Ravenholme

That actually requires more suspension of disbelief than anything otherwise - Even if you're here to kill us, taking some of us to work out how best to do it still makes too much sense. Testing our biology and frame to it's limits, finding out how we react vacuum, how we react to disease, chemical and biological warfare (Can't engineer a bioweapon without a way to test it), etc etc And for a lot of that, Cadavers will not do.

Mine usually goes in Hungary (Though I should point out I'm meaning in X-COM and UFO AI, rather than Xenonauts), it's a great location for defending multiple nations, and my girlfriend happens to be Hungarian >__>

The alien goal is abduction of humans, right? Or, at least, that's one of the many things they're doing, right? Ignore the oil aspect, Oil Rigs are perfect targets for the Aliens because they're isolated and undefended collections of humans, generally of a healthy, working age. Prime specimens in the parlance of my trade (Biologist). You can, ideally, capture them either without being detected or before any kind of response shows up, which means that you're likely to get as many live ones as you can to dissect and prod to your leisure. That's the real value of an Oil Rig to an Alien (Although, the assumption that they would know what Fossil Fuels are is not entirely true, as it relies on some pretty specific aspects of the Earth Environment that we have them. What if they're from a world without oceans, for example? Or with rocks that don't lend themselves to the preservation of dead material?)

Well, actually, I think a lot of the Pre-UFO capture research stuff on alien origins/new interception doctrines etc are completely viable, because the Xenonauts organisation is the first time that you'd be breaking down the international cold war barriers and bringing together a multi-disciplinarian team of experts in their fields, who may have a fresh take on the Iceland incident of 20 years ago. The fact that it's all purely theoretical at this point, doesn't mean that they are any less likely to come up with something workable from "what we know" - Even if that isn't much, we can still draw inferences from it. It's the reason that Scientists have seminars and symposiums, often at the international level. (I'm a biologist)

That's slightly better than my idea, but makes less sense in the document format, I think

I have thoughts. The main problem is making the various stats distinguishable from one another, correct? With that new style, you're begging for it to be highlighted/differentiated as if someone had actually taken a highlighter to each line of text. There should be enough highlighter colours for each major stat. That way, it keeps the feel of a document, and makes it feel as if it's an actual thing performed on the documents that allows someone quickly skimming through the personnel files to jump to the soldiers scores in a certain thing/attribute. It should be noted, however, that I don't think it's really necessary with that new screen. It's clear, concise and utterly beautiful. When I get money/find a new job, I'm definitely splashing out on a pre-order. This game looks, frankly, amazing.