tried pillaging in anarchy sellement : didnt go well

[Felix DiCestria]

... that's the ship mission menu. Not the foot mission menu. Emplacement power grids are missions to go scan a beacon or blow up a generator at a horizons settlement, kinda like in the SRV tutorial.
For foot missions, you need to disembark and use the terminals on the concourse.
As it happens, I was only three jumps out from HIP 20492, so I just zooped over to the station there, disembarked, wandered over the concourse...

View attachment 384435

Boom.

View attachment 384436

I just checked and even the ship mission board was showing the AX reactivation missions (which is... new, no other odyssey foot missions show on the ship board like that). I have absolutely no idea why any weren't showing up for you unless you just didn't go to Zadjel City.

It's not new. Stations that will not allow you to disembark will show the Odyssey missions on the ship mission board. I've always found AX repower missions there. If he cannot handle the randos at anarchy settlements, he surely doesn't want to try the bugs at these sites. I also saw a few other missions recently at non AX stations that offered Odyssey materials from the ship mission board, and they weren't on foot missions AFAIK.

Edit: It might be new that stations that will allow you to disembark still have repower missions from the ship mission board though

The military settlements in Thargoid controlled systems will be well beyond his ability.
Every other settlement on the other hand is wide open provided he can make it to the surface (Admittedly no mean feat given the glaives). Drop straight into any non military settlement, deploy SRV and dismiss the ship so as not to attract interceptors and that's it. No bugs, no scavs, no one. Just me, my SRV, a regulator and e-breach...
That said if he's only just unlocked Palin getting through the system is going to be tough.