Hello Starsectorizens and Starsectorpuppers.
Since progression can easily be reversed when the player fleet dies doing anything from scanning or bounty hunting. Perhaps there could be a way to gain progression and knowledge without risking everything in one fleet, but not include boring aspects as "grinding" easy bounties etc.
One idea is to have the player accept mission as a combat support. Once accepted from a market or a rendezvous point reached, a fleet is spawned and is headed into another fleet that spawned somewhere else. Reward is paid if the target fleet is dead or friendly fleet survive, this way it can easily become an protect or destroy mission with a few tweaks. The reward amount and difficulty could be dependent on fleet size difference, etc etc.
A system like this could have new players easily head out, fight in awesome big battles without worrying about losing ships and progress, witness how ships engage each other and basically quickly gain in-game battle knowledge for when they set out to build their own fleets.
Also experienced players could take on riskier missions by doing stuff like sacrificing themselves luring target fleet through a corona or in combat trying to assassinate crucial ships.