Armor9D

The count refers to how many you have available. When you had it equipped, it was unavailable because someone was already using it. When you switched soldiers, presumably unassigning the previous soldier from the dropship, it was freed up again.

While the idea of different medals giving different stat bonuses and other effects is cool, I find it somewhat counterproductive given the nature of how medals are earned in this game. Since different soldiers are suited to different roles because of their stats, it would be irritating if a soldier got a medal that was effectively useless because it didn't match with what they're good at. As is, earning a medal is nice because the across the board stat increase benefits any soldier no matter what. XCOM Enemy Within had specialized medals, but that worked because the player could choose what soldier got the medal and because each medal had two different possible bonuses the player could choose between. The only way specialized medals make sense within the current system if if their bonus is very closely tied to the circumstances under which it is earned, to ensure that a soldier that gets it will naturally be capable of benefiting from its boost. (i.e., a Crimson Heart provides a small heath boost, reduces needed heal time, and/or improves odds of successfully surviving if killed) Personally, though, I'm in favor of keeping medals as is. The one change I would like to see is the addition of a medal for successful Base Defense missions, it seems weird that isn't a thing.

I think it's really neat that night battles are represented in game and are meaningfully different from day battles, but there are some steps that could be taken to make them easier to prepare for or avoid and to give the player more options for interacting with them. Firstly, it would be nice if, when dispatching a dropship, I could see when it will arrive at its destination and if that time will be during night or day, as it can be difficult to guess that correctly. It would also be nice if a dropship could loiter at a mission site rather than just having to launch the mission immediately upon arrival or else recall back to base, so that dropships arriving just before daylight could wait it out. Lastly, given that the game takes place in 2009, it seems a bit weird that our soldiers don't have night vision goggles and sights available to them and are forced to rely on flares for illumination. It would be nice to have an NVG module that gives a soldier full visibility at night at the cost of some accuracy penalty and no longer being able to throw flares. It might also be worth making it so that maps have some natural illumination at night, as it seems a bit weird that none of the buildings have lights on, and that UFOs have no interior illumination.

One particular category I'd like to be able to filter for when selecting soldiers to add to the dropship is medals. As it is, it's very annoying to manually bring up each soldier to figure out who hasn't gone on a UFO/Terror/Base Assault mission so that I can ensure that they pick up those medals for the extra stat boost.