Another short game - gave up after encountering Ethereals before capturing a single engineer or recovering Elerium. Hypotheses follow;
I think I've narrowed down the cause of my research troubles - engineers only have a 25% chance of spawning outside the ship, which means that when the engines blow, they're likely to be taken out by the explosion, making them unlikely to spawn, especially in small craft. Also, though this may have been the roll of the dice, there seem to be lopsided odds of landing vs. flying UFO missions, further diminishing the odds of capture.
Some questions as well; is stuff like dynamite, AK-47s etc supposed to be buyable or not? They're mainsteam terrestrial technology, so I don't see why not, but they're not defined as such in the ruleset. Also, what are the pros and cons of grenade launchers vs. thrown grenades?
Finally, a suggestion - given that fusion torches come far enough in the game that they're obsolesced by other equipment, rename it as hullcutter, make it available as part of the laser research branch and increase the TUs used to 100% - that would make it available early enough to be useful, but its usage would make its user vulnerable {otherwise I can see a motion sensor/hole/shoot maneuver that might be too unbalancing}.
