I just finished watching Meridian's episode 5 of TWoTS. Meridian, I have to say that the Line of Fire obstructions highlighter is absolutely brilliant. It is elegant and very impressive.
Regarding the training pools, I also think they train up the aquanauts quite quickly. Compared to vanilla X-Com, it takes significantly less time to get good soldiers. I, for one, LOVE this, though! I know it's not the same as earning good soldiers through constantly struggling and training them in each mission, but I don't miss that part of the game. Training aquanauts used to mean making a conscious decision to hold off on completing the mission objectives just to shoot MC'ed Lobster Men with weak pistols so you can increase your aquanaut's firing accuracy. I hated doing that. It's even worse when training MC skills. WAY worse. I think it's a huge waste of time and very boring. It's probably the number one reason lose control of myself and save scum: I just don't want to re-train my soldiers.
In my recently started playthrough of TWoTS, I am not constantly stuck with the weakest, worst-performing aquanauts money can buy. After a month or two and a few real missions, they are decently reliable. Now, finally, every mission isn't a chess match. I can take risks! That is SO much more fun to me! I truly admire the patience and strategy I've seen in some of the Let's Play's, and watching them has made me a better player, but I guess I am just not always so patient. Especially if I have been playing for hours and it's like my fourth mission in that sitting, I just want to blast through it as much as I can. Otherwise, it's just too tedious and I need a break.
Anyway, maybe that's a super unpopular view about the missions, but I definitely feel this way. I love the new training pools. I don't think they are unrealistic either. Imagine an aquanaut's day: wake up, train, sleep, repeat. Their job is to stay fit for the missions. If they train every day or even just five days a week, I bet after 15 days (assuming the aquanaut goes on two missions per month), he would be stronger and a better marksman.
However you might feel about this, it seems like there is a good opportunity to introduce balancing for each difficultly level through nerfing/buffing of the training pools. I am curious what others think about this, or the training pools in general.
