Randoms - bad or inexperienced players, are mostly extremely ineffective in PvE scenarios. In 80% of cases, noone will use a Duplicator, or even spawn, if you use one on them.
Experienced players are frustrated, you’re left alone with a ship and in most cases you can’t complete the objectives, because of swarms of bots, who are either preventing Beacon capture, or just delaying a player long enough to fail the mission, etc.
To at least somewhat address those problems, I suggest the following:
All PvE scenarios should feature Alien artifacts inside PvE maps. So far, only 2 Defense contracts have such Alien artifacts. Normal PvE scenarios should have them as well.
Alien Repair Kit
Speed Boost Kit
Damage Boost Kit
Invulnerability Kit
They should be added at your own discretion. I suggest at least minimum amount of 2-4 max, of one or two types, depending on the size of the map.
Respawn times should be normal like in other cases.
Duplication with Premium ships:
Every Premium ship used by anyone should have one free Duplication attempt as well. This feature should not be limited to Open Space only!