I may advise you to out-light your requests (?) with subtitle or a number, so that answering is less tedious.
Overall, you may have forgotten that UFO : AI is a work in progress. As such, you should post here only feature requests that might fit in the existing game, and reserve rants and heavy criticisms to another part of this forum, maybe here.
Overall, I humbly think that your are an impatient gamer, aren't you ? What I experienced is that UFO : AI is a slow paced game compared to original one. Time flows slowly. From this point of view, as from others, you have to adapt (from the original game).
So, go for cover, build accordingly to your economy, save before risky action, build radar turrets, etc.
By the way, your witticism about radar coverage, shows that you didn't play the original game, not a prerequisite though.
About finding money :
First months are quite difficult, start building a second base immediately, then another hangar helps. Once you have three intervention bases, you detect much more landing events and you shoot most light crafts. You don't shoot all the UFOs above sea, do you ?
As for January of 2085, I have no use of the advanced craft yet. Eight bases (HQ, 2 Tactical, 1 Research, 1 Prod/Dismantling, 1 Anti-craft only, 1 Prod (with hangars), 1 Radar (Future Storage/Whatever useful), build in this order, with six costly anti-matter storage. My maintenance costs are now even higher than the nations' subsides, but knowing that, mid-game, a single harvester mission can bring me more than 100Kc...However, I took time to read and note suggestions of interest.
1°) Securing squaddies' too high value :Me too, it's restart button when one is killed. I feel like cheating, but it's my game. Between cheaters, I may advice you to not do that, and to save just before landing instead, then reload in case a casualty occurs (or game crashes). When you hit Restart (once), the random seed seems to be (intentionally) at your disadvantage money-wise (Aliens are equipped lighter). I did the same with the original game.
I need
a stronger incentive to rush for civilians lives, do nightly missions (in original game, you better had with terror missions), and consider soldiers as spendable (against higher objectives), feeling how I am on the edge and fighting overwhelming forces... Maybe, it would be another game (the simplified production X-COM that i just coming out ?). For now, I am slowly building and preserving my squaddies in order to prepare for the final (?) strike.
I could of course have mixed squads of say 4-6 attended veterans and 4-2 canon-fodders, but it would end the same (I know me). Maybe if (when) I am overwhelmed by a sheer number of simultaneous missions, I will start weighing shorter missions (with casualties) and experience gains (for vets) up.
2°) Auto-combat :I am not used with it, so I spend many time fighting. I like maxing experience, distributing the kills and swapping weapons when danger is cleared to increase secondary (or tertiary) skills. Even to the point to switch tactical roles for a while with sure hit weapons (MG&FT for heavy, GL for blast, NG for assault, coilgun for sniping). A short assignment as a grenade launcher and you soon get a better grenades thrower. Many time spend here.
Not allowing to save in Battlescape is a chosen feature by the dev team. However, there is the Auto Combat option...
I understand that the missions take many time, and that, occasionally, you may want to abort one. THAT is the point. There could be a feature in the ESC menu, that allows
to swap (once for all) to Auto Combat from within the Battlescape. As far as I can guess how things work, this could be implemented by saving automatically in the Geoscape, then aborting the mission (when AUTO is desired), then loading the hidden save and playing Auto-combat instead, with no further player intervention. Not sure if I am clear.
edit - removed the maroon color so the text could be read.