Just realized I forgot to explain base assaults at all.

Once you get the hang of them they aren't so bad, but, there are basically 3 types of planetary base assault missions: scan, destroy, and...well also destroy but not a generator.

Generator assaults will generally be something like "kill the power" or "open the gate" or something along those lines, and you're being asked to blow up a generator. Just get in, find it, blow it up, and get out. The first time you enter a planetary base you're going to be completely lost, but the thing you're looking for is literally called a generator, everything else that's stationary will either be very obviously a turret or a data point.

The scanning missions will usually ask you to scan a data terminal. It's uh...not super complicated, you just need to find the thing. In my experience you'll usually find it near a gigantic satellite dish. It's easiest to go into first-person turret mode and target the data point to scan it, as this often allows you to do it from a distance and you can avoid having to maneuver past walls and stuff.

The third kind just requires you to kill a pre-determined number of sentry drones. The more you have to kill, the higher the payout, but most facilities won't have more than 3-4 drones (+1 if you want to count the Goliath, but those are enough of a pain in the butt to kill that you may not want to bother unless you're assaulting the base from your ship).

I hesitate to include this, and want to clarify that this is not solid fact, but I'm guessing there is probably a second type of scanning mission which requires you to scan ALL of the terminals in the base. I'm making this assumption because you "can" do this already even though I've yet to encounter a mission that explicitly asks you to. The way it works is you'll scan one data point, and then a timer starts that warns you that the system will go into lockdown when it expires. Scanning another data point will allow you additional time, and once you've scanned everything...well good for you because I've never gotten that far. You'd basically have to memorize the whole layout of the facility (the layout of individual facilities doesn't change from mission to mission) and be a pro racer to get it done, but I'm mentioning that it's a thing just for the sake of completion.

Good luck out there, Commanders! o7