For those of us who like to venture out into the frontier, bounty and scan missions can be a great help, but I think the campaign balance of them is a bit off.
Bounties pay out pretty generously, but it seems like low level bounties disappear very fast in a campaign. I've had runs where I've done 4 or 5 of them and then afterwards every single available bounty has at least one cruiser and a large fleet, and capital ships become ubiquitous. This sort of sudden and massive jump in bounty difficulty makes it problematic if you wanted combat to be your primary means of income, as system bounties are more difficult to take advantage of, compared to the payout, as once you start seeing cruiser fleets in the bounty lists, frigate fleets become quite rare, and I don't see many destroyer fleets at any point in a campaign. I know I'm not the best player, but I have never been in a position to tackle these higher level bounties by the time they completely take over the bounty boards.
All this would only be a moderate issue, except that scan missions exist.
Scan missions pay out the ass, more than low level bounties, and are laughably easy to complete. I can rake in hundreds of thousands of credits easily, flying a "fleet" that consists only of a single Shepherd. Increasing the size of the fleet increases the rewards too, as you have more cargo to loot the scan target, the surrounding space, and bring supplies for surveys.
I do enjoy scan missions, but I enjoy combat more, and financially speaking, bounties come with significant risk compared to scan missions, factoring in repairs, recovery supplies, loss of crew, and potential loss of ships. Compare to your typical scan mission, which only incurs monthly maintenance costs, and maybe the occasional repair cost from hitting a hyperspace storm, costs that bounty missions *also* must incur.
For an optimal experience, it would be nice if combat was something I could do frequently early game because It is an effective way to advance, not simply as a side gig because I enjoy it.