I made a mod that makes combat a bit more challenging wihtout affecting anything else:

https://www.nexusmods.com/nomanssky/mods/1788/

This mod is not a "hardcore-battle-mod", so you can also use it if you are a casual player and just want a bit more challenge in your fights.

Here is a full changelog:
V1:
- Higher chance (100%) that predators attack player
- More health (150%) for predators
- Sharks can be aggressive
- More health (200%) for scuttlers
- More health (200%) for fiends
- More health (150%) for small fishes
- More health (133%) for big fishes
- Higher Damage (200%) for everything on Derelict Freighters
- Space Enemies attack you longer (10x) before they bail
- Higher Damage (200%) for space enemies
- More health (200%) for Sentinels
- Faster (33%) Attack Speed for Sentinel Drones
- Sentinel Drones can now shoot up to 4 more projectiles (3-8 per salve)
- More health (200%) for Pirates

V2:
- Pirate fights are harder

V3:
- Pirates "Medium" are a bit harder to fight.
- Pirates "Hard" are harder to fight.

Looks nice, well done! Perhaps i'll give it a go soon.

I made a small update to v. 2.0 with a small addition:
- Pirate fights are harder

Ooh this looks nice. Going to bookmark the Nexus page for when Hellogames finish updating the game (and I am done finding / reporting vanilla game bugs).

There are only a couple of things bug me about the game, asteroids being far too frequent is the main one which Lo2K has sorted with a couple of mods ..

.. but combat being grandma friendly is the other main thing that bugs my brain. And you seem to have the right ideas without being too heavy handed :)

Tip for Nexus (if you are willing to put the time in) : Have a lite + Medium + Heavy version of the mod to satisfy the diverse needs of people. It would probably be a bit more of a burden when it comes to updating the mod for newer versions of the game, but would increase the popularity. The one you have now would be my preference, but I can see some would prefer a Lite version of the current one, and the other extreme Heavy would be for elite gamers

So to take one of the changes in your mod as an example :
Lite - Higher Damage (150%) for everything on Derelict Freighters
Medium - Higher Damage (200%) for everything on Derelict Freighters (Current setting for your mod)
Heavy - Higher Damage (250%) for everything on Derelict Freighters

And apply a similar spread to the rest of the settings.
Only trouble then would be you will get the odd request saying "Love the Medium version, but could you do a medium version with x a little higher and y a little lower" .. :D

Anyway thats up to yourself - Thank you for the mod and research that has gone into it, looks like just the thing for when I get into modding the game.

I made a small update for version 3.0:
V3:
- Pirates "Medium" are a bit harder to fight.
- Pirates "Hard" are harder to fight.

Oh god! THIS is a huge part of my love/hate relationship with the game, and a classic example of where either Hello Games relative inexperience shows, or the influence of the Sony Playstation testing cycle?

I have ZERO idea why they made this change to asteroid density, or why they kept it update after update, patch after patch. It is completely immersion breaking. But i think they just think "well you pulse jump over distances in system anyway, and that makes you invulnerable to damage, so why change it back?". DESIGN FAIL.

This is NMS all over, and i speak as a passionate fan. Without mods i simply could not play the game, it is just too infuriating with these kind of logic disconnects.

And if i was into the game for combat i would certainly be using a mod like AlpakaDream's. You just have to mod this game, it's too insane/maddening without them.

They dont think the asteriod thing is a problem. Atleast gog you dont have to update, the game to me is unplayable with out removing the 4000000000000 asteroids, raver drug induced space of colors, make believe sun colors, and not being able to hover. Can travel faster than light, but hovering is just to complex hahahah. Which they are so stupid because the asteroids were there because they didnt want it to be to hard and you ran out of fuel. You cant hover because it makes it eaiser to blow things up with your ship. They really have no clue what they are doing, my guess is there is more than one person making the decisions on what to add.

I also made a less Asteroids mod today:
https://www.nexusmods.com/nomanssky/mods/1802/

Thank you very very much, Im gonna give that a try soon.