Good discussion.  Some thoughts that may or may not be helpful:

After being away for half a year and hearing about the new mission system, one of the things I was most hoping for after seeing the new production missions was being asked to actually produce real items with real materials and gaining items like fragments, kernals, and possibly cortex as rewards (well maybe not cortex as we need incentive to go to Beta/Gamma more).  I wouldn't even mind having to use my own ore if it meant getting kernals to unlock more research or fragments to crank out more prototypes.  While some NIC as a reward is important to cover the number of NIC sinks there are in the game, the rates that are out there now seemed really high and not needed to be honest.

I am far from an established producer, but I do like to tinker and be able to produce my own stuff even if it isn't the most efficient, and even if it costs more to produce than buy outright.  I would seed the market with more items, but I am limited by fragments the most and don't feel like going out to farm a location doing combat for hours just to make some items even though I have done this many times before.  So, I hoard them for when I really need to make a prototype and to make sure I have enough to help my corp when in need.

I did notice when I started doing combat missions a bit more that I started to compile some fragments and kernals, but it would be nice to give the industrial path player another option to get fragments and kernals at a decent rate.  If the availability was better, perhaps we would have more items being made and put on market for sale.

But yeah, I agree there needs to be some type of NIC sink or adjustment in some way to help with the huge influx from new missions.