It seems that the main issue here is that some people (like me) would really like to be able to customize their soldiers for role play and some people feel that customization of soldiers breaks their immersion. Here is my solution: This is a game meant to be intense and heart pounding. Some people find it hard to get attached to random sprites with random names and so those people like to name their soldiers after people they actually know. For instance, I care much more if my buddy Ross dies than if Ivan Vassyliovich dies. For those people (particularly since customization is such a beloved and integral part of the X-com games), soldiers should be highly editable. For the people who don't want to edit soldiers for whatever reason, don't edit your soldiers. The option for customization doesn't force anyone to customize but it does add options for people who want them. For an indie game like this, I'd imagine that you would want to appeal to more than just one group of people in as many ways as possible and, honestly, the reason given for not being able to customize soldiers by our beloved leader just seem insufficient. Forcing your customers to mod the game to do something so basic for the sake of "immersion" is ridiculous especially when it isn't even compulsory.
On the callsign discussion, the "real name" is also used instead of the callsign when you receive the notification that a soldier has suffered a bleeding wound.
