From the blog post:
NPC balancing
Electronic warfare NPCs are annoying little bastards. We play our game too (srsly), and the feeling that they are a bit too much for the newbies has been growing in us for some time now too. They are usually easy to kill, but when they get together with their damage dealing friends, they can easily overwhelm an inexperienced player. If you get in trouble near one of these spawns, it’s already too late to run.
With the introduction of the new islands we’ve got some more playroom for balancing, so we’ll lighten up the old starter alpha islands a bit by either removing EW NPCs from spawns, or reduce them to one. We’ll also remove or replace high ranked NPCs that are too close to the alpha terminals, so new Agents who are not so familiar with NPC names won’t get slaughtered after a few steps on Nia.
I think, part of the NPC issue with Telleis is simply that many vet's, including myself, far out EP/equip the 3 and 4 star bots; but choose not to go to the harder spawns on Beta.
Alpha-II's aren't meant to be the hardest spawns. If farming NPC's on Alpha-II required 6 months of EP and MK-II bots, then PVE players would have nothing to do after they 'conqured' the Alpha-I islands after 2 months of EP.
Point being that I can take (3) 4 star Ewar and (2) 3 star assault DPS with my Baph MK-II with T4 lasers and tuners and level 7 basic skills. However, if you tune that spawn to where it is 'difficult' for me, then the 3 month EP player with a MK I won't have a chance.
Minerals and Roaming bots, I agree with you completely. The only difference I can see in alpha-I vs. II is the distances to outpost. On Alpha-I, your never more than 2-3k from an outpost or teleport when mining. It would be highly challenging on alpha-II, with it's single outpost, to get your 50 kph Riveler on/off the field when your 4-5k from an outpost or TP. So, while there should be roamers, they should be 'slow' mechs and 'rarer' then on Alpha-I.
Titan isn't supposed to be rare remember, so putting 12 islands worth of Titan on 6 islands is going to result in red fields.
Some adjustments are needed, but keep in mind that Alpha's 'are' carebear Islands and the added 'logistics' for beta corps to move titan around isn't a negligable factor in the equation for having titan red tiles.