Did you nail all the ships in the last group (the stuff after the beam ships)? I remember it being particularly difficult to get every single one of those without using a megabomb, although it was possible.
Wave 4 is easier than 3. Apart from the last one, 6 and 7 are quite hard. 4, 5 and 8 are fairly easy.
Well, like I said, I tend to be able to shoot most of the ships down, so I bag lots of credits.
I'm quite surprised that you say Wave 3 is harder than Wave 4. From how I see it, the Waves in Outer Regions, from hard to easy, are: 9, 7, 6, 8, 4, 3, 5, 2, 1.
Let me recall other Raptor moments. Do you know that, on Rookie difficulty, you can actually survive the first three Waves of Bravo Sector by just holding down your fire button and not moving?
Oh, and it'll be good to note some of the birthdays of the game developers. If I remember correctly, setting your system clock to certain dates like, say, May 16, will trigger Raptor's birthday mode. In birthday mode, there are some new enemies, like mechanised monkeys that hit you with coconuts, robot cows that have a back-mounted laser (in Bravo Sector on Rookie difficulty!), manta rays that have a single rapid-fire laser, and what appears to be a Star Trek reference at Wave 4 of Outer Regions that, when shot enough times, will reveal a Raw Freylium Ore that can be picked up.
Here are the dates that will trigger birthday mode:
March 12: Bobby Prince
May 16: Scott Host (I use this)
August 28: Rich Fleider
October 2: Jim Molinets
Here's a cheat: Pressing the Backspace key will resotre your shields and give you a Deathray, although it will also reset your credits to zero. You can hold down Backspace while flying to be invincible and get a lot of Deathrays.
Sounds interesting. What format is this on?
MS-DOS (3D Realms) or Windows (Mountain King Studios). You'll need to know how to use DOSBox if you play the MS-DOS version, and if you use the Windows version by Mountain King Studios, I cannot guarantee that the cheats will work (although birthday mode still appears to be present).