Finished the SH/IM campaign. Overall, was lucky to avoid HKs appearing out of nowhere to kill the transports (at the early-midgame phase where you can't avoid it).
Other minor comments:
- I had to wait for about 2 months to get a Freak mission (except a ship terror mission, which would have been deadly) in Jan-Mar 2019, so I was stuck and not able to research Leviathan (which requires MC shields). Maybe the occurrence of minor Freak missions (very small/small subs) could be increased slightly.
- MC projector seems to have incorrect or misleading ufopedia text. The text seems to suggest that it boosts your MC capabilities; it does not (but some previous version might have, the code to do that is commented out in items.rul).
- I think I have already commented on UFOpedia/ruleset differences in certain advanced armors (for example, ion armor sonar range is different in UFOpedia entry and in the ruleset).
- Vibro knife is extremely useful right now if you have trained melee accuracy (easiest to do in gym). With 70-80 % hit chance and fixed 8 TUs you can essentially instakill everyone at long as you hit (except ghosts and similar special units). Even the drills don't always kill a lobster, and they will also miss sometimes. OTOH, if you don't have good melee accuracy, you miss a lot and maybe the drills may be better in some contexts. Even though I love it, I would still suggest some further balancing, for example reducing the damage and/or making it further in the research tree.
- The properties or Zrbite, Mag and ION armor are probably already decided. But I wonder what is the use case of ION armor. The shield might be cool especially for scouting or "enemy facing" units, but the other properties are much worse than MAG armor (sonar, heat vision, stamina, etc.). So in my SH/IM runs I haven't at least made any use of them.