Please don't kill me, but I was wondering if any thought had been given to improving the visuals? I don't mean spangly 3-D and effects, I'm talking about redrawing the existing artwork, making it sharper eg. making a diagonal border look like a line instead of a pixel stairway, and making use of a higher available palette to make some of the gairish terrain a softer tone rather than neon-coloured grass.
For the record, I LOVE UFO and TFTD, and the Firaxis XCOM pretty much let me down, so I'm not trying to mess with a sacred cow, I just think that if you're going to the trouble of remaking this from the ground up, making things look a little better (while still keeping the same art design and look), would be a reasonably high priority.
That being said, I'd hope that it it'll be moddable eventually and I'll just do it myself!