I wish you could do a little more with captured aliens. It feels like you could do a lot more with them. Like figure out how to make captured aliens help you or figure out more about their physiology and psychology. Psionics (did I spell that right?) is a psychological weapon and learning the aliens psychology could give soldiers, who are specialized in psionics, a bonus to overcome the aliens psionics resistance.
Yeah, there could be a vast "search tree" beyond the "important" techs also, to give you small bonuses, things that scientists look into, when they get bored with the alien guys in the lab...
- 2% more criticals,
- little more effective gas
- specialized weapons of questionable tactical advantage
- scout techniques and predictions on the alien mind, to figure out what aliens will be on the target site, to use the specialized weapons more effectively
- get more aliens stored alive in a storage facility
- "reprogram" aliens with an artificial hive mind to transforming one of the ufos you gathered as additional fighter
- one-time psi-noise-wave generator stopping alien activation for 2 month (till they adapt to ignore it, and you can't figure out to do it again), to take pressure from you.
- reprogram the robotic aliens by a virus, implanted with a melee weapon until the aliens have updated their software (3-4 month?)
- breaking in the hive mind, getting a heat map of the aliens expectation of your bases, and primary area of activity and gives sometimes warnings on a base attack.
- infiltrate alien bases/ufos by manipulated aliens/civilians that have a programmed subconscious mind, or very clever lowtech detection strategies to get information of moving patterns and base locations
- "simulate" fights with reprogrammed aliens to train the soldiers
- generate alien slave worker or additional security with artificial hive mind generators (which might become a problem when the attacking aliens staying to long to close
- using alien "terrorists" infiltrating the alien and ships, that sabotaging it, and so bringing the concept of mistrust into the hive mind slowing alien activity down
Things like that?