Snarks

I have to disagree that the panic mechanic necessarily forces progression and prevents "farming" because satellites already let you do that. It's almost the end of the first year in my second game and I've got satellite coverage on every nation, preventing any more abductions. I haven't even assaulted the alien base yet and my entire squad is equipped with Titan armor while panic is low overall. Multiple Skyrangers is supposed to let you have an alternative to the satellite spam. At the current moment, there's not much when it comes to choosing your squad. I want to be in the position where I have to decide where to distribute my veterans and the scarce equipment. Having the aliens scale up their attacks is also a great complementary idea. Anyways, it's not that I don't appreciate the constraint. I think it's good for creating the intense immersion. However, the player needs to be able to advance and get past that stage. It's part of mastering the game, and I would rather handle panic through more combat missions than satellites which just stops abductions altogether. But all this is besides the point, mods are supposed to change the way the game functions and the goal behind this idea is to encourage using more troops and offer more ways for the player to master the game.

Don't get me wrong, I have no intentions to remove the choice mechanic behind multiple alien abductions. I just think that it's too extreme and forces the player to deal with panic by satellites and doing plot advancement missions. This is supposed to be a way for the player to counter the alien attacks on a strategic level. If you think about it, the costs involved with scaling up your XCom operations are the additional Skyrangers, potential Foundry/OTS upgrade, and the extra soldiers and their corresponding equipment since each squad needs their own set since everyone is being deployed simultaneously. That's a lot of resources the player has to invest and it creates a tradeoff between getting something like Titan armor or getting more soldiers and equipment. That's the kind of decision making I was thinking could add an extra layer of complexity. Plus, it would give the player an incentive to have more than just the six man commando colonel squad. In my current classic ironman game, I have a 6 men colonel squad with 3 backups that deals with everything. Taking any low rank soldiers is just a liability at this point.

Would it be possible to add in enemy compositions consisting of Sectoids and Sectoid Commanders for the later missions? I find it disappointing that at a certain point, you basically never see Sectoids again and only Sectoid Commanders in the UFO crashes later on. I'd imagine it'll be like the Muton/Muton Berserker squads.

This is probably a tall order request, but would it be possible to have multiple Skyrangers so that the player can handle multiple abductions at the same time? Specifically, if it's possible to force the player to send different soldiers on each Skyranger to force even more decision making on the player's part.