Fly Solo in particular I feel is far too hard for it's mission in the campaign. Both times I've played it (once as imperials, once as both) it felt borderline impossible (this is as someone who felt that Last Stand felt winnable for rebels with 11xp). Whereas both times I've played Imperial Hospitality the rebels have cleared the map and casually walked the prisoner out. I feel like this causes a bit of a snowball problem as whoever wins "story mission 1" will nearly always win "story mission 2" and then be 2 xp ahead which can be a huge snowball factor to the point where I'm wondering if it's better strategically for the rebels to throw Aftermath so as to play the Under Siege.

Have other people had the same experiences?

Losing the first mission is generally the smarter play, but I've never seen the heroes succeed at either Fly Solo or Imperial Hospitality.

Winning Aftermath can be a rude awakening for the Rebels once they get to the next story mission. I've played Fly Solo twice as the Imp - winning handily - and Imperial Hospitality twice as rebels - also winning handily. In IH the most damage the Imp player did to the Prisoner was 2 dmg through cleave.

I've played Imperial Hospitality right now as a rebel. Gideon escorted the prisoner with Command and Masterstroke. I completely ignored the terminal and won it quickly. I think the diversion of the terminal isn't well advertised and I thought it was a poor tentative of diversion.

Retrospectively we're wondering if he could place something like a Nexu or any other imperial figure on the rebels' starting token. Hypothetically the prisoner couldn't stop on the token and quit, so I was forced to kill the imperial figure first.

They wouldn't have to stop on the token to escape, they just have to still have 1 movement point remaining after getting to the space adjacent to the exit token, even if there's a hostile figure on that space (they'd just have to pay the penalty to get to that space, and still have the 1 point left).