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.

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

I’d settle for less “game completely freezes for 3 seconds for no reason”

I know it’s a bandaid fix for performance, but better upscaling solutions would be appreciated.

Lol I wish! The game runs on Bitsquid, which Autodesk stopped work on in 2018.