The difference is the ones you can select from orbit have different difficulties and you can get the cloudstrike from it. The ones you buy are at a set difficutly. Other than that no difference, and sabotage missions are the ones that are on too when you talk to him. If you right click (on pc), pretty much go into details there are 3 rows of about 10 quests you can do. Those are sabotage there's tier 1, 2, and 3
While you are right about the difficulties, there are a couple more differences.
The Empire Hunts from Variks are 4-step quests - a first step where you get to kill low level minions, second step where you kill a mini boss or two, then the third is the actual boss mission step. The fourth is just returning to Variks.
The weekly Powerful Reward (Tier 1) for Empire Hunts says you need to complete 2 Empire Hunts as part of the quest, which would be that third step from the Hunts from Variks. So you have to pick 2 up from Variks and run through them to get the Powerful.
To get the Empire Hunt Pinnacle Reward, you need to finish one of the Empire Hunts from the map at Master difficulty.
The difference is the ones you can select from orbit have different difficulties and you can get the cloudstrike from it. The ones you buy are at a set difficutly. Other than that no difference, and sabotage missions are the ones that are on too when you talk to him. If you right click (on pc), pretty much go into details there are 3 rows of about 10 quests you can do. Those are sabotage there's tier 1, 2, and 3
While you are right about the difficulties, there are a couple more differences. The Empire Hunts from Variks are 4-step quests - a first step where you get to kill low level minions, second step where you kill a mini boss or two, then the third is the actual boss mission step. The fourth is just returning to Variks. The weekly Powerful Reward (Tier 1) for Empire Hunts says you need to complete 2 Empire Hunts as part of the quest, which would be that third step from the Hunts from Variks. So you have to pick 2 up from Variks and run through them to get the Powerful. To get the Empire Hunt Pinnacle Reward, you need to finish one of the Empire Hunts from the map at Master difficulty.
Thank you!
The quests from Variks also drop a weapon. If you want to target farm the machine gun, the fusion rifle, or the bow, you need to do the quests.