I don't believe miners are 100% aware of the block reward halving yet...we should definitely see a drop in the hash rate. Basically, every Scrypt miner except Titans and A2 Terminators are now unprofitable (and A2s are just barely profitable). Neither of those are being actively produced any more, and I don't know of any new Scrypt miners coming out [EDIT: except Sfards, but that's a "hybrid" with a pretty low Scrypt hashrate]. KNC Titans had a profit factor of >10 just recently at $0.1/KWh; now they are about 4.
I think we will see a drop in LTC network hash rate over the next few days of probably 30% or so as older miners are shut down, probably permanently. I don't know yet if the drop in supply of LTC being sold is enough to significantly raise prices; that's hard to say without knowing what percentage of miners dump their coins on a daily basis, what the total volume of LTC is across exchanges, etc. I will say that block reward halving is certainly a positive influence on price, but that may or may not be trivial.
In any case, it's bad news for miners at the moment, but things may look slightly better in a week or so...time will tell.
That being said, bitcoin miners have been hurt a bit by the price drop as well, even Antminer S5s are only about a 1.8 profit factor at $0.1/KWh.
As to the OP, Litecoin is clearly not dead, but it's pretty stagnant. Without more adoption, it will eventually die like all of the alts...
I've got two Titan(s) (2nd one at a good price in march so I've ROI'd even at this price) cost to mine 1 LTC at 13c kwh as of NOW is 1.08 usd at 650.1mh combined rate
you can figure out your own pain from the halving using this calculator from
www.litecoinpool.orghere is there calculator
https://www.litecoinpool.org/calcrun your own or other's figures
My profit after electric at the 13c kwh rate and 2.94 usd per LTC now is the following
total profit 637.68 USD
elec costs at 2500 watts (2 cubes with a dead die each less elec fyi) 234.00 USD
403.68 USD PROFIT over price of electricity at the above price
A single user Titan (assuming they got the full 350mh over clocked out of it with NO dead dies (a big IF imho) say is 325 mh so half the values above or 201.84
not bad for the best single scrypt miner you can get but 201.84 and 117.00 for electric still is somewhat dismal since the halving imho (in that the price of ltc has dropped say 1/4)
sooooo...again as I said before (and others) anything under 110mh (with the 110 mh unit making 20 bucks a month at my elec rates) is a LOSS
SO AT THE VERY LEAST for ME with supposedly the best scrypt/power miner available (if not the price in the past) 30% dump in difficulty quoted above would be
a godsend....so 30% more is a big deal ...but if (again imho) LTC at least does not climb back to above 4 bucks (either with btc's help or without) we who mine LTC yet
(so sad my last home miners).....are gonna be in a world of hurt imho.....(just because I'd be the last man standing with 2 titan(s) does not mean I want to be alone
completely don't ya know)
So some equip (some day) has to fill this void or it will all just wind down like a rubber band imho
(again my view WELCOME anyone who can assure me LTC will kinda sorta keep its 0.01 ratio to BTC in the far future in speculation and LTC being
silver to bitconi's gold jump in here...would like to be proved wrong ......buw without some of my concerns being addressed above...not good)
(the ways of crypto are mysterious to me and it seems to be getting worse the longer I am in this fun house)
On the other hand your idea that LTC difficulty will go down 30% does brighten my 'evil titan miner heart"