I like the idea of updating autoresolve with an "outsource mission" option.
This is not UFO:EU, On harder difficulties you have a very limited access to soldiers, if your team gets badly mauled in a terror mission and you then shoot down a UFO for example, you will probably prefer to auto resolve the mission to give your team time to recover.
On the other hand it needs an element of balance to stop abuse, this is after all a game and not an interactive novel but it needs to make sense in the story told, if the auto resolve becomes leave it to local forces (ala UFO: Aftermath) it then brings into play several potential penalties which have been suggested. Auto resolve needs to be an option used sparingly by the player when they are having an excessively hard time and need to give their teams a chance to recover health or manufacture equipment/replacement ammo. Story critical missions should also be limited so the player cant auto it.
On the national rating scheme, the player is there as Earth's answer to the alien threat so any deferred mission result should not help PHALANX's reputation and anything where it goes bad for should hammer the player, I was thinking something like
Player Tackles the mission and wins = +1 to national opinion
Player Requests Local deal with mission and they win = No change to national opinion
Player Tackles the mission and looses = -1 to national opinion
Player Requests Local deal with mission and they loose = -2 to national opinion
Player ignores the mission and it disappears = -3 to national opinion because the player should have acted in some way, even if it's to defer it.
As for salvage I think that the player should not directly benefit from it but perhaps a random selection could be added the market for the player to purchase, though if the mission is a loss then the nation keeps all salvage.
and before geever starts yes it will be a lot of work, but at the same time the current implementation feels like a stopgap.
