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[Hiruma Kai]

There are two main layers to the game, the strategic campaign map and the tactical combat view. Each layer poses unique challenges and would require their own form of balance levers. For the strategic layer, the most important challenge is balancing resources in/resources out. Reducing upkeep across the board (ship maintenance, crew upkeep, fuel and colony costs) isn't too involved and definitely makes things easy. The combat layer already has a difficulty setting that changes global damage for enemies and player.

Actually, Easy mode, in addition to reducing damage in combat, also increases sensors by 500 (making it easier to spot dangerous fleets ahead of time or find exploration targets) and increases salvage by 50% (not rare salvage I believe - although I could be wrong), meaning more supplies/fuels from defeated enemies and salvaged from domain probes and the like.  So it is intended to make the campaign layer easier as well.

[nathanebht]

I've been exploring and find that my officer/crew salary is the biggest drain. Have 10 officers and most are level 5. Here is my experience with a no-mods, .95a game.

I stock up, head out and explore a cluster of stars. Domain probes seem to be everywhere and produce a lot of loot. Have plenty of fuel and supplies from what I find. Could keep exploring but my bank balance is getting low. Multiple 100k out of my cash because of the long travel time.

Sold stuff after I got back but it didn't bring in that much cash. So do quests and salvage to get to where I could explore some more. Eventually started raiding pirate stations for big profits.

This started to feel like a job and I've quit playing. Having to work up money just to be able to explore, not fun. Hassle of buying supplies and fuel, didn't compare to monthly expenses. Perhaps putting the efficiency mod on all my ships is why I never felt buying buying supplies and fuel was a hassle.

[Kaphraxus]

Noticed Alex commented on this and wanted to chime in as a less vocal member of the community (until now lol) but I like the struggle for supplies in the early game. It's a big part of the game's appeal to me as a fan of sci-fi works like firefly and star wars where the appeal was always as a small time smuggler or something. However, using a large fleet can become unwieldy in the lategame when you can fully strip markets of supplies and still be wanting more. To a certain extent, player colonies help with this (especially with a waystation installed) but I think some additional changes that could be made without just cutting supply consumption across the board are:

Having contacts give discount supplies/missions for supplies.

Bringing back that skill from 0.9.1a that reduced supply consumption for d modded ships based on amount of d mods (really sad to see this skill go)