I think the one thing the Agents feature desperately needs to be really cool is a one-click-repeat-mission button.
Because right now, receiving your Agent’s report and then sending the same agent on the same mission with the same gear is far too click-heavy for something that doesn’t even cost actions.
Ideally, there’d even be the option to skip the full report: go straight to rewards, then rinse and repeat - two clicks, that’s all it should be! 
Yes, if your agent’s equipment is enough to 100% all challenges, then a one-click “complete this mission and repeat the same one” would be ideal!
I found out that it’s better to err on the ‘stingy’ side while equipping your agents. If you can achieve the same solid or potent chance of success without equipping something, then do it.
Because your main character might need that extra +1 advanced skill in Zeefaring, Chthonosophy etc, not a good idea if you need that equipment but it’s already equipped by your agent and he/she is in the middle of the mission.
My take is exactly the opposite. Choose items to equip carefully to make sure the agent can succeed – and avoid the frustration of the entire effort being for nothing.
Then again, I do have a lot of multiples in the advanced skills, so the issue of that extra +1 doesn’t really arise.
I wound up with a combo, lol. I equipped the gang mostly with a bunch of secondary equipment I had lying around BUT ALSO got another each of Irrigo Goggles, Moray Heels, Leviathan-Leather Valise, Avid Gloves and Brachiating Spindlewolf. Not a great expense bc I think I’m early endgame (in spite of not finishing Destiny, Railroad OR Evolution, SHAME) but it’s kind of ironic that an addition apparently meant to get players to use more stockpiked items wound up in me…stockpiling more stuff.
“your main character might need that extra +1 advanced skill in Zeefaring, Chthonosophy etc”
Boy did that just happen to me in Burgundy. Fortunately the Wily Zubber was done and I clawed the items back without having to leave but that was not a happy moment! So instead I loaded her up with lower-value items rather than the higher ones that also have +1 advanced qualities.
I’m sorry to say that after some time using them, I realized that I really hate, hate, hate, hate Agents as a feature.
They’re extremely distracting, and IMO this is a real accessibility problem for some aneurotypical people. The amount of clicks needed to manage them currently is absolutely obnoxious. They feel like a chore and I dread seeing the pop-up. After a 100 times it’s really not rewarding to see what they brought, at all (spoiler: it’s the same thing as the previous 99 times). I sometimes end up ignoring the notification for another 20-30 Actions before I finally begrudgingly get around to seeing the report and sending the Agent again. Otherwise I’d completely forget what I was doing half of the time.
They feel like more effort and more clicks and more brainpower for a reward that’s… nothing. It’s just EPA. Pure EPA with 0 lore reward, 0 roleplay reward, 0 story reward. Why the heck are we even doing this? If I wanted to repeat the same clicks over and over and over for all eternity to make a number go up, I’d go for raising Investigating… to 777 or something. Alas, not many of us enjoy this type of thing.
Agents are obviously incorporated into the wider in-game economy now. Anyone who doesn’t want to use them is at a clear disadvantage, and this gap will presumably only widen when more Agents and Plots get added and they become more essential. This just means that instead of some more imaginative and fun grinds (that would have the same desirable effect on the economy) we got those soulless money-printing machines that will regularly require attention and offer only Echoes back. Until the end of time.
It’s like some tamagotchi that only poops. Yeah I can keep it alive just for the sake of it, but why would I want that? Isn’t it supposed to be enjoyable, too?
But… I don’t think they’re integrated significantly into the economy? There’s nothing in the rewards that can’t be obtained elsewhere. The benefit is minimal; if you’re doing it constantly it’s either because you’re enjoying it or because you’re going for one of the ridiculous year-long vanity grinds and this will shave some real time off of it.
If you don’t want to do it, you can just not do it? As you said, there’s no story locked behind them.
After I set them up, which does involve a bit of fiddling, they’re just two clicks – one for the report, and one to send them off again. Take the (yes, minimal) income because every little helps, but since, as you rightly say, there is no lore and no change to the outcome, two clicks is about all they’re worth.
(There’s mild disappointment about the lore and invariable rewards, yes. But maybe give yourself permission to simply ditch them? I don’t foresee that being any great disadvantage, especially if grinds aren’t of interest anyway.)
Some ventures’ outcomes do take multiple clicks to get the report - the intelligence one and the zub one, off the top of my head. But, yeah, it’s very easy to opt out of using them if you don’t want to.
Yeah, yet… This has been just a test run, after all.
This is untrue though. The exact number of clicks (= API loads affected by server lag) is between 9 and 11. Not 2.
I just went and counted and - yeah, 9 for collecting the simplest report and renewing the mission. I honestly didn’t think it was that many, even having done it many times over - I guess I’m clicking on stuff all day long so exactly how many times I click doesn’t register!
So the report comes in 2 bits – I still don’t see how it’s more than four. But having been called a liar (albeit sooo politely), I’m out of this conversation.
I’ve just had a couple of reports completed, so I’ll list the clicks.
The Clay Breaker has finished Found at Zee, so the clicks are:
The Wily Bathyphile has completed Beneath the Waters - that’s a multi-part assignment, so the clicks are:
All that assumes you’re sending them out on the same missions with the same gear each time.
Also not counting the clicks to navigate to the Agents tab and then back to the Story tab.
On mobile this is even worse: one click to select the “head” button (add an extra several seconds of waiting on my ancient phone), one click to navigate from the Possessions tab to the Agents tab, one click to navigate back to the Story tab. Or alternatively, clicking the Agents link in the popup, if you’re fast enough, to go directly there—but that is its own special kind of clunky, because it reloads the entire page, taking even longer.
I did some back of the napkin calculations and have to say that ~30 excessive clicks per day generated by Plots are nothing compared to number of excessive clicks generated by checks for which you don’t have exact outfit. Plots probably add less than +2% of total clicks. Unless you are sitting on some two-clicks mindless grind, in which case Plots could add up to +15% of clicks.
More autism:
In terms of EpA Plots add from 4% (base EpA = 6) to 3% (base EpA = 8). So clicks per profit for Plots is more or less the same as for usual gameplay.
The biggest issue with Plots is how they interrupt regular gameplay. I say that as someone who rather likes them and hope the mechanic gets expanded, my biggest gripe is how they can demand my attention when I’m trying to focus on something else.
So from that perspective, amortization is not the most relevant context for counting Plot clicks. The issue is the length of interruption, how many clicks it takes to get me back to what I was just doing.
Yes, that’s a huge part of the problem.
FL gameplay was always, for lack of a better word, single-threaded. Now it’s not, with the second thread requiring attention at completely random moments, and some of us can cope with it worse than others.
There’s a reason I don’t have a second screen despite being a software dev (and kinda needing it). I can barely hold my train of thoughts when I have just one thing in front of me. I’m grumpy about it because it’s a new problem with FL that I never had before. Normally I can always just not play games that require my brain to work like that. But now with Agents being added to FL, it’s as if someone suddenly bought me a second screen which 1) I don’t want 2) only plays annoying ads at random intervals 
I’m generally positive towards the agents, I find it satisfying having another use for my items and feel mildly more productive knowing my actions are getting me an extra bonus. But I definitely agree they’re too many clicks; one click to receive the whole report and then one to go onwards is as many as that part should take. And I’m not sure how much one could streamline the mission starting part, but at a minimum it could really use a ‘repeat the same mission with the same agent and same gear.’
I don’t mind the number of clicks associated with receiving reports—I like the text snippets so I wouldn’t want to skip past them—and once I’ve stopped what I’m doing to switch to a new tab it doesn’t really matter to me that much whether I’m there for two clicks or ten. But I would appreciate if as they expand Agents they included some longer missions that intereupted gameplay slightly less frequently (perhaps only unlockable once you’ve completed a certain number of missions like with getting your second agent, so that they don’t get a bunch of support tickets complaining someone’s accidentally locked a vital piece of equipment behind a 500 action timer)