I've been using procurement contracts as my main source of income in the earlygame (who hasn't?)
I'm not really going to talk about UI issues, I think there will have to be a UI overhaul across Starsector at a later point.
Current Mission: Procurement Contracts
As many people have noted, there's probably a bit too much of a range on how good missions are. Some missions are almost impossible to actually be profitable, others are a little absurdly profitable. Some are basically impossible to do (I can't cross 3 systems in 10 days). It seems like the timeframe slightly affects the unit price (given 2 contracts of the same good to the same planet, the one giving less time will pay slightly more per unit. It would also be good to scale the amount of goods needed to the size of the trade fleet/number of procurement missions already done. Maybe it would depend on your rep with the faction providing the mission as well.
Also, you don't encounter the fleet that is spawned to chase you if the Procurement Contract is in-system. It's relatively risk free to trade within systems as a result.
Other Mission Ideas:
Escort: Some traders may have some high value goods that they want shipped, or maybe the Hegemony trusts you enough to escort their relief fleet so they don't need to cut back on patrols. This would spawn a fleet that heads over to the destination system, and you need to join in any battle they get into, and try to keep all the ships alive. This gives bounty hunters something to do. Obviously some pirates could be spawned to simply hunt the fleet.
Hit: A fleet is travelling from one place to another. Make sure it does not reach its destination. Especially common for pirates, or once you are friendly/cooperative with a faction. Could spawn escort fleets that take the fleet part of the way, to promote attacking it in deep space.
Cruise: Only if you have a civilian liner in the fleet, take a bunch of people to various places in space, then return them home. Possibly penalize combat during the cruise, or maybe the cruise ship must be deployed or the mission is failed.
Other Ideas:
Immediate Rehiring:
Once you finish a mission, have the person who hired you ask if you can do something else for them, maybe at a bigger bonus. Currently I don't see the same person ask for things more than ~3-4 times, so you never really build a relation with them. This would also allow more... unusual requests, like the Base Commander needs some under the table drugs, but will pay a premium for them.
Increased Individual Rep Impacts
I would make each mission have a bigger rep impact with the individual. The +1/-1 with the individual is tiny, given that you tend to trade all over the sector and to different people, rather than continually trading around 1 system. Maybe also give rep impacts to individuals on the port, so if you fail a delivery to the quartermaster, the base commander and several merchants hear about it.
This was touched on in the blog post, but there should be bonuses for having good reputation with several people. Maybe the quartermaster gives you a discount on supplies, the base commander is willing to let you purchase some military grade equipment, etc.
