By all means, go ahead! But of course other people can write here too.
Obviously, no issue with that.
When it comes to briefings, I could add direct info on deployment size, but it would kill the suspense, no?
Depends how much info and in what case. A set of vague statements about the mission, be it terrain or describing enemies going from "a creature" through "multiple contacts" to "whole horde" and merely underlining "humanoids", "some sort of animals", "weird creatures" would least make one aware that, for example, it's an area where some type of weapon wouldn't work (sniper rifles in confined spaces, shotguns in vast open plains) and that what they fight wouldn't be numbers of animals (easy to fire, low damage weapons prefered) but something big and mean (hevy caliber rifles necessary). Less of suspense destruction and more of a giving the player the bare info any COC would give its soldier, lest they come shooting at rats with missile launchers, pull out knives against horde of chupacabras they should be able to see outside the window before they even deployed or force player to spend boring time and turns moving each agent to equipment stash near the vehicle and rearm each of them one by one.
Yes, I wholly agree. It's all on Meridian!
Sincere props to Meridian as well, then.
Sorry, I don't understand. Do you mean to say that zombies can be excluded from standard monster missions? If yes, then I guess they could, but why?
It's basically the same mission with similar numbers of enemies under two different names, making it double as likely to show up compared to other missions that could be chosen instead of it. Not a big deal either way, I just thought that since there's already mission like that, why double it? The one where it's just a couple of zombies is a different matter.
So? Not sure what you're trying to say. You got some missions, some didn't happen this campaign, that's how RNG works and how it was designed. And what is a "mission roster" - was it a metaphor? Because there is not such thing as a "roster"...
Ah, if it's intended then nevermind. I was under the impression that the intent is to have every player get a considerable chance at experiencing all kinds of creatures and missions. As for roster, yeah, a figure in speech in that it's not exactly roster but - from what I know, missions that will spawn are decided a bit ahead of time and there's no script running random dice every in-game X minutes to spawn another mission.
Eh? Why? I don't get what you're getting at. Why would I want to do that?
High chance to miss lots of content as the player moves through the game, unless they purposefully wait with promotions to enjoy it (but then that may cripple them later on).
This change is what people actually begged me for, so I went ahead with it. There's a saying in Poland "keep the fish or keep the aquarium" - you can't have both. If the mission start is too bad, just abort.
Yeah, I can move smoke grenades a bit earlier. Hell, let's make it Promotion I, as an experiment.
That's the problem - without saving before first move you don't know if it's too bad. One often doesn't know if it's too bad till they actually start moving on the first turn and realize there's several enemies aiming at them - and then the very fact they made one trooper take one step may lead to them being shot up and then there's little left to abort with. Same problem with smoke grenades: I repeat, because of how grenades seem to work, they're not useful because agents get shot up after making a single move, so before those grenades explode even if one starts the round with them equipped and primed.
I've been tapping into early game's potential for like 5 years, I'd really like to move the fuck away from early game eventually. 
Hah, I understand. My personal bias speaking because as mentioned, the "special agents in trenchcoats and with normal military hardware uncovering paranormal happenings/conspiracies" is kind of unique yet very much appreciated aspect for me.
I am open to considering adding it to some other mission too, but the cult apprehension feels too early for an advanced feature like that. Maybe something else?
As you've mentioned, nearly any mission could have *some* reason to add such, start-game cult apprehension just felt fitting for me because at this point XCOM is just budding initiative pursuing their first leads wherever they may be and trying to apprehend what's basically simple criminals - so having their gangs send a few guys more if they realize some of their men were attacked/someone went onto their turf or regular police coming in to take care of these criminals seems reasonable to me.
Admittedly, I like the idea of police arriving to spice things up... But they should shoot you too, and we can't have that! 
In regular cult apprehension, maybe we cannot. I could think of a special mission though where some intelligence agency had secret op to raid some important place housing things not meant for their eyes tied to some council members so rather than going undercover and browbeat their officials to let XCOM in on it, one's forced to crash the party and either fight both groups (with penalties for killing cops) or prepare less-lethal crowd control. Could even underline the aspect of how council isn't really just good guys and we may be forced to do some of a really morally ambiguous, wet work for them.
Eh, I know, ideas are easy but what's the work to put them in!
Are you talking of something roughly between cult apprehension and cult activity?
Wasn't thinking about it but that'd be an option - rather than heavily modifying suspect apprehension mission, one could get its alternative where there's no penalty for letting it slide, but there's additional risks and rewards (in form of more enemies if one takes their time) if they want to get on it (could be easily explained that since local authorities are onto it and the targets are unlikely to be of any great priority, XCOM can let it sort itself out).
I want to make more undercover missions, of course... But most of development time went into early game, why would I pour even more into it when the mid/late game is a skeleton???
Could think of the reasons but as mentioned, I'd rather give you the honest answer of untapped potential and how it's by my absolutely subjective take the most awesome part of the game and its greatest appeal. Of course, I understand if your opinion differs on it, but just there's so much more that could be done so it'll be better (and some of those things with less work required than the others) that eh, it hurts. But yes, I am aware there's a lot of other things to be done in other parts of the game and there's only so much time and will.
TBH I don't get how these ideas would work. Are we still talking about the reinforcements feature?
Yes. All those scenarios are just hypothetical ideas for the ways reinforcement mechanics could be implemented. Be it enemy reinforcements for some gangsters if player is slow to capture enemies the mission begins with, police reinforcement to fight those enemies and thus possibly deprive XCOM of captives (again, should player be too slow) or military reinforcements in a bigger battle against aliens (as the battle keeps raging).
Ghosts are shelved for now, but of course I'd like to develop this arc at some point.
Looking forward to it.
Good point, I'll add something like it, thanks
No problem. Hell, while I am hardly a professional writer, if you want any little text blurbs like that about any little thing for events and whatnot, just let me know what's needed for what and I can probably make several on the fly.
There is some value, but yeah, it's a hard mission. Good luck next time!
Uh, not my point. The mission difficulty isn't what I concentrate on, but it's the fact that the informant doesn't have to be kept alive and cannot be kept alive since he spawns in the middle of enemy location and dies instantly all the time. Sometimes he even appears in mission loadout phase (sometimes he doesn't), sometimes he's not there during the mission, sometimes he's a controllable character, too and sometimes just implied to exist in mission debriefing but not actually appearing on the map. It's a weird mission like that.
Better one-tile knives: no idea what would be better than the shiv but not larger. A plasma switchblade?
We wouldn't even have to get as far technologically though plasma knife which would be basically just a small hilt till it's in one's hand and activated makes sense. I was thinking mostly about absolutely or just somewhat realistic alternatives to shiv which by the name alone usually implies improvised, small weapon mostly made in prisons or other criminal circles - while there's proper, quality folding knives, short, very easily concealable blades for some special forces - and that without mentioning simple, tiny knives once alien or hi-tech materials get researched or XCOM gets into occult.
Plus, there's general a lot of tiny, useful things that should be available to clandestine organisations and fit one slot of covert operative's inventory, not only knives, pistols or telescopic batons. Lethal or disabling agent injectors/syringes? An accurate melee weapon dealing a lot of damage but holding one "ammo" and having hard time with armors, for example.
But the core of the issue is examples that seems to be what I edited in before you started replying, like katanas which because of graphics even when not held take as much space and are as hard to wield (on account of needing to be put in a backpack when not held) as heavy missile launchers. No quick draws possible.
Sure, Sectoids are small and frail, but as you well know they have psi shields. Yes, it's unfair. So what?
I don't mind them being difficult enemies and being defended by psi-shields, when I was mentioning wanting strong/weak enemies with fitting stats I was literally meaning that - some enemies which have to depend on their hi-tech guns, but some that are just beasts in general. Enemies that are frail (but may or may not make up for it with aforementioned tech) and not.
The issue with sectoids are that they're NOT small and frail outside of their graphics and they, as mentioned, seem like any other kind of able enemy: whatever their stats, in examples above, they outmatched strong (for a human!), fully trained, fit adult in matters of purely physical prowess, as if it'd be sectoids who are muscled up martial artists, not operatives fighting them. And that applies even to those sectoids which simply even aren't in combat roles, but merely support. Their performance and warfare experience as a species is a different topic altogether.
Says who?
That's how specialization works. The former are, as you've just said yourself, meant to be small and frail. The latter have no mention of any extensive training and conditioning with their purpose being warfare but are implied to serve mainly as a middle management of Dagon's cult.
Sorry, but this just isn't true. They are as varied as they can within reason, and carefully designed for it.
I'll take your word for it, but from their prowess in battle I am willing to attest that depending on their rank, all enemies seem to be comparably skilled all across the board. If an enemy is a decent rifleman, they're usually also good at bashing my troopers or pushing their guns away in what I called "gun struggle" (trying to shoot next to each other). If they can shoot well, they can also react quickly with their shots - 360 no scope headshot reaction fire seal of excellence. If they're strong, they're usually also pretty sturdy. I am sure there's some variation in their stats, but it just isn't visible during the gameplay when it comes to armed sentients. I have to underline t's better in case of non-sentients like, for example, chupacabras which indeed seem very fast, hit very hard but have merely okay toughness fitting for their looks and ufopedia description.
So I fail to understnad your point, feels more like a rant than anything else, sorry.
No problem, to a degree it is. It may be that the boundary for what's lethal and not for melee is thinner because usually when enemies get into melee range, they exchange several strong hits most armors offer limited protection toward - and thus it looks how it does, with melee attacks either doing nothing or outright obliterating xcom operatives of average health pool.
However, I have the feeling that you only addressed very early game, which I've been focusing on for the past few years and I really am not interested in developing it further for now, since late game is sorely neglected. Do you even go beyond the invasion phase?
Yes and no. I got much further in the game before but as I've mentioned, I wanted this feedback to be about what was very noticeable to me in 1.8 alone. I've started a fresh new game for this purpose, play it when I have time not occupied by anything else (which varies, thus me not being that active anymore) and try to make my remarks on this basis, without mixing in stuff I recall from further down the line till I get there in this new playthrough, since otherwise it'd be unfair as things may have changed by now. Like I wrote:
Will write more as I keep going through old and new content in a fresh new game, should time allow. Unless it'll be just bugs, then I post those in the relevant thread.
So, should I get that sweet, sweet time and IRL won't bother me with tragedies and responsibilities to deal with, I promise to put in at least some of that time in playing and writing more of the feedback for 1.8
I could be wrong, but I think what he means, is that with every update we get more and more stuff to research but not more time to actually perform the research in.
I mean merely access to the content itself - certain missions, enemies etc stop being available with time and progression. I don't think one should get cheaper research just because there's a lot of potential technologies - no one says player has to research absolutely everything before moving on and shouldn't prioritize. Plus, early game the biggest limiter for research isn't even just money (though it is expensive) but number of available laboratories and amount of space for scientists to staff them with. But again, that's not really the issue I talk about.
It may indeed affect one's preparedness for invasion, as with new threats and things one has to deal with they also may suffer more casualties to build up back from but I find it fair - new opportunities bringing new risks - as long as they're not forced onto the player and heavily penalized.
