Based on the original post and being based on or inspired by "Easier TFTD" mod, I thought the intent was to make the mod easier than vanilla TFTD. (Which I'm not personally that interested in.)
But it appears that is not the purpose, but rather make the game somewhat longer, balance it differently and make it more sensible. Whether it becomes somewhat easier or harder is immaterial. (As a TFTD veteran I'd say the vanilla game is not all that difficult, if you know how to play it, but rather some missions are just so tedious and dangerous that you want to avoid them, because you don't need to complete them.) I definitely think the idea of different (and easier) Alien Base missions sounds promising. The same applies to 2-stage terror ship missions.
Significant increase in variety is also something I'm looking forward to. Wrt. TFTD I have liked TWoTS a lot but its one drawback is that the progress might end up being very slow and sluggish repeat of hundreds of essentially identical and easy-ish USO missions (unless you just shoot down and ignore). If there would be more variety (compare, for example, to X-Com Files), I suppose that could avoid getting bored by the game too quickly.
When looking out for balancing and making various things more relevant, you may also want to check out, compare and contrast to how this was accomplished in TFTD Evolution by Alpha Centauri Bear. The purpose of that mod was also to make the game more difficult (even excessively so, I think): https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,8661.0.html
Thank you for the link and the advice!You are right on the money with my goal, if something is easier as a result of being more fair or less frustrating, so be it. But preserving difficulty while not making it just annoying to play is one of my main goals.
A bit of backround, this mod born out of a want for a TFTD with the same gameplay, but less frustrating/unfair but still difficult. More decisions that must be made and ways to play, like in reavers harmony mod, and the variety that TWoTs has but without the ENTIRE game revamped. I am in no way a perfect Classic Xcom player, but when i played TFTD on veteran, I was able to beat it by rushing sonic pulsers, then sonic cannons. Ignoring most missions and rushing RSH and cheesing the last mission. While it was fun, that play style seems to be the only way to play and win the game, as doing something like a Artifact site would be silly, as the cost is not worth it. That is the balance i want to fix, having missions be less frustrating so you want to play them, and having them atleast give something you need, such as the sonic weapons you need to convert to human ones, grenades etc, while not overstaying their welcome, or by providing variety in terrain and layouts. While i think the balance of the current version is good, my end vision is to have something more all encompassing, where every decision is deliberate. i will say as well, Long War 1 is a big inspiration, so things like SMGs and such were directly inspired by that.
I will update the main post with a thesis statement in the goals of what i am trying to achieve, but as of right now, this is it.
