I've never played Straciatella, but I know it's a moderately popular, compatible mod in the community. What you're describing does sound insane, but I suppose if you got a copy with "tweaked" .ini files it might be ramped up to 11.
I'd always go to the Bear's Pit for links and downloads (and help).

Personally I like 1.13, and there's a ton of fun additions and configurations possible.

Stracciatella is not even required to play. On Windows for smooth playing you need to copy dll file (wine3d? I forgot) to the game folder and for GNU/Linux there are Wine. There are not even -that much- bugs for second party "patch" to fix, just look at changelog, they propably invented more bugs themselves. For example: after taking Chalice from the sector inventory screen it may dissapear for good. That bug wasn't present in vanilla. That is possible they broke difficulty settings, because on easy you should get yellow-shirts with pistols and almost twice as much less enemies.

Pure game is very much playable. I am personally selected Expert/Ironman on the second playing try where 10+ bandits with armor encounters are typical. You need to focus on Cambria Hospital after Drassen Mine for faster and cheaper healing, that is a must have. Consider to have General Len for his initial level 6 (helps in interrupts), long range gun and cheap price. He will not progress in experience though. Right thing to do is to buy any merc for his good gun (anything 5.5 & 7.5mm caliber) for 1 day and rearm cheaper one. Ammo ressuply can be bought at San Mona secret store and at Bobby Ray online store (can be shipped to Drassen or Medua airports).
Another chasing option after Cambria is Balime. Stores there have the high technology additions like laser pointer. It helps tremendeously by adding flat accuracy bonus up to 20 squares away. Can be attached to any gun, may be game breaking. Conviniently closest antiaircraft bases also covers Balime which allows for raiding. Capture early while Balime defended by weaker bandits, store up on laser pointer and go home, you probably won't make it against gray-shirts retaliation.

Dexterity for shooting at moving targets, marksmanship for actual shooting, experience lvl for interrupts and spotting. Shoot with burst or at the very least many fast snaps. It is better to shoot 5 snaps than 2 fully aimed shot until sniper scopes.
You don't need to sign 2 weeks contracts early, better buy good fighters for several days. Drassen can be captured day 1. Cambria is less than day travel from Drassen. Both cities have mines.

If you can't win patrols in plain terrain just dont fight them, train militia in cities, travel on helicopter.