Laying it out, calling ti as I see it...

Industry missions are broken.  I don't mean the ones that have ores you can't find now (anyone finds immentium on yellow islands let me know lol), or the weird curve on mining missions now that ore patches move around.  What I mean is, that while combat missions gradually walk a player up through their combat skills, using combat scanners to figure out the best fits, etc, we who serve the pick and shovel don't have the same.

Right now (not including any changes you guys are planning), we go here, mine that, head back, cash in, rinse, repeat.  And production missions are much the same.  What I propose is a rework, something along these lines.  And yes I realize it's a hell of a lot of coding, but I'm not expecting it done yesterday, more a guide for the next major patch.

level 0 - tutorials, this is how to scan, what a plant is, etc, same as now, no change
level 1 - basic mining progresses, skill up more, introduces tokens to rewards, pretty much no change
level 2 - changes, several.  One is that your production missions give you a ct, and you use materials you mined to make the parts.  This is the level we introduce trade missions at too.  Example thus:
     Widget I - scanning - go to point A find box bring back the Leg Widget of Dooooom
     Widget II - production - we have researched Leg Widgets, we developed light weight frames from them, but we need more, here's a ct, make us 10 leg widgets, take 10 of them and the ct, leave 1 frame as reward behind, plus other regular tokens and nic.
     Widget III -  production/trade - there's more demand for frames than we can meet, use a frame to RE a CT for them, build 5 and turn them in.  This mission will walk people through a basic understanding on RE process, what the numbers mean, more than the current ones do.
level 3 - More advanced mining, production and trade.  By this point people should be familiar with the production system.  Adds trade missions, example:
     Widget IV - Demands increased again, this time you market to people directly.  Same RE and such, but sell 5 of them on market to complete.  Here people have to decide if they want to sell tot he low value NPC orders, or try to get a decent price for them.  Note that the mining missions will be giving them the materials they need so no problems there.  You guys are pretty good at balancing, my only suggestion is to have these missions across all 3 corps in each race.  Multipurpose in indy corp, guns combat corp, odds and ends intelligence corps.  By this point people should be looking at getting out of the newbie corp anyway, and having to do group missions or else learn some combat skills to progress on their own into different market areas will encourage that. 
level 4 - more of the same, items requiring more minerals, and the mining missions to get them.
level 5 - introducing higher tech levels for production, RE, and trade, encouraging research and moving experienced players out of the newbie market areas.

When combined with my other post about adding kernals and decoders to the syndicate store, missions like this will advance industry to the point it should be at, allow newer player a better access to the system, and provide newer combat focused players what they need on the market.  Cheers.