I haven't had anywhere near as much time to commit to X-Division as I would like to, however I'm nearing the end of Phase 1 (I've restarted once) and I am really liking the changes that this overhaul brings to the table, calling this a mod doesn't do it justice, it's a complete overhaul.
The first thing I need to ask Charon & Drages, are you both fans of the Aliens franchise? I have the Aliens vs. Predator board game / wargame at home; the one made by Prodos Games, and I feel like I am getting to play this game via X-Division on some of my ground missions! I'm personally a massive fan of the Aliens series, I saw them when I was young and had many nightmares about Xenomorphs :D. I was surprised and excited to be encountering Xenomorphs in my ground combat missions. When I first played Xenonauts I dreamed up a mod that over hauled the game into the Aliens setting. I don't want to get carried away with it, as the game is still Xenonauts, but have you had any ideas about adding a Xenomorph Hive clearing mission like alien outpost missions? Some of the alien base tiles look like a Xeno hive, just the wrong colours.
In terms of feedback just adding my opinion to a few things I have seen mentioned in this thread and my thoughts playing the mod;
I am against increasing troop size, starting with 8 is plenty of troops, if the starting number of troops is higher it just slows down the ground game like Charon mentioned, I did like the idea of smaller capacity and faster drop ship options.
The Air game currently is extremely brutal! It frustrates me sometimes, however I like that the player now needs to maintain a large fleet of aircraft, I feel that this is also important as it keeps financial pressure on the player in terms of maintenance costs, and how much they can commit to upgrading the fleet vs. troops.
It's been mentioned many times, but Terror missions are also very tough in the early game, with the changes made by Charon so that a lost Terror mission doesn't result in the loss of the continent this helps balance Terror Missions, I agree that like Long War, you should not win all ground combat, there should be missions at the start of each Phase that you may have to consider withdrawing from and taking some artifacts with you.
It would be great to see the feature like Long War, where you could assault a tough alien base to recover the continent. This would add great depth to the Geo game.
I saw mention of Drages working on new buildings for bases, my one request would be alien containment, specifically Xenomorph containment, I'm sure you guys have seen Alien Resurrection, Even thought the movie is pretty bad LOL! You see what happens when unprepared scientists attempt to hold Xenomorphs in captivity, they are smarter than they look!
Legacy items should be removed from the game or re-worked to fit somewhere in X-Division, someone mentioned that there was an aircraft that was still in the game with the old build cost of $300,000, as X-Pedia is still a work in progress nothing indicates to the players that this craft is not suitable for X-Division.
Vehicles and Aircraft build costs are currently too low in my opinion, you can throw phase 1 vehicles at the enemy without much care of preserving them, maybe this is false security since you start with enough money to setup 4 bases and have a few million spare, this doesn't account for losing bases in the later phases if things become very difficult like you guys have mentioned. I guess I'll only really find out when I hit Phase 3 and feel the real terror.
I'm actually excited to reach the later Phases and see how things change, hopefully in the coming 2 weeks I can spend a lot more time and get a feel for the X-Division theme, I get the impression that Phase 3 will destroy all my bases and show me the game over screen :). I also saw it mentioned that the idea of the alien races being clones or being more of a collective of races working willingly under their rulers is still in debate. I think the aliens having some free will and mind of their own would not only give them some more flavor, it would also make more sense that they are willing to provide information during interrogation.
After I've spent more time I'll come back with more things to write about I'm sure, the bugs I've encountered are already covered here. I am still happy to help out with X-Pedia even if it's just doing spell checking work, to write entries I think I need to play the mod more and get a more solid idea of the alien factions status first to make the entries have a cohesive narrative.