@Charon I am liking the changes to the AI, it makes much more sense now, they are less likely to just run out of the ufo, instead they guard it much like what would happen in reality. My first encounter was a normal scout which i intercepted whilst landed, sebillian, was a difficult mission because those flamer rifles are pretty accurate in sebillian hands; i ended the mission early to just capture the ufo because the remaining guys were way to strong and i was running low on ammo.
Second mission was caesan normal scout once again, light scouts seem to be pretty uncommon so far, although i guess that is random - this one was very hard (caesan are usually easy for me) but I managed to grab a lightning rifle, capture a medic, a technician and a couple of xenomorphs. Not bad! all my units are in the infirmary now though.
Comparatively it feels harder than before, which is great - previously on veteran I blitzed through phase 1, now I can see it taking a while to do the ground combat, which is how it should be. Excellent work ;-)
EDIT: Thanks for the changelog, sorry I missed it!