[Thoughts on XCOM 2]

Ah yeah, that's true - the terror / retaliation missions do have a timer, it's just expressed differently.

As you sort of imply, one of the biggest changes they could make to the game (for minimum effort) is to make the turn counter start as soon as your squad are revealed from cover rather than at the very start of the mission. It'd simultaneously make stealth more valuable and give a player more tactical options on timed missions.

There's a mod that does that in the workshop called "True Concealment". Personally I don't think it makes too much sense in most of the missions, as the briefing states that the activity with the timer is occuring before XCOM deploys, but it's still a decent mod. There's also a mod to increase the timers as a whole.

If anything, the fact that they decided to focus on modability is my favorite part of XCOM 2. They give you access to so many scripts and functions that, realistically, most modders will never need to touch a substantial majority of them.

EDIT: There's 3,465 script files weighing it at 25 MB!

[Xenonauts 2 confirmed!]

Will be on the lookout for when to buy that alpha or join in on crowd funding!

Good luck in the development!