I have a long-ish thought on one of the mechanics here. Just a preface, I am a long time XCOM EU and XCOM2 (and long war and long war 2) player. So I am new to the xenonauts world in general. Let that be the grain of salt
Here's the main thought: These games suffer a LOT from the massive gap between save scum and no-scum (ironman-ish). You know nothing going into a mission. Let's count all the major things you don't know:
1. You don't know the types of enemies you'll be facing
2. You don't know even the general placements of enemies.
3. You have no idea how many of them there are.
4. You have no idea what the map even looks like (despite a helicopter having just flown you into the area?!)
5. You have no idea what is inside various buildings
6. You have no idea where the objectives are.
7. You have no idea where to send most troops or any reasonable distribution/defensive areas to take
Then guess what, if you play some of the mission, and then decide to restart. What percentage of those things do you now know? ALL of them! (or at least some to most, depending on how far in you got) I believe that this is a huge problem as it more or less forces players into a binary decision of playstyle even though there are more than 2 types of players (you either save-load or you don't).
Fact A: Some players love ironman and love not having info. The game meets their needs.
Fact B: Some players love ironman but hate not having any of that info. The game does not currently meet their needs.
Fact C: Some players love loading saves, and love not having the info on the first go, but love having the info on the second go. The game meets their needs.
Fact D: Some players love loading saves, but they want the info to stay hidden even on future loads, so as to not feel "cheaty". The game does not currently meet their needs.
Fact E: Some players love things the way they are, but wish more of that information was available prior to the mission in the first place, and didn't require playing and save-loading to get said info. The game does not currently meet their needs.
(I am somewhere between player D and player E, for what it's worth.)
But there's this huge gap between loading a save and not. Because once I have ALL that information, the mission is now MUCH easier, and maybe all I really wanted was a second try or maybe I just wish that info had already been available in the first place, since it's achievable simply by loading the game anyway. How do we solve this issue? Some ideas in no particular order:
1. Give the player vision of the maps layout/obstacles, but still under fog of war (not building interiors). This makes sense anyway, you just saw it all from the helicopter!
2. Give the player more info on enemy count/makeup either prior to the mission itself or upon landing. This again could make sense since you saw some aliens chillin around the place as you flew in and landed. (i don't know if the game already has this mechanic in place or not via technology. But either way, it's the issue of "info available from save-loading")
3. Give an option for "semi ironman", which allows for restarting a map completely from the beginning, at will, but it's randomized again. So you don't know everything about it. But now you'll at least know the enemy types and rough numbers, and you get another shot at it.
4. Other types of ways to feed the player information from the list of 1-7 above *without* needing a load a save to do so. This in turn means that loading a save isn't as much of an egregious advantage. This may also in turn require difficulty of the game to be slightly higher.
In closing, I believe the difficulty differential between information pre and post save-load is too drastic, and it forces players into a binary playstyle that doesn't fit some players (myself being one of those middle people). Ironman by itself is not a catch-all option, and is too extreme for many players, and those of us who avoid ironman are left with few options other than forcing ourselves to NOT save-load, which approaches being ironman anyway, or save-loading and getting massive advantages.