Agreed, Shadow Genesis is harder then your usual campaign, but it's nicer this way.
Here's how I like to look at it. Two campaigns I would give high scores to for mission design are Warzone and Sol: A History. But S:AH is
significantly harder than Warzone. There's no one target level of difficulty that all campaigns should aim at.
Deciding on the difficulty level is like deciding whether or not to have a speaking player character: there's no one right answer, and the more variety we have the better. People who like one kind of campaign can play it, people who prefer the other kind can play that, and people who can enjoy both get some variety in their FreeSpace diet.
So Betrayal, Macielos, I don't think you guys need to reduce the difficulty. It's good to have some hard campaigns and some easier ones, and SG's difficulty is part of what makes it stand out. There are a number of things I'd like to see fixed in the next patch, but difficulty isn't one of them.
And you're welcome! I'll let you know if I succeed in earning the special loop.'
EDIT: out of curiosity, how many of Hiven's beams need to be destroyed in order to complete mission 40?