Mission Board/Types
Courier Missions are one of the most common and simple types, and involve transporting either data or commodities from one Station or Surface Port to another. They will fail on ship destruction, as the data will be lost and the commodities are unique.
In some cases the goods may be illegal at the destination, in which case the mission will be clearly marked as a Smuggling mission.
The type of goods supplied will typically influence existing and upcoming faction states; delivery of food will counter famine states, and so on.
Supply Missions involve either the acquisition and delivery of general goods, or a donation of credits/goods. The goods can be acquired from nearby/local markets; occasionally even from the issuing station/port.
In systems with resource sites, stations may offer "Mining Rush" missions. These simply require mining, refining, and delivering the specified quantity of a specific resource from local asteroid belts.
Donation missions offer only reputation and influence as rewards, but credit donations can be a quick and easy (if sometimes expensive) way to make new friends; they can be completed as soon as they're accepted from the mission board.
As with Courier missions, the type of goods supplied will often have an influence on existing and upcoming faction states.
Assassination Missions require the location and destruction of a specific target ship. Targets are usually pirates, but may also be generals, deserters, politicians, or (supposedly) infected individuals, depending upon faction/system states. Occasionally, the mission will have "Wetwork" in the title; the target will not be revealed until arriving in the specified system.
The location of all targets will usually be unknown until the local Navigation Beacon or a specific Data Point has been scanned. A Discovery Scanner may also be used to track down targets.
Pirates will usually attempt to interdict any would-be hunters, or may even jump in to ambush them at the Navigation Beacon. Others, particularly Deserters, prefer to flee when encountered and will likely need to be interdicted after being traced.
Massacre Missions involve hunting down and destroying a specific number of ships from a particular faction, often (but not always) as part of a Civil War. These are most often Pirate ships, but they may be Civilians. Anarchy factions will usually openly refer to the targets as Civilian, whilst legal factions will typically only refer to the mission as 'Spec Ops' or 'Black Ops', and only reveal the targets are civilians on arrival in the destination system.
During a Civil War, target ships can easily be found at any Conflict Zone involving one of the relevant factions, though these areas are of course quite dangerous.
Obviously, missions involving the destruction of civilian ships will be very illegal at the destination unless it's an Anarchy system. Spec Ops or Black Ops missions may also have special modifiers that slow (or stop) the arrival of System Authority ships when engaging mission targets.
Technically a subset of Supply Mission, these missions involve tracking down and stealing or liberating goods from a specific target or group of targets. Sometimes they're legal missions, which require the recovery of stolen goods (or sometimes hostages) from a particular craft, whilst others will be illegal and require interdiction (and possibly manifest scanning) of civilian shipping vessels to acquire the items in question.
If a specific craft must be raided in order to retrieve the items, the mission briefing will also provide a time window during which they can be encountered. Careful aim and/or Hatch Breaker Limpets are advised; destroying the target whilst they are still carrying mission items will result in mission failure.
Recovery missions involve the retrieval of specific goods - sometimes legal, sometimes not - from deep space or planetary surface locations. Goods include items like black boxes, commercial samples, lost artwork, military plans, or other miscellaneous commodities. The location of the items in question - if not provided by the contractor - can be revealed either by scanning the local Navigation Beacon or by using a Discovery Scanner.
Sometimes, factions may request an Illegal Recovery mission, or (during a Civil War) a Civil War Recovery mission. In the former case, System Authorities will have to be avoided (as the item will be marked as Stolen), and in the latter, pilots should be prepared to deal with the swift arrival of hostile craft from the opposing faction at the recovery site.
Aside from planetary Recovery missions, there are two other mission types involving surface sites; Data Recovery/Theft, and Generator Sabotage. Both mission types require the use of an SRV.
For Data Recovery/Theft, a site must be located (using the local Nav Beacon or a Discovery Scanner), and a Data point at that site then interacted with using the SRV Data Link Scanner. This site will typically be a randomly-generated Outpost or Building rather than an actual Settlement. The site will be lightly protected by Skimmers (some of which may be buried) and Defense Turrets. Data points are sometimes Public, but usually Private and located within a Trespass Zone. Some sites may also have additional loot in the form of items like legal salvage containers and escape pods.
Generator Sabotage, meanwhile, requires the identification and destruction of a specific generator type (e.g. Comms, Defense Grid) at a target Settlement. These sites have extensive no-fly zones and serious defensive networks, so approaching on the ground with an SRV is essentially mandatory (though some lightly-defended sites can be attacked by ships or fightercraft directly) to avoid ship destruction.
Both mission types can be a good source of Encoded Materials due to the presence of scannable Data Points, and they can also provide Data Point Intel Packages.