Hi everyone,
A small offtopic about savegames - the most hardcore savegame feature I've ever encountered was in Warhammer 40k Chaos Gate (IMO one of the best games ever and similar to UFO:AI but without base management - limited ammount of troops (at about 60 for whole game) and supplies, ranks for troops; equip them, go to "battlescape" and kill enemies). There were 4 difficulty levels:
Space Marine - easy, player's units generally stronger, enemy generally weaker
Veteran - average
Champion - hard, opposite of easy
Mighty Hero - same as Champion except for saves - at the beginning of campain you choose a single savegame file, and the game is saved automatically whenever you quit and when one of your soldiers dies in combat. Sweet, isn't it?
Ability to save game during battlescape would enable such "Mighty Hero" difficulty level in UFO:AI, that is, there would be a single save for both geoscape and battlescape, so you couldn't load and choose another equipment. Consider implementing this nightmare of a code to enable that kind of challenge:P (that's an argument for adding battlescape saves in order to make the game harder, not easier:P)
I'm not even close to being good enough player to try that level of difficulty, but I'm sure some of you are:)
If implemented, I would enable battlescape saves at will in easiest difficulty setting, but I'm not a developer, so it's just a suggestion which, I guess, will be rejected:P