Horizons NPC-Power is bad balanced since horizons

[nunatak]

First of all, I love ED and I like the new features coming with horizons very much. Today I did my first planetary landing and crafting experience. I'ts very cool!

But, since horizons the power of NPC is in very bad balance! Yesterday I came back from a two month exploring tour! Entered the bubble, got an interdiction. Within 10 seconds I was shot down to hull 1%. With full speed and boost I was able to escape. It was a big luck! If they had killed me, it had destroy the work of two month and my playing fun, too.
Please do something with the balance! For players doing there stuff in the bubble all time, it's no problem to get destroyed sometimes. But for explorers it's a work of month! So, I like a dangerous universe, but killed in seconds is not dangerous, it's not fair. Make hull repair more expensive but don't let NPCs kill players within a blink of time.

Or, another suggestion: Do something to let explorers rescue their data while being abroad. For example, let them buy some expensive hyperspace drones for 500.000-1.000.000cr per one, loading maximum by 3-5 units. These drones could be used for players far away, to send their scan data to universal cartographics and save it till that point. That would be a very nice feature to make homecoming for them more secure!

 

[Loskene]

You just have to adjust your playstyle a little to adapt to the changes. I did a brief exploration tour to Barnard's loop and the surrounding nebulae the other day. I bought an Asp and considered stripping it to the bone for maximum jump range, but it dawned on me I'd have to make some compromises to ensure my safety out there and on the way back home. I fitted it with 3A shields to cover landing scrapes on high-G worlds, a vehicle bay that holds 2 SRVs in case I break one, 5D thrusters to hold me up safely and let me run away from interdictors, a power distributor big enough to let me boost, and an 8 ton cargo rack in case I found anything nice. I ended up needing all of those at least once. Returned home with 97% hull, one intact SRV, materials to cover 3 boosted FSD jumps, and 8 tons of gold.
Safe to say the days of exploring in a completely gutted ship are gone by the wayside, just be thankful nobody's found a reason for us to need weapons. Yet.