A couple things talked about pretty much at any time in the forums are why some missions can't be autoplayed, and how tiring it can be playing that umpteenth crash site just when you're anxious to pass a few days to get some new tech, and it's also been talked about how come no one else in the world seems to be fighting the aliens but Phalanx. So, I had this idea...
Replace the option to autoplay with an option to request a national military (of the area) to deal with the alien mission/crash site. There should be a penalty to that nation's happiness, and we could also get a mission report telling how it went, victory having less impact on happiness than defeat. The nation might say "no, we can't fight them, phalanx has to" and this would of course be the equivalent of autoplay being grayed out. Hopefully this would deal with at least some of the talk/questions mentioned in the first paragraph, and I believe the overall sense of realism in the game would be heightened. I can't code myself but I would imagine this would not be an overtly difficult thing to implement, for one who can code.
What do you think?