Right now, Difficulty has a... well, difficulty. The difficulty settings in space and on the ground are significantly different. Setting space combat to Elite difficulty gives a great challenge, but (particularly in exploration, it seems) even having Difficulty on Advanced on the ground seems much harder.
I propose dividing the system. Let people set their Space and Ground difficulties separately.
Since the reward bonuses are supposedly tied to the specific defeat of enemies, rewards would automatically scale -- if someone's set to Elite difficulty in space and Normal difficulty on the ground, starships would yield better numerical rewards, incidence of drops and quality of drops while ground encounters will be set back to normal. No one will get direct advantages as a result.
This will let those who find the ground combat more challenging to begin with tailor it to their desires while doing the same with space, without forcing them to (say) exit to sector space and change their difficulties because they prefer Space on Elite and Ground on Normal (to use the extreme example).
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