Bears feel great now. On a 1-2 star island it feels like a tank actually should do.

I think my only problem now is that if you have 4+ bears, an island can feel like a walkover.

But I don't think this is a problem with the mod, I think it's a longstanding problem with the economy. Getting the first bear is a huge amount of work (requires at least 3 blueprints) but then after that they're not that expensive so there isn't really a huge difference between having 1 and 4.

What might be interesting is having them 5x as expensive (or something) to balance things out.

PS I should say, I'm exclusively a PVE player so I'm sure PVP players have a completely different experience

To be honest, that sounds about right. If you have four mantas, then most islands... also feel like a walkover.

If the bears make it even easier than having multiple mantas that's good too, because they're always going to be slower to deploy and retrieve (and a lot shorter ranged) than air assets unless you also have a load of petrels.

The idea to make bears more expensive is good feedback too, thanks. I'll certainly consider that in the future, and it's a lot safer to make economic changes than it is to make statistical ones, avoiding update issues, since the economy will apply smoothly to any new bears produced.