The addition of lots of new research is on my "low-priority" list of things to do to flesh out the mod once i've finished adding all the major features and optimised it.
In the meantime, for those who want it, you can use the config (as you've found) to adjust droid base health and base damage by a scalar amount. If you find the NE enemies HP is just too high, increase the droid damage scalar from 1.0 to 1.5 and see how you go.
Also please remember that yes, "bullet speed" and "bullet damage" and "combat robot damage" are all extremely important research to make your droids more effective in combat. It makes a huge difference, so try to get Bullet Damage in particular up as high as possible as soon as possible to help deal with big biters. Also note the rocket bots are extremely important in late-game high evo battles because they do massive damage to single targets (big/behemoth biters) and are very important for clearing big worms.
