As you say, it's adding a lot more spinning plates, more than the original. The original's balancing in the combat came down to a couple of things. First, your rookie hardware, which was solved with autocannons. Second, keeping them alive long enough to level, which meant a bit a of carefulness until you had some decent armour. And lots of quicksaving and reloading if you're cheap. Which TBH I felt was necessary when you had those late-level moments with an alien still alive somewhere on the map, and you just wanted to run out and find them. Finally, once you had plasma cannons and flying suits the troop kit was standardised, the only question then was psionics. You'd want as strong psis as possible, both for alien control and resistance.
I can see this version is going to keep the variety for much longer.
I would like to see the 'run to spot, but stop first if you see an enemy' mechanic though. That's very important and realistic. A soldier may well have the intention to get to cover, but if they spot an alien then they'd reevaluate. So if you've move 5 out of ten space in a movement and an enemy comes into view, I'd like to be able to retarget the remaining five spaces of movement.
