Okim,
I just wanted to say thank you very much for all your obvious hard work on this mod. While I love Starsector and have been playing it intermittently for about a year (probably a couple games per release), I find your mod to be almost exactly what I've been craving as far as activities, ship types, combat dynamics, etc. It reminds me of my first gaming love, Elite.
That said, I understand why you're making some of the recent changes you've discussed re: initial difficulty. While I agree that choices are fantastic and that a more shallow difficulty curve might help new players get acclimated to the game, I wanted to share my own experience briefly. Yesterday, I was able to start the game in the normal fashion with a shuttle and a freighter. By the evening, I'd joined the ISA, had 2 frigates, and was running regular and successful raids into civilian RSF space against transports, tankers, etc, without any problems at all. I did finally get destroyed by the end of the night because I attacked a civilian mining fleet that had a destroyer in it and that fight didn't go too well. I wasn't able to identify it from the system map, but that was really my fault. (I'm not the best at the actual combat in this game.)
Anyhow, just an opposing viewpoint that would like to say I think you're providing a very compelling experience with a very manageable difficulty curve already. I like the way the mod is in its current state and I'm glad I can continue to play it in that fashion, plus I'm looking forward to playing with your new updates. The journal sounds amazing!
Please let me know if there's anything I can do to help with this mod.
Regards,
Daniel