Not a complaint or a bug report, I'm just putting this here so you have another data point on the current balance :
In the late-game for a given cycle, I'm doing something like 1300-2300 damage per 'turn' in melee with the axe, with about 90 seconds of effective stealth remaining by the first time I swing it. Which is to say, combat is a Stamina Delay that I'm trying to avoid, but there's zero concern anymore about actually losing to the punks with silenced purse pistols I'm going up against.
Viewing post in Update 0.35.0 - Stealth Combat comments
Yeah, the current build has a bug where street thugs are being generated for even high end jobs that I've solved in the latest build, but I can't release until I finish making Projects functional without unwinding everything I did there. The fix was incidental to the new project territory system that is coming.
Root cause is street thugs have a max combat skill because I didn't want the world to feel like it just infinitely scaled with you - I wanted players to know that when they got better things that might have been a challenge in the past are now cake walks. But the higher level corporate enemies do scale infinitely because they have the same access to training, gear and cybernetics you do plus the advantage of a patron so they should always feel like a challenge. And there was just a typo in a data file that was making street thugs the default for a bunch of opponents.
Update is scheduled for release either late today (in about 17ish hours) or early tomorrow, and I'd love your feedback on how the balance feels when it comes out.