I always thought funding being tied to how well your doing in the game was interesting. It makes the player think carefully about their actions and if they skip this mission so their soldiers can heal or whatever, they risk things getting worse. The mechanic strikes a balance between two playstyles on opposite ends of the spectrum, going guns blazing and doing every mission regardless of whether or not your equipped, versus the opposite end simply doing the bare minimum, strictly the story missions required for progression and nothing else. Ideally you want the majority of players to fall somewhere in the middle, I think keeping funding the same regardless of panic removes this dynamic and a significant amount of tension and planning from the game.
I like the idea of the toggle modules, but maybe soldiers with a specialty in a given stat have a proficiency for that module? Maybe a soldier with a high strength stat doesnt lose as much carry weight when wearing heavy armor. Maybe the high accuracy soldier doesnt take as many TUs to shoot when wearing the goggles. Just something to think about, imo gives soldiers more personality and adds to tension bc if you lose your sniper, theres a very good chance the replacement wont ever be as good as the one you lost.
I love the tech tree ideas, the difference between big upgrades and small upgrades add much needed diversity to it and lets me go on my upgrade tangents freely.
Also, if your struggling with mission variety and really wanna set this game apart from the first, try mixing them together?
EX: During a terror mission you discover a room of abduction tubes, the room is well guarded and both the tubes and the guards appear to be teleporting away in 3 turns, do you attempt to save the abductees?
One off kinda side missions that only happen once per campaign would be awesome as well.
EX: Command picks up an alien weapon prototype signature on an otherwise normal VIP mission, the VIP is already KO but the mission isnt complete yet. Do you attempt to take the weapon and get out? The reinforcement timer remains the same but they're closing in 2 turns or less. If you extract the VIP and the weapon, the payoff could be huge. Make 10 or so of these semi-unique missions and insert 2-3 per campaign, would give tons of replayability and excitement for each run.
Another EX: During a terror mission an alien ship drops something from the sky. Is it a bomb? Reinforcement? Supply Cache? You could go all 3 ways with this and have the player guess each time they play it.
Loosely tying these basic plot threads into the missions would add so much depth to them, mix and matching mission types adds even more.
Side note this game is super addicting, love it to pieces and spent 10s of hours launch week playing.
