Thanks for playing, and for the feedback!
The optional dialogues are meant to be a part of the resource management, with the incentive of finding out if there is a traitor in your group (and who it is), but I don't currently emphasize that enough in the game itself. The idea would be that you can also use your spare time for other things at checkpoints (like making items, does that sounds like a good idea?) and thus are forced to think about who you can afford to talk to, or how to talk to them: I plan to have more 'pointed' questions that consume more time but can potentially give you better clues as to if that person is a traitor or not. Maybe it would also be a good idea to have some 'free' interactions as well. I also plan to better integrate the story into the map gameplay, like making characters react to situations / places but keeping the longer interactions at the checkpoints as it is now.
The combat system is also definitely something that I plan to overhaul, as in building an actual system (for now it is indeed random). Did you notice how the alert system works? I think that also ends up being unclear and not really impacting the gameplay, so I'm thinking of removing it altogether.
I've 100% come to agree with you on the map part as well: at first I wanted to portray the city in a kind of 'grand' scale, but the only cheap enough solutions for me to implement on my own ended up being either very time consuming, or looking bland (AKA the current map). Lately I've been thinking about having a flat map, and showing a holographic 3D animation of the characters moving after selecting a node (like just running on a plane, similar to the fights). I would also like to show some specific nodes in more detail, like a POV from a security camera or something, so that I don't have to build the whole city in 3D and can just focus on specific places and camera angles. Does that sound better to you?
Again: thanks a lot for the feedback! I have been putting a lot of thought into it and polishing as much as I've been able to, so this helps me a lot to know which parts require more attention than others.