How does the difficulty alter the game?

[Timberwolftrass]

Hey there, just out of curiousity... How does the difficulty alter the game exactly? I noticed already that the difficulty has a major impact on your rewards for accomplished missions, with hard rewarding you with just about 1/4 of the credits you would have gotten on easy.

My question is... Are there any other changes? I mean, when I play on hard, are the enemies going to use more fighter, better fighters, better equipment?

So far I have only played on easy, for the simple reason of the highest reward, and I'd like to know if the other difficulty settings are worthwhile playing for other reasons than keeping you relatively poor.