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Very similar mod: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=561448390

It's already included in X:CE version, no need separate mod

What would this actually do, though? If you could just gun down anyone in the drop zone with helicopter door guns or whatever, all it means is some free kills in the opening of the mission if aliens even spawn near the drop ship, which they don't in Xenonauts 1. I also see it encouraging turtling and AI-luring, as other postsers pointed out. I suppose you could get chances to use it in a wide open map, or if the helicopter happens to be angled right as to give you a lucky sight line down a street or something, but all I see this doing would be taking challenge out of gameplay. A better implementation would be to allow soldiers to shoot out of the view ports of the helicopter. The soldiers in the helicopter would have heavy cover, but would be able to hit aliens outside just fine. However, come to think of it, I have been playing with an idea of a special type of mission for when your troop transport gets shot down. If this happens, instead of just losing everyone on board, you start a mission where the helicopter has crashed and is damaged and some of your soldiers will be dead, and most or all of the survivors will be wounded. Aliens then assault you, rather than the other way around, and if you lose all your men, or perhaps if the helicopter is destroyed, you lose the mission. In a defensive mission like this, where you had to spread out your troops to guard the helicopter, I suppose it would be fun to have a kind of "last stand" situation where you have been driven all the way back to the drop ship and you have a heavy gun or two to provide some fire support if manned by Xenonauts. I'm more concerned with how you can't look out of the windows of the drop ship in many X-Com games, I seem to recall this being the case in Xenonauts, too. Edit: have to say I dislike the idea of auto-firing weapons. Sounds like a good way to get my own squaddies killed.

One thing that's not yet in the game but I've (somewhat vague) plans for is to differentiate between veterancy / combat experience and the soldier skills. The former you only gain in combat or through running field agent operations that involve the risk of injury or death, whereas the other skills can be trained up and are things like "rifle competency" (you can slowly gain experience in these on the battlefield too). I haven't figured out exactly how training works but the idea is your soldiers are continually gaining skill points towards your chosen skill provided you have available training space for them in the base, and this does not make them unavailable in any way - you've just got to ensure you have enough Training Rooms to go round. Something like accuracy when using a gun would be split between veterancy and familiarity with the weapon - say the base accuracy for a rookie soldier is 40, and a maxed out Colonel has 60 base accuracy. But if they have Rifle Competency 1 they get +10 Accuracy and if they have Rifle Competency 3 they get +20 Accuracy. So a rookie with Competency 1 has 50 Acc with a rifle and a Colonel with Competency 3 has 80 Accuracy. But a Colonel using an unfamiliar weapon and a rookie that has been extensively trained with a rifle (which is much faster process) both have 60 Accuracy. So hiring a rookie at the start of the game and keeping him on the reserves bench while he trains up can pay dividends if your main team starts taking casualties.