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I think i came across one of the best ideas i have ever met: 3.) This game needs a shooting range where you can test your weapons against known and unarmed enemies Here is the orginal comment: https://steamcommunity.com/app/223830/discussions/0/1729837292629920778/ The idea would be testing range where you can load dummies, armoured dummies and later advanced robots into, including basic placeable cover. You can also load your real soldiers into the battle, equipted with everything you can currently produce. For you can either make them infinitely available, or, for the micromanagement enthusiast, produceable. Every dummy will have parameters you can set, with the dummies stat being the maximum. For instance you can produce a 2k hp dummy to test equipment on, but you only want to set it to 500 hp, you would be able to do that, but not to 2.5k hp. The dummy would have some equipment slots, mainly for armour, but not necessarily limited to that. Robot dummies would have advanced stats you can set like strenght, accuracy and reflexes. As an ultimate dark dummy you could even put a "living" being into the testing evironment, for testing suppression or psionic abilties. In X-Division terms you could now use your live captured aliens for live action trailers, you can strip of the armour of live aliens to test them on dummies, with the laboratory sensor giving you more feedback about every statistical traceable data you can get your hands on: Number of bullets missed, number of bullets hit, total damage, armour degradation, current armour (approximitelly or hidden), damage split up into damage types, suppression (on living species), and and and. You would be able to throw a Xenomorph Queen against a target equipted with Praetor/Sentinel/Wolf and see how well she does against it. You could equipt robot dummies with your weapons and perform live tests on living species. Tests could be shut down at any moment, but they would be succeptible to the same rules as real ground combat. If you accidently kill your own soldier in the training chamber he is subject the same mechanics as in a normal Ground Combat mission. No experience can be gained that way though. Eqipment used in the test chamber will be subject to the same rules as in Ground Combat, eg. if your throw an incendiary grenade you have 1 less in your base. Explosives could be tested this way, rockets can be tested this way. You could even use remnants of androns for testing purposes to discover new battlefield tactics and such. The whole testing chamber could be your own formable Ground Combat testing field, a mini Ground Combat mission so to speak. Research would be tightly tied into the testing chamber, with research unlocking new and better abilities to test equipment on. Better technology could slowly introduce mechanics to the player if they discover it during the training. This idea can be heavily expanded on and seems highly integrateable. (Clears throat) If the target goal for X2 is 20 to 25 mission per game than this feature seems to be big to be worth the realisation, eg. if youfinish the game in 20 to 25 mission ground combat needs to be more or less self explanatory. But a testing range would be perfect if you want to have a more sandbox like game and dont want to compromise on complexity. This and a well made tutorial would open up the game to new people, while advancing what the XCOM genre is standing for in a meaningful way. Not only for X2, but i also think Pheonix Point and other XCOM games could profit from such an idea. @Chris@Dagar@Svinedrengen@Phoenix1x+52

Information regarding aliens needs to be readily available and handy to access, but certain hard numbers(not all) should not be shown. Knowing your foe is the best direction in understanding how to kill them without needing to test fire your weapons first in the field. It was always great to try out that new researched weapon without exactly knowing how it was going to play out and it could easily back fire which would take you back to the drawing board. Perhaps a small combatant to this would be hit point numbers that would show when hitting a target so you could learn how much damage is being dealt and with experience you could make better judgments. I dont mind a bit of a numbers game, but somewhat controlled. In regards to the alien info, in X1 it was revealed through alien lore from the geoscape usually in a wall of text(in a separate menu) that usually would only be viewed once or twice on initial uncovering. It possibly needs to be broken down so that lore is separated from actual alien stats or info like their strengths and weaknesses(similar to what Charon quoted but not in paragraph form). The big kicker here is that it could be additionally added to the ground combat so when new/existing aliens are revealed you can study them for initial info on how to kill them. For example, starting a new mission and revealing a Caesan you would click on them to reveal an expandable information icon or portrait that appears at the top of the screen. It could show a simple head portrait and a small list of known things about the alien. The more you play through and research certain things the more the stats are filled with known information and on initial first contact most of the stats would be classed as "unknown". It would give a real feel to actually wanting to know more about what your fighting rather than seeing them as a "new" alien threat that has increased health and a different skin(similar to an RPG but without the leveling elements). If you get into trouble, sitting back and putting a plan together before rushing your turn could better predict the outcome of the next turn. You might just find out that one particular alien is more aggressive than another, or one has different resistances/health and rank standings. This would make you try for the weaker alien first, raid his gun and then secondly take on the difficult more resisted one with your new alien tech. You would probably really need to add a more randomized stat system though for it to work so no two Caesans are alike. It would keep you on your feet. There could be many strategic possibilities and layers with this that i haven't even thought off.