I think "Highwayman Scout Quad" armor should be made more adequate to its appearance and pedia description, i.e. "vulnerable to fire and explosions", instead having 50% and 75% resistances, which in combiantion with good armor makes it nearly invulnerable to almost any early ranged weapon. Its only weak point is 115% to stabbing, which is weird. Its massive TU: 250 is weird as well, as well as deadly: after crossing of couple of hangars space it will still be able to do several bursts of autofire.
Last night I get another sudden difficulty spike, then very young agricultural base, located in deep of amazonia jungles, was attacked by "small" band of highwaymen (36), including dogs, flamethrowers, fucking incendiary SMG and 3, yes THREE at once, aforementioned vehicles. So spotted one of these on first turn of combat, I decided to reload back by few days and bring on help of local peasantry a couple of strong melee fighters from homebase, equipped with... rapiers (pikes can suit better but who knew when). They make the job, yes, but at cost of many reloads and hours of playtime, because of sewers phase was extremely tedious.