Having run a bit last night and doing some Bounty Hunting I have a few observations.
I tapped each type of ship and can say the only one that seems really over powered is the cobra.
Here's Why:
Of all of them, I died 4 times last night (most in two months, not bad, nice improvements!) However, 3 of the 4 were to cobras. I'm running in a Vulture, beefed up, pimped out. Yet, oddly Cobras have the magical unicorn powers of Ramming you until you die. 3 Direct Rams shields down and two shots my Vulture is dead...and I couldn't get their shields past half way. I dropped Pythons, Anacondas, Vipers, Diamondbacks, Couriers even ( annoying as they are), and yet Oddly I felt like Professor Quirrel trying to suck the blood out of a fabled beast that was magically untouchable. FD - Recheck the Cobras would ya?
Second Observation:
Seems the spike in difficulty went way up, but the rewards for said engagements stayed about the same. Whilst there are a few bumps, like 10-20% rewards, the overall difficulty increase is like 200%. Might I suggest the KW Scanner posting the actually bounty in the returned data so as to incentivise and en/discourage engagement? Seems if we are to "pick our fights" it would help to have a way of doing so intelligently.
Third:
Whilst the overall use of power is the big difference, the use of power distribution seems to be coming at a "computer" speed and NOT at a human speed. I thought AI was to be more human, flipping spacial "u" turn in faster-than-human speeds is essentially AI cheating. Might want to fine tune that logic.
Other than that, I can't disparage the improvement in AI, just suggest a few tweaks.