Guys seriously I get what your problem was with the NPCs being hard, ruining your RP and all but please. I always enjoyed a lil challenging NPCs to shoot at from time to time, it made it interesting to even go that far and sometimes horrifiying if you know you could have a certain death.
But I mean can't we make them at least harder at Core systems of certain factions, give them usual guns as the players use maybe. Would be nice to bring them back again.
EDIT: Nomad NPCs or just Alien NPCs like Wilde/Nomad/AI etc. I'm talking about Snubs here not Capital Ships.
Or maybe increase the amount of NPCs in systems like Iota or Omega-55 and Drake, such places which should crawl with NPCs and people would just love to hang out go there and shoot Aliens. Wilde Scorpion Gunboats and some rarely appearing Tundra would be realy cool in those systems like O-55 and Drake.