sick bay:
Why is it now so that all hired soldiers are always displayed ? In 2.4 it was a quick overview how many and which soldiers are wounded.
equipping soldiers:
Being able to equip via the employees menu is of course very useful, but removing a soldier from the dropship should still auto-unequip that soldier, as that's what's needed, most of the time, since the equipment is needed for the soldier replacing him/her. If he/she is reequipped through the employees menu, that equipment should of course be kept then. At least it should be configurable with an option; or, for instance, what about assigning the "remove all equipment for this soldier" action to the right-click menu in the menu where soldiers are assigned to the dropship (aircraft menu) ? Both functionalities are already present elsewhere, so supposedly an easy task, and that way it's also possible to keep equipment based on the soldier and current situation. Alternatively, add a "remove all" button in the aircraft menu. The way it's now, I always need to switch to the equipment screen before or after removing soldiers just to remove all of their equipment.
bleeding and increasing needed TUs:
I actually like this change, as it's more realistic, and aliens (Taman at least, probably all biologic ones) bleed as well, but don't seem to have any medikits, so it's actually more an advantage for Phalanx than something increasing the difficulty, and makes wounding an alien much more valuable than it used to be.
I hope the sick bay is more efficient in healing than in 2.4 though, where I sometimes take heavily wounded soldiers onto the battlefield and immediately heal them with a medikit because it's so much faster.
soldier clothing styles (urban, arctic and so on):
The choices got removed, supposedly because they don't have effect ? Good.
the weight system:
While optimizing the carried weight, the popup informing about not enough time units is very annoying. It needs to be clicked away all the time. The flashing red warning below the soldier image is perfectly sufficient. Please make this configurable. (show this popup ? yes/no)
I mean, the carried weight should be arranged so, that it is as close as possible to half the maximum carrying capacity, but doesn't go above that, thus there's no TU penalty. Unless the goal is to get a speed boost, of course.
Also, the weight display would be more useful if it displayed (in addition) the weight the soldier is able to carry in addition without suffering a TU penalty. And perhaps the maximum carrying capacity displayed should instead be the half of that, since that's the value the player is more interested in.
Perhaps like so
15.5 (+1) / 33 (16.5) Kg
where the numbers in brackets are the additional possible weight and the de-facto maximum weight.
EDIT
I just discovered that the popup is non-modal, permanently placing it in one corner seems a way to go.
money:
I haven't played 2.5 enough to really comment on it, but if there are less UFOs, there is much less money from selling those, or their parts, and the loot from the resulting missions. Thus nations should pay a lot more, to have the same money, since costs for buildings and equipment as well as maintenance costs seem to be the same.
map design:
This is the worst part. There are less UFOs to make the game less tedious and more map variation to make it interesting I suppose. *But* even for scouts and so on, there are now huge maps, such as the "mansion", which is a pure pain in the ass. I suppose these maps are designed to be visually attractive, not fun to play (Table tennis on a balcony is nonsense though, the ball would fall to the ground all the time.) This map is huge, one can keep searching for hours (real time) just for that one moment when you spot an enemy. Thus, playing a few such maps is more tedious in the end than playing a lot of those small maps in 2.4 - fighter crash, bridge, scout crash and the generic crashed UFO which appears in variations. On those maps it is often so that one can see all enemies right from the start and kill 2 or 3 in the first turn. This often leads to ideal battle results. I don't complain about most or all weapons being deadlier, just about that it's not fun to search large maps (in particular, maps with a lot of levels).
Also, the crashed UFO is seldom (never ?) visible. In 2.4 one can detect the remaining number of enemies from the UFO type. Say, it's a scout, you already killed 1 and see 2, thus there can none be hiding somewhere and ambush you. That's a huge tactical advantage. In 2.5 it is necessary to somehow track the UFO type by out-of-game means...
