Greylocke

I would perform sexual favours for anyone who could make those weapons usable! And hand to hand would be a blast!

A lot of those sound fantastic! Especially being able to add to the research tree (It needs to be larger dammit!) and being able to manufacture rifles and rifle mags would be good too. Yes the game NEEDS more weapons! All i find is ways to modify existing weapons into other weapons... i dont like this, so have more weapons would be sweet! And not necessarily more powerful weapons... just different.

If I put a Arquebus in your hands would you know how to load and fire it? (OK maybe if it was already loaded you might figure the firing mech out....) but that's an example of just 300 year tec gap since we were using them... If the aliens had solid projectile weapons 500 years ago they prolly wouldnt know how to use em now. But studying the tec to use it is an excellent idea, even along the line of best defense against it. "The human weapons rely on inertia? so lets make inertia refractors!"

Dude, i totally agree. Game's end came too easy in X-Com. And sending 2 avengers of troops would have been sweet. A full scale battle at their super base... troops absolutely lining the corridors....afterall this is where the 2k + soldiers have come from since the games beginning.. I always found the ending funny, c, i never use plasma.. but with a burst of hot plasma the brain was destroyed..hehe

i did something very similar myself, but disallowed lasers to do rapid shot. I think there should be more of a balance with the weapons, a payoff- power for slower use/rate of fire.