About the research options, the issue is not quantity but quality. If people can come up and elaborate on good ideas that will add something meaningfull to the gameplay, if they make sense in the context of the game, if game balance issues are foreseen and if you hopefully could provide content (texts, models, textures, whatever), I'm sure they will eventually be picked up. I don't know how the developers are working and what their plans are but I see so much to do that simply adding "more" research options is probably not the priority right now.
The lack of ability to choose the loot didn't bother me at all, it seemed to me that most of the stuff was sold automatically anyway, I didn't look but you can probably define what should be sold automatically.
About keeping fighting ufo's after the game ends, personally I wouldn't keep playing but I think that should still be possible and easily done.
About a ufo combat flight sim mini-game, I disagree. I think the way it's done is not very gorgeous right now but I like the way it's headed. I find the way "UFO: Extraterrestrials" handled that is the most fun of all UFO-themed games and "UFO: AI" is headed the same way which is fine by me.
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