Changes in the last 15 months?

Hey all - I played this game a lot in Beta in summer 2013. I really loved it, and the developers have done a great job. But a couple frustrations led to me getting bored with it after 1.5 plays -- I'm curious how it's changed since July 2013.

Here's what bugged me in 2013 - can anyone tell me if these things have changed in ways that might make a re-play more rewarding?

1. Strategic play - and particularly air combat - was very linear. There was only one strategic research path towards keeping up with the increasing toughness of UFOs. Once medium ships appeared, you never saw any more smalls. Once larges appeared, you never saw mediums again. Which meant if you hadn't anticipated exactly the correct tech choices, you were behind, with no hope of recovery. There was no "explore and try things to find what works", except for reloading much earlier and trying a different research sequence.
   
2. Squad weapon tech progression wasn't very diverse. The step from ballistic to laser weapons was identical to the step from laser to plasma weapons: more damage, more weight, less ammo capacity. And at each tech level, the same mix of weapons was available: pistol, rifle, sniper, shotgun. This made tactical planning less interesting - when new tech was available, you upgraded and lived with the lower ammo caps, but you didn't need to adjust tactics at all for the new technology. (This as compared to the original X-Com, where laser weapons had higher accuracy and no ammo consumption, but plasma had higher damage, making the strategic choice between the two interesting right up to the end of the game. Xenonauts doesn't need to exactly clone the OG of course, but the branching of tech capabilities meant there were multiple approaches to making an effective squad, each of which required different tactics.).
   
3. Air combat losses were nearly unrecoverable. Planes were fairly easy to lose, but so expensive compared to income that even a single loss was usually financially catastrophic to your strategic arc. This meant the game involved a lot of save and reload, re-trying each air combat until you found a way to win. IIRC the devs were trying various approaches to rebalance this right around the time I stopped playing.
   

So - do y'all think I'd find the game more replayable now? There was a lot I loved about Xenonauts, so I'm curious to re-try if some of those concerns have been better balanced.

(It's *way* better than the 2012 XCom: Enemy Unknown, which I felt was fun once -- but not as fun as Xenonauts! -- and was so tightly scripted that it had almost zero replayability.)

1. This is the same, but I've made a mod (Dynamic UFOs) which generates a wider range of UFOs at any given point in the game and might be worth looking at?

2. Again, this is the same. But there's various mods intended to resolve this (again, I've looked at this in Extended Armouries although the current build needs some tweaks as there's a few issues currently).

3. Aircraft are now recovered if they are shot down so you lose coverage for a while but you don't actually lose the plane.

There was an extra year of changes since you last played it; the game went from an unfinished and unbalanced alpha to a finished game. You can't really explain that shift by discussing just a few areas so I'd recommend giving the final version a go.

1. Kabils mod is good point to avoid that.

2. You are right about it but again there are mods to give more variety. The game is nice to play but if u are looking more depth and chooses the developers made this game very mod able.. even yourself can add or at least edit most of the game. You can change all the stats of the weapons like giving more acc to laser.. u can add new weapons.. the modding community is working on this hard but ofcourse need time..

3. Yeah planes are recovering now.. so u don't get sad so much. Even the air combat was always a side game for Xcom like games I think Chris made it how it should be... all the Xcom like games ignored the air combat.. ufo after series, Xcom eu and more they just erased it.. but Xcom games always add more.. after ufo and tftd, they gave more attention to air fight at apocalypse and they made the best space simulator 4x style at interceptor.

So with some micro management and research mod to air combat it will be perfect. .