1. I'm not sure if I remember it right, but I could swear that on previous version we were getting much more Procurement Contracts than in new one, and also I remember factions gave missions if I was neutral to them as well. Now I need to rack up some rep to get more of those contracts to pop up. Might be wrong here, since I've been playing heavily modded SS though... Those missions serve more like roleplaying purpose to me, income isn't impressive, but I just enjoy hauling cargo across the galaxy.
So, is there a way to make mission pop up on neutral rep too and get actually more of those?
2. Survey Missions are very cool, but only at the beginning. Since galaxy got like WAAAY bigger, I have to drag along tanker just to have enough fuel to run around with average sized fleet+. In prev. version I never had any need for tanker and my fleet was enormous. With this, survey missions kinda fall off. Bounties are still better profit and if I go with small fleet for Survey with tanker, it's just pretty risky venture.
Are you guys still doing Survey mission in mid and lategame?
3. Again, can't say for sure if it was vanilla feature or mod (probably mod), but I remember in late game huge pirate armadas were hunting me down. Usually they were trashed but sometimes it was actually fun when after hard bounty, you get hit by one of these armadas with your CR lowered and some ships heavily damaged. It was awesome battle for survival. I think I'm pretty late in the game right now, but I didn't see one such event.
Does it exist? And if not, is there a way to implement it somehow?