Saving during missions.

[frumius]

and yet another time: I don't know the reason of others - but the reason why I didn't write this yet, is because I don't like it. Games need game overs, games must be challenging, I hate these casual game aspects. So the reason why it's not there is that nobody on the team cares about writing it - because in our opinion it would suck. And as I've said earlier already: UFOAI is opensource - do whatever you want with it. We would even add it to the mainline, just not enabled by default. We will never ever (at least not in the current teams mindset - correct me when I'm wrong) write this on our own. But we wouldn't care if anyone else would.

And of course there are ways to still exploit it with VMs - but honestly... if anyone wants to exploit a game, he will find a way - but why should we care about those? In the first view we are making a game for ourselves and for having fun while doing and playing it. And in general we only include features we believe in.

EOF

     Being new to this forum I didn't know that you were only making this game for your own amusement. I assumed that someday you would want to put it on the market. If the above is true then you certainly can do what ever you wish and any critical comments are absolutely out of place. Since I am completely unqualified to contribute to your effort in any way and any comments I might make would only be my opinion and not at all relevant to your personal goal of 'having fun'. 

[Grug]

I assumed that someday you would want to put it on the market.

This is an open source game. That means (roughly) anyone can do what they want with it. Open source means it is already released to the "market".

If you mean selling the game, I don't believe that was ever the intention. Personally I would say that your implication of "putting it on the market" would mean at some point making it Closed Source which is completely against the concept of Open Source.

Since I am completely unqualified to contribute to your effort in any way and any comments I might make would only be my opinion and not at all relevant to your personal goal of 'having fun'. 

Why do you suggest you are completely unqualified to contribute?

The aim of the game being Open Source means that any can contribute to making the game better. You can provide ideas, and if the development team believe that it is worth spending the time to code, will implement it.
Alternatively, if they don't agree with it or don't consider it a priority then you can code it yourself, or find a friend who can, and the changes can be submitted for consideration for inclusion into the "official" project. Alternatively, you could maintain a seperate alternative version of the game with your own features. The project is "Open" to all these options.

If the above is true then you certainly can do what ever you wish and any critical comments are absolutely out of place.

Even if the game were being developed towards a "completion" point and sale, the developers are still allowed their opinion on how they think the game mechanics should operate. I don't see why them being able to do what they wish is dependent on whether the game is available for sale or not?? o.O

Critical comments however, are not out of place. If they are constructive then they can be helpful. If they are not constructive, or don't fit with the vision of the devs, then they can be happily ignored.

[TBeholder]

IMO, the main value of battlescape saving support would be as optional debug functionality.
But why not to allow it at "Easiest" level? 

[anonymissimus]

There are some missions that need at least several hours - namely attacks on alien bases. (If you are faster, you loose too many units. Starting strategy is too wait on the entrance ramp, covered in smoke, waiting for aliens to show up & kill.) Not being able to save there is a pain.
Not allowing saves because people should be afraid is kind of a futile attempt. Look at other games. For instance, Battle for Wesnoth also didn't allow saving during scenarios (=missions) in the past, but it's long gone as it wasn't really worth it.
In UFO:AI's case, you are making it way too hard to reproduce in-missions bugs and cause the game to be unstable in return, basically.
Of course, if the real reason is that it needs to be implemented somehow, that's a completely different matter.
EDIT
And btw, serious players disallow themselves saveload exploitation anyway. I never do within scenarios in BfW, though it's technically possible.
Thinking about it, I even don't saveload at the beginning of UFO:AI missions (where it's possible)... Not because of loosing units however.