The difference is relatively small, its not something that winning a game (and of very few importance if not playing for speed, what difference 10 game mins per sector would really make, if day is only about 2-3 sectors to grab). You could easiliy test it with travel across the same sector in real-time (it do not affect turn-based at all). Sadly there is nothing to fix there, probably they didnt got that the way they speeded up animations, they actually speeded up actual movements. But as its an option already, id say it works like command line key fixes, its up to player to "fix" it or not. About 1.15z: while i can make it really soon, id prefer not really to make other ones. How about you will check first if Hard amount of 300 Reserves is enough, or should be increased?
I didnt sayd they are useless, i said they are not useful to actually kill enemies. To make "unseen attack" with knife, well, i dont know reliable way at all. Even laying down mercs, who cannot see new movements while in this position, would still hear approaching enemies. Even in such marginal case it still not something to achieve easily, and there is not fair way to know if enemy see your merc or not. Another drawback of knives is that they could only hit Torso (just like explosives and rocks), so no headshot with them. Their condition affect their damage, they could break, and "useless" ones wouldnt be usable (except Snake battle). Stabbing tappers is silly tho fair, id say. Pre 1.15z its possible to even stab own merc with low aim and train both Dex for attacker and Agility for defender, without much risk for latter. But there is shitload silly slow way to train things, like crawl on 2 tiles back and forth while keeping enemy in sight of Camoed merc, or re-detect traps on return to sector, or just throw Rocks on adjacent tile (id say the worst one). Nice one id say its scoring double kill (or at least double attack). If merc still have AP left, and its safe, say its the last enemy, if merc will shot/stab already dying enemy, it would score another kill with all rewards included (
upd: its
NOT true, double shot will only provide additional exp roll for hit, but will not re-trigger a kill rewards and stuff.). Ofc its not something intended, but its curious and not really ruin a game, as its not something possible to do redundantly.
Quick peek show the skills shouldnt have effect on spending, but ill try to measure it sometime. Thing with not overbandaging is wasting AP of doctor sometimes prior starting first aid.
Sadly, screenshots are of next to no help quite often. I know some, probably related glitch about actually not curently seen enemy is kept drawn on screen, and when merc will see that enemy again, player would been told about "enemy spotted"; its something about a skip of some refresh of screen state. It
vaguely could explain the stuff you're about tho. Also there is 2 different ways to store knowledge about enemies for a merc: one is total amount, and other is per certain enemy. They could update in different time, leading to desynchronizations of such kind. But sadly that all i can say from screenshots only. ALT-X is good way to make a save, there is nothing bad in saves, just winning via save\loading will slow learning curve, but saves have other usage too.