At a complete loss here..

Quote from MrPras

...... I don't mind hacking/tweaking the game - but it feels like cheating - but rather at the moment it's necessary just to do some of the missions or to avoid the pain of countless hours and sore wrist/arm shooting at npc's that are just unbalanced

Tstststs, haven't you read the "legal disclaimer" on installation ??

@ OP:
"is it balanced?

yes..................................................................obviously debatable to quite some people

is it hard?

depends on your skill (i am actually out of the game but manage to kill 10 fighters in NY in less than 10mins)
.....................................................................with an Eagle and class 10 weaps - sure ! But NOT in a Starflier or Liberty Patriot with stock weapons available there.

are the NPCs in NY hard?

nope - but you didnt fight NPCs in other areas yet.................now, THAT'S absolutly agreeable.

do NPCS use too many bots/bats

actually no - every human player can use bats/bots so why in gods name shouldnt NPCs have the same right?
....................................................................if they had the same bots and bats - you're right. But actually : the NPCs recover their shields on SP up to full even if no batteries are in their berth anymore, on the server up to half full, their hull recovers even without the use of bots, faster on SP a bit slower on the server ( but there they got their "special flying abilities" ).

So again : is it balanced?...........................................................debatable

@ Griff_en :
"OP would have an idea of what the attrition rate with new players is for
MP and I would suggest that its probably a lot worse in SP where you
cant ask anyone for advise or hear from experienced players that it gets
better. SP is how I had my first taste of CF (and I suspect that's the
case with most people) though I soon started playing somewhat
concurrently with MP. If I hadn't discovered the Custodian gate by
chance near Rochester (only because I made a habit of getting a better
thruster the first chance I could) CF would of been history ..
uninstalled."

Last year about the same time was quite a discussion, why there are sooo many registrations and downloads of CF, but not as much players on the server ???

Still not much more players than last year.

I see the custodian gate already from manhattan - so ahm with some bit of opened eyes that shouldnt be hard to discover... And ahm well - we had some quite good increase of the number of players.
Everything is debatable up to specific points. For some its too hard, for some too easy, for some balanced. For some its easy to earn credits, for some not. For some its easy to discover the secrets others dont have that much luck. Well its the point of view on how you want to look at the things.

So think positive and you will soon recognize its becoming better <<< have i said this, hm *startsthinking*

Yes Huor, but 1 thing is for sure:

Quote from NucNuc

Last year about the same time was quite a discussion, why there are sooo many registrations and downloads of CF, but not as much players on the server ???

Still not much more players than last year.

what is the reason?

30-40 players is more in my eyes
but ok

all ive to add is that NPCs carry even less bots/bats than their ships can handle and it is impossible to use those if NPCs ran out of it
thats like dividing by 0

Just to question the idea of being balanced or not

Clearly combat is balanced for skilled players - that's fine, no worries there
Missions - 30K average for a mission and 3million between levels? If you play combat missions then do the math. I don't think that it's a problem once you get onto higher levels but at the beginning having to do 100's of missions between levels is not balanced.
There are a bunch of other things that make the game too hard in some places or too easy in others..

I am, of course, speaking of the SP which is being redeveloped I hear. But still, it's far from balanced at least for me - I don't like the idea of spending a week (I don't play the game 24/7) to get on to the next level. It's just boring.

It's true that freelancer doesn't have difficulty levels - well there's a possible option for 1.9 when you install - different levels for different players

EDIT: Also with regard to tweaking the ini files - is it any less legal than modding the game? I'd like to see them sue me for that haha

regarding the money:
the reward for missions will be doubled in CF1.9 which gives a max reward of 988260$
next to that you get tons of escape pods that you can sell for good price

however, doing missions is not everything in FL
- trading
- smuggling
- mining
- killing npcs
- getting loot from other sources
- getting special items from wrecks

balance is a matter that does not apply only to one aspect of the game but to all aspects together

As in RL :

money shouldn't be everything.

Agreed. I don't like that the levelling system is tied to money and missions. Any way to decouple or to connect the levelling to kills for example?

nope