (this would require more of the detailed DDF description of newsfeeds, for instance a premium in-game cost for Bounty Hunter Digital Digest or similar).
The game balance question for me becomes supply and demand. Realistically we have commanders starting with nothing and missions of value to them are plentiful. As players "advance" to more powerful ships they should expect fewer missions available for those ships because of economics and reality. When a player has a fully tricked out Corvette, non-military ranking missions for them would naturally be fewer than what an Eagle pilot would find acceptable. There are fewer Blackbeards than common thieves. Sorry, this is just the way it is. This also prevents the opposite of the death-spiral which is the wealth-spiral, where a rich commander expects to be earning a million credits on every mission. I don't think that is realistic and means those that reach a certain level of ship in the game will rapidly become billionaires with nothing to spend their money on. Realistic expectation for money sinks for these tiers of play is 2-3 years down the road (like buying a persistent planet-side home, sponsoring in-game events, etc).
Also, I have not personally noticed mission mis-matches as the OP states, but if the above examples are correct, the mission system needs a thorough health-check. The error where a faction issues a kill order on a war hero of its own (unless there is text about them being a traitor or similar), or civilian authority issuing an order to kill civilians- does seem off.
