JS is hard. Yes, you have extra loot, but as Zippicus says, the battles can get really long. The other thing is that the extra loot can be good, but errors in JS are really harsh, and crackdowns/bases/pogrom can get very tricky. An "early" (Starting second year) mercenary/church/stargod crackdown in your early base and you are totally scrub, and normally, those years crackdowns mean lot of sacrificed units. I do the shameful month savescumm when I have a really bad month. (At least I need to repeat all the month with a new seed. Don't hate me
). And you have to run a lot from missions.
I don´t think the "extra loot" is unbalancing considering everything. In the end, you need to advance much faster in JS so you don´t get a game over. I think JS without the extra loot could get between Nintendo Hard and Unwinnable.
I think Superhuman Xcom file is harder.. (At least, that is my impression).
In the end, I think the balance of Piratez is very good in all the difficult levels. But I have not tried less than Davy. (I´m masochist
).
Maybe, if there is a way to get some items just a little costly in JS (Ships, for example, or manufacturing cost of some non-intended to be profitable items.) (And just a little more
), that can be interesting. But I think there is not code in the engine for that.