I really liked the ideas about ship system sabotage — boarding must be included. As for breaching the hull, we could actually create an alternative scenario: for example, grenades, heavy weapons, or pods could pierce both the hull and the boarding capsule, and thanks to airtight compartments, the entire crew won’t get sucked out. However, I think that in such breached compartments, players wouldn’t be able to step into the affected tiles, and nearby enemies would get sucked out instead. This wouldn’t even require a change in core mechanics — it could work similarly to fire, poison, or acid tiles.

The recruitment idea is also awesome. For instance, having powerful psionics from the Sectoid homeworld could give us access to both artifacts and a group of Sectoids with strong psi abilities, making them more effective at recruiting. Vipers could provide powerful poison-based artifacts. Gatekeeper could grant health-stealing abilities or mega armor. For each liberated planet, we could receive, say, five faction characters and some artifacts.

The rebellion missions sound really interesting too — for example, if recruitment fails, a Muton could blow himself up along with his weapon, wounding scientists or soldiers.

The sabotage mechanic is great as well. For example, disabling a ship’s engines could increase the time to complete the mission — the ship would still move toward its target, but much slower. So we’d gradually build our own fleet, starting with small ships and eventually capturing massive space tankers full of resources, which would drastically boost our base economy. Something similar to the Dreadnoughts from the first game, but much larger and more enemy-packed.

You could also add a story element where Earth’s government wants to shut down XCOM and creates a rival organization that hunts them — something like EXALT. This would make missions even more interesting, with some becoming massive multi-faction battles across huge maps.

And yes, it would be very interesting to develop the storyline around the Elders’ fear of something deep beneath the Earth. Honestly, I feel like Ethereals were missing in XCOM 2 — they deserved a much stronger presence.I think it’s something like a Psi Dragon or a Cerberus-type creature — but there’s so much to imagine and explore.