Can't answer the first because I always play on normal for a first run. You level up fast and it seems melee/unarmed takes awhile to get nice at, so really it seems like you have made the game as hard for yourself as possible if that's the route you took. It's already scarce on health items and certain enemies start having very damaging weapons.I got 2 questions for people that have been playing this for awhile.
1. What difficulty is recommended to play on for fun?
I got to anew Atlantis last night and I'm playing on very hard. The enemies aren't hard they just eat up bullets. I've been running out of ammo on all my guns so I need to swap to the laser drill used for mining. I picked skills for melee combat in character creation but I her smoked trying to close the distance to do damage.
2. Is there a secret about being not being over encumbered?
At the research station I just picked up med packs, and looted the pirate's corpses. This led to me being over encumbered. I stored stuff in the ship before that. I had to store some stuff in a box and there were more pirates when I got back. I killed them looted their stuff and got over weight again. I eventually said fukk it and dropped all their weapons.
The 2nd, I'm also always overencumbered but having a follower helps because they hold your shyt, and then when you go to the ship, dump all your resources in cargo specifically because that shyt adds up. Later on you get boost packs and spacesuits that start increasing carrying capacity, and perks also obviously