Range nerf most certainly guts Safety Override's usefulness at kiting, which is understandable. (I would have used Safety Override just to make my ships faster, or rather make up for speed lost now that Helmsmanship 5 no longers makes the player faster.)
Yeah, that's pretty much the reason. The idea is to open up a more aggressive style, but without the range nerf, I'd found myself still gravitating to long-range loadouts and using the speed for kiting, despite the peak time reduction.
Is the difficulty setting permanent, instead of determining starting assets? (If so, I will play Normal. I may be a munchkin, but I want to play fair.)
It's permanent. More for easing in new players/providing a bit more of a relaxed experience.
Is the increased salvage in campaign only for easy mode or is it a change globally in the game and easy mode gives an additional 50% salvage boost?
(this might be a confusing sentence, sorry)
It's 50% across the board, and then 50% (multiplicative) on top of that for "easy".
So if you got 20 supply in 0.65, you'd get 30 in 0.7, and 45 in 0.7 easy.
does increased salvage also mean looting more weapons?
No, just credits/supplies/heavy equipment/metals.
I wonder why salvage is increased at all though, wasn't the idea to make random battles without in-game-reason (bounty, mission, asset defense) unprofitable?
With enemy fleets having officers, at least in my testing, it took more ships - and thus cost more - to beat the higher-end fleets. When the enemy has 10 level 20 officers, things get pretty rough, even if you do too. So this is pretty much driven by "what feels sustainable for a high-end fleet taking on appropriate challenges".
It's not supposed to be entirely unprofitable, btw - just not a great way of making money. At endgame, though, there's not much else if you're going the combat route and facing faction fleets.
@ Gothars: Probably because you cannot get paid from any and every faction, if you become friends with one, as we can in 0.65?
Yeah, that contributes too.