hmm, i really dont know … i changed difficulty to guerrila just for one rival test - military harvester - and bang! experimental shotgun - mayby just coincidence 
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Besides what Xezr said above, higher difficulty level also extends the machine detection range.
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Hello @ioneepj 
As mentioned by Xezr;
The difficulty does however affect the spawn rate for rivals so IF you are looking for high quality loot by taking down and looting rivals, playing on a higher difficulty would be beneficial.
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Interesting. I can’t say I’ve ever had a problem spawning Rivals on any difficulty (except for maybe in the Farmlands) and I’ve only had a US weapon drop on a Rival once.
The majority of mine have come from a mix of FNIX / APOC enemies. I think I’ve still yet to even see an N16 Extended mag of any quality.
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We’ve gotten several players reaching out to ask asking how difficulty affects loot drops. We’ve responded in different threads, but since it’s such a common question, we wanted to make a more in-depth post clarifying it.
The short answer is that changing your difficulty setting doesn’t affect your loot from each machine drop. Playing with more players and the difficulty scaling with those players also will not affect each machine’s chance of giving you more loot.
However, on higher difficulties the chance of spawning a Rival is higher. Rivals give some of the overall best loot, making playing on a higher difficulty setting that much more appealing when hunting for Rivals.
Additional information regarding the difficulty settings:
• When playing with higher difficulty settings, players do less damage to the machines.
• When playing with higher difficulty settings, the machines do higher damage to the players
• When playing with higher difficulty settings, the machine’s ability to locate players visually and through sound is increased
• When playing with higher difficulty settings, the machine’s accuracy when aiming at player is increased.
• When playing with higher difficulty settings, there is no change to how many machines will spawn in the world.
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Hi @Drennon. Can we have any confirmation or refutation, or even a slight hint about how Reaper loot works? Many players claim that the Reaper needs to be finished by a killshot to get access to the full loot pool, and if the Reaper is allowed to self destruct, the chance of loot (weapons) is lessened, or even fully lost.
Can you say anything about it? 
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Hey,
I can confirm that the reaper will provide better loot if it is destroyed before it self destructs.
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Does playing with more player and enabling auto-scaling mess with Rivals’ spawning rate?
Also, thanks for pinning this thread!
Hello. It does not affect the rate of loss. To drop high-quality weapons or items, you need the skill of your character as high as possible and also need opponents with a high level of 1-4. The higher the opponent’s level, the higher the chance of losing valuable items and weapons. It often happens that you find 5* items, just in boxes and you find experimental weapons in runners. This is specifically my observation. PS4 PRO.
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@NJR87 I think we can safely say from an awful lot of trials that a Reaper self destructed by its own fuel-air attack gives terrible loot. The evidence is clear to see even without a dev’s affirmation.
Did you notice that my post was written a year ago? I had only killed 2 or 3 Reapers when I posted that question. And there were a lot of community members that were asking this question mong each other as well. 
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Another question… Maybe you could change the topics headline, too…
Does anything affect loot?
I was wondering if there is something like a countdown for best loot.
For example if I shoot down a seeker and immediatly loot it, I often get some steel or a sound module. If I can’t do this immediatly, I get nothing.
Same with rocket-runners in general. If I’m fast enough, I often get some missiles. If not: nothing.
Maybe this effect works for other machines, too.
Often the first 2-3 hunters (not rivals) of a horde I loot have really useful ammo, sometimes weapons or experimental clothes. The others all just have some .44 or .270 ammo in general.
Maybe this effect is the problem with reapers loot. If it self-destructs through its firestorm you probably are in cover at this moment and get to it after it’s safe. Instead you’re probably faster in looting it if you killed it with your own gunpower.
So maybe the time until looting could affect the reaper’s loot, too.
Anyone else who experienced this?
Time to loot something does affect the loot to my knowledge. But i do know that Missile runners and Seekers are bugged for loot, it shouldnt be like that. I believe Knivspark acknowledged this on a thread about the runners barely giving HEDP rounds.
Machines have a higher chance to drop vision modules and such if you kill them without damaging their components.
Like the Seeker for example. Take it down without damaging the loudspeaker and there’s a larger chance of it dropping a lure.
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Well that explains why I’ve been getting vision modules by the boat load. When I kill a seeker, I always snipe out the jet engines.
Oh man, that’s an old one…
You just have to get sure to just destroy the turbine. Hitting a seeker with experimental pvg from the side has a great chance to destroy more than just the turbine.
With my luck, they are always coming almost directly at me, so that’s usually not an issue, lol