[Base Simplification Ideas]

[2] Living Quarters to be abolished, replaced with Barracks that can hold 8 soldiers each.

[3] Laboratories / Workshops will hold 10 scientists / engineers, hired immediately on construction.

[4] Scientists and Engineers no longer have any monthly wages and do not fill living space.

My 2 cents:

1/ Retain living quarters, but change the space occupied by soldier from 1 to 4 (or any numbers you seem fit). It will greatly limit the number of soldiers that each base can house, just like your intention. In addition, living quarters should have a limited ability to heal and train soldiers (if training is available in game). Healing ability must be only limited to minor wounds, so if some of your guys have part of their brains blown off, you'd better send them to somewhere with real Medical Facility.

2/ Laboratories/Workshops will hold 20 people. The first 10 will be hired immediately after construction and take residence at their workplace. The other 10 must be hired manually, and will live at Living Quarters. However, if Living Quarters are full, they will sleep (and eat and stuff) with their fellow eggheads, which will incur "Overcrowded" penalty and reduce overall efficiency of that said facilities. The more people you cram in one place, the greater the penalty.

Formula for penalty:

Penalty = [1]Total penalty by overcrowding / [2]Number of facilities

[1]The first "overcrowded" personal will incur the base penalty of 5%

Any "overcrowded" personal after will incur additional 2%

So if your laboratories are overloaded by 4 people, the total penalty will be:

5% + (5% + 2%) + (5% + 2% + 2%) + (5% + 2% + 2% + 2%)

= 5% + 7% + 9% + 11%

= 32%

[2]Number of facilities refers to how many laboratories/workshops do you currently have

Example:

If your base has 3 laboratories and 2 "overcrowded" people, 4 workshops and 5 "overloaded" grunts, then the penalty for:

- All laboratories: 12% from total penalty / 3 = 4% reduced efficiency

- All workshops: 45% from total penalty / 4 = 11% reduced efficiency

In case there is available space in Living Quarters (due to the sudden death of some unlucky red shirts), the facilities with the most heavy penalty will have the privilege of locating their surplus members to that free space first, until their penalty is lesser or equal to their counterparts. If laboratories and workshops have the same penalty, priority will be given to workshops (don't ask me why, I just prefer engineers to scientists).

Example:

Take the example above. The workshops will have the priority to allocate their grunts first because their penalty is greater. Therefore, their "overcrowded" people go down from 5 to 2, at which point the laboratories will take over and free their eggheads. The process will continue until no more "overcrowded" personal is found, or no more free space is available.

If you decide to hire more soldiers while all spaces are occupied, the non-com personal will have to move away. The least "overcrowded" facilities, or laboratories, will be forced to accept more tenants.

However, it's still possible to manually allocate your men. So if the you want to give the eggheads more breathing space, and piss those annoying engineers, you should still be able to do it.

3/ Scientist and engineers should also have monthly wage. It creates a cost curve, and combines with the diminishing utility of additional personal (if you don't have enough space to accommodate them), you have yourself a beautiful supply-demand diagram. Did I mention that the next employee you hire should cost you more the previous?

[A nickname?]

"YOLO", aka "You only live once"

[[unofficial] POLL : UFOs & Being Horrible]

And personally I wish Alien Base missions were 3 parts. With 40 aliens per part. But hey, that's just me.

An idea that only hardcore masochists would enjoy.

[Xenonaut Base Progress]

"[..] Double walls are indestructible"

Then will I be able to punch a hole through them at least?

[skirmish mode battlescape weather effects and nucear dead zones]

I love suggestion of "Skirmish mode", but your idea of Geoscape seems to be too confusing, and ambiguous. Why should nations have war with each other when they are facing a bigger threat, alien? Conflict between them would be more interesting (so that if Xenonauts want to please one faction, they may have to upset the other), but going as far as attacking (and nuking each other cities) is kinda unnecessary.

[Bleeding Wounds System]

"Then we have the Caesians who may bleed, but may not care about each other enough to be particularly affected by it. A telepathic hive mind for example? In other words, if they don't have a motive for doing anything following a wound, is it necessary to add?"

They don't particularly care about their comrades, but they should know that the longer they can delay their (and their comrades) inevitable death, the more damage they can deal. Remember, to Xenonauts, any hit is a certain death.

"Can they heal each other at all (are there sprites for that)?"

The developers don't have to create new sprites for aliens. Just modify their weapons so they will shoot healing beam instead of plasma (afterall, they are aliens with superior technology).

[Bleeding Wounds System]

Just like Buzzles, I would like to know if the alien will suffer from bleeding as well. If they can bleed, it might a good feature as it will promote more teamwork between aliens.

Alien 1: *get hit by Xenonauts* Ouch!!!

Alien 2: *out of sight* Buddy, get over here and I patch you up.