Alternatively, one of those pesky Large Crates of Viral Agent could accidently leak into the hold and because the the player was AFK and didn’t space it Concord would need to impound the ship for a few days until the player figures out which forms to fill out to get it released.
Of course it is returned slightly damaged (it was that way when it came in) and possibly missing a module or two.
A long time ago CCP had missions requiring 15 to 20 jumps just to get to the mission site, players would just decline those missions and look for ones that were closer to home base… Eventually CCP redid those missions and made them much closer to home base…
There’s still missions that go into low sec space, usually offered by Agents stationed within a jump or two next to low sec… Also the high level Epic Arcs send players into low and null sec space…
As for mission rewards, there hasn’t been an increase in pay for as long as I can remember… CCP definitely needs to increase the mission and NPC bounty payment…
Doesn’t take much imagination to figure that out…
An Explorer mission could be something like a VIP ship in need of repair that’s stranded in a w-hole located in a nearby system… Basically scan / locate the w-hole, enter, scan and repair the VIP ship, return to Agent…
A Salvage mission could be something like a Convoy has been destroyed in a nearby system and the Agent needs the salvage from a specific wreck, all other salvage can be kept…