Nah, I think this is fair, as long as it follows the existing pattern for drop rates. Make it so it spawns a single sample per standard mission. That still makes it a significant grind for the players who can't handle 7+, but at least gives them something for their efforts now.
There's a lot of players who only play low difficulty missions, and some of them do so because they feel like they're held back by not having access to all the ship upgrades. It creates a sort of Catch-22 where they "can't" play high levels because they don't have the ship upgrades, and they can't get the ship upgrades because they can't play high levels.
I think 6 is still a decent entry point, honestly. I believe every unit type can appear at 6, so it's not like it's completely free on a 95% scavenger planet or something, either.
7+ was quite manageable with a good 4 squad until they kept adding events that would bring a mission to a halt like infinite gunships and factory striders spawning right at the objective. I’m guessing that a lot of these fixes should start addressing that.
Amen brother. I only play at helldive difficulty. I think it's a sort of weird paradox where common and rare samples aren't important enough to get, and helldive means you need to constantly be on the move and sticking with your teammates. So there's no time and no incentive to just wander around the map for samples.
Level 6 is still working for it, if you think it's not you are very sweaty. I still like playing on 7 to a degree, but 6 is not a night and day difference, you still have to be on your shit to not die