Normal in my opinion is too easy but good when I want to burn through a mission, Advanced is a good medium while Elite is pretty exciting. I would say that Normal is for begining and casual players, while advance offers a more of a challenge with the added rewards that come with.

Elite should be for players who know how to play thier class, organize a good group and tactically employ that group to overcome a greater advasary.

that being said, I'd like to propose to that how the difficulty runs look something like this:

Normal:
Standard group size as is in game currently. Max, One Command (Commander, Swordmaster, etc.) enemy at a time. Health, Shields and Weapons Comperable to your own based on level. Skills comperable to your own based on level (rank and number) but with recharge time based on BO skill points 3-5. Sustainable injuries possible 5% chance, but always Minor.

Advanced:
Incresed group size to ratio 1.5:1. Max, Two Cammand enemy per group. Health, Shields and Weapons comparable to you own bsed on level. Skills comparable to your own based on level, recharge time set at BO skill points 5-7. Sustainable injuries Likely (60%) Minor, possible (30%) Major, rarely (10%) Critical. So 40% chance no injury sustained.

Elite:
Incresed group size to ratio 2:1. Max, Three Command enemy per group. Health, Shields and Weapons comparable to your own based on level. Skills comparable to your own based on level with recharge time set as BO skill points 7-9. Sustainable injuries Almost Always (95%) Minor, Likely (60%) Major, Possible (30%) Critical. So only a 5% chance of not sustaining an injury.

Injury chance would also increase based on other injuries +0.1% for minor, 0.5% for major and 1% for critical. It has also been suggested that on elite mode there is a chance that a BO could sustain permadeath if they sustain too many injuries.

I think the challenge would be more fun then bieng one shotted by OP ground groups or invunerable space ships. Any other takes on this subject?

If it actually worked the way you describe it, that would be great. Unfortunately, elite seems to just take longer without actually being more challenging. Whenever I play elite in space I always find myself thinking "when will this battle be over", even though I am never in any real danger of dying.

Kinda agreed. Also, the only "slightly" better percentage of higher-quality loot doesn't scale well with the difficulty.

I play on Advanced for everything.

As previously said Elite just drags it out too long.

I would have liked them to make advanced as if 3 players entered the instance instead of 1. For elite scale up as if 5 players entered. This would be crazy if 5 players enter an elite instance so it would have to scale down to accomidate multiple player groups but to me it would be better than just giving the enemy 3X shields and hull, which is what the current system feels like.

That is how I feel about it too. I think if you make it as I've posted it won't seem such a drag as you battle because the targets don't necisarrily take longer to kill but that there are more to be killed and it gives you more opportunity for good drops because of the added enemies.

Normal is a breeze
Advanced only kills me when I stop paying attention
Elite still kicks my butt quite often.
All the drops suck more often than not, but thats to be expected.
I just wish they would bring the advanced subsystem damage system to PvP.

This is my experience as well. I would be ok with it if the drops justified the time...but they do not.