I write this, in part, after having the game bug out after my laptop hibernated due to low battery, just moments before completing a long and rather frustrating mission. The other part had to do with reading up on a blog/article referencing many situations where saving restrictions have greatly diminished the fun of gameplay, for minimal benefit towards the designer's vision.
If it is more of a design philosophy change, rather than an actual technical limitation or resource/time constraint, then perhaps a compromise could be made. Within the initial settings of the game, wherein the player selects his difficulty level, there could be an optional in-battle saving toggle. When on, the player can save (and reload) mid-battle without restriction. Alternatively, the toggle can be shut off, and battle progress will instead be auto-saved at the start and end of each team's round. Perhaps the autosave could even be erased when loaded, and thus only re-established at the next turn change. This would present a buffer of sorts for the forced leaving of the game, or even a random crash, while still keeping the mode a bit more 'hardcore' than other games.
Additionally, perhaps an in-game option to re-enable player-controlled saving could be placed as an in-game options, though with no going back to 'hardcore' battle saving once the restriction has been removed.
I hope this can help strike a middle-ground, where players can opt for the added challenge and tension involved in a "one-life" approach to missions without the benefit of rampant save-loading, while still allowing leniency for the players who would be otherwise turned off by such an approach.
