I've been playing some more and I now definitely think this mod is too easy. I'm currently at the point where I'm meeting chaos terminators/berserkers and did my first space hulk.
Craft Lascannon seems too strong- With two stormhawks and my landspeeder, I can shoot down even supply/terror ships. Plus you can manufacture this for excellent profit. I imagine this is the only craft weapon you need in the game, and it doesn't even require ammo. For such an early tech it makes the whole interception game very lacking.
Smoke/tome of smoke is way too strong- I'm currently more worried about friendly fire than enemy units, because enemies never get a shot off. Most of my best casualties are in fact from friendly fire because I forgot to crouch, or from a stray sniper bullet. The only scenario where AI actually gets to shoot is ~turn 20 when chaos raptors rush the roof of a supply ship or such, and even then it's actually just one round and only if they survive reaction fire. In 99.9% of missions you can cover both landspeeders with tome of smoke from seats 1-2 and kill 7-9 chaos raptors on your own first turn without taking any reaction fire before enemy gets to do anything.
Enemies lack lethality and fear factor- I would love to see an enemy with a rocket laucher nuking you (or himself, chaos bless him) with frag missiles, or some chaos marine fire full auto incendiary with autocannon. Tyranids also seemed awfully weak, probably because nothing in the game (so far) survives autocannon burst with 50% accuracy, much less 4x 1-2x burst (depending on TU remaining) that you can refresh multiple times with chapter banner.
Small idea - make stormtalon faster (and maybe refuel faster) than stormhawk, right now it doesn't really have any role as it's completely subpar in comparison. Sometimes you just want to see if an enemy craft is a supply ship or a terror ship for example.
Enemy factions would be more strongly themed around the four gods rather than armour types.
+1 here! Dividing the CSM faction will make gameplay much more interesting, because player must encounter different warbands and choose tactic more carefully. For example, Khorne warband will be more melee-oriented, Nurgle one will be tougher then others, Slaanesh one - fast atacking, and Tzeentch... current CSM is actually Tzeentch warband as all of them are psykers
I support this idea. Even though I'm no modder I think you could achieve something akin to this with this (or I could be completely off).
https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?topic=4288.0Khorne band could possibly be made with very low cheatTurn number equipped with melee weapons / grenades / shotguns / flamethrowers and such.
Also would love to see something like a cultist maniac rushing you, occasionally having a primed grenade in their inventory (surprise!).
Don't know if it's possible, but maybe slaanesh troops could get a stat buff if you take too long (enjoying their sweet time you are providing them), while tzeentch troops could summon a powerful rapeface daemon to assist if you take too long conquering a valuable target like a supply ship etc.