Even I fell into this :) I always felt sad for them because we can Wax their tails so easily that you kind of want to seriously kill Arco for not funding them better :)

Is it still too easy, or too tough, or just right?

I lowered the hitpoints a bit on the bases when I downloaded it, since otherwise I had to sit there and fire away for ages to destroy them. Other than that, it's nice to have to run from the Centauri sometimes rather than just breezing through and slaughtering them.

The Main problem with anything in game is how your ship is set up ( or not ) when you meet the eventual scenario. Centauri are naturally strong if your not upgraded, a Heavy raider can devastate a new player in seconds, but as you gain more experience, they are just annoying.

Base Hp are fine : I once made the Himal Bases stronger and regretted doing it because I was pinging away for awhile to crack them.

but its always up to individual players and how they play : there WAS a " stronger Centauri " mod once : but it was buggy and had side effects : I am happy you revisited the idea and as we see from Peter5930 , it was a good visit