Thank you for the feedback. You're absolutely correct in that the difficulty curve has shifted too far and that there isn't enough decision making with missions currently. I'm testing a patch now that will give more decision making power to the player pre-mission and should demystify the systems at play a bit. Part of my goal is to make missions more strategic and less tactical, to better fit the genre, but as this effort towards 1.0 continues I'll be bringing mercenaries back and giving you more tools on how to approach missions in general.