Hello, hope you don't mind another reply. I still appreciate the feedback, just kind of realized I might have been a bit too harsh on myself in the OG message and didn't like the vibe it gave off. There's some aspects that may be tweaked down the line, I'm still really happy with the overall like...structure and concept, there's just a lot that could be touched up editing wise and of course in play-testing. Plus, I didn't really answer your questions super well and wanted to fix that.
SO:
For the three deaths mechanic and whether it kicks in with respect to the squad or individual players' deaths, it sorta bounced back and forth before I settled on "three separate player deaths occur in the game". I edited it a few times to try and make that clearer but I think there's some more editing to be done that better gets the idea across (and I'm not even sure the sentence I just typed is clear-wait no I just figured out how to make it clearer [use the word 'separate']...this is why the professionals have editors). Plus, some of these costs are clearly more enticing if they trigger once every member of the squad has experienced a death, so I might reframe things to be more in line with that, at least for some of the three-player-deaths triggered mechanics.
As for the game-ending nature/vibe of some procedures, I think it's an unintentional remnant from a unfinished mechanic I called "Gutting the Snake" where it was sort of mission prompts/methods to sort of break the cycle and end the loop in such a way where either A.) Your team or members of your team die their final deaths and stay dead on THEIR terms, if that's what players want. OR B.) The players escape the cycle and overcome the consequences, returning to life as mortal beings with no strings attached...aside from whatever weirdness they started with OR whatever weirdness stuck around. (a final re-design of your character and such.)
Decided to skip that as I was sort of feeling a bit swamped between my job, university coming up, and didn't want to try and work out each "GUTTING" mechanic. I figured out the "Pre-" and "Post-" mission prompts, so maybe I can frame it as ENDING, prompts so players can get back to mortal play and such.
Anyway, once again thank you for the feedback and for letting me answer your questions!