So... thought I would add some comments to my own post in case anyone else had similar questions.

Been playing for an hour or so and here's what I've learned:

1 - Getting more used to movement, and I think I actually prefer how it works in this game compared to X-COM. X-COM is too tactical and too slow (don't get me wrong, I love it), but this game seems to move more quickly. Feel I have better control. I've also gone through the settings and disabled a bunch of things, so the game plays a bit more. I still have the circle-around camera for monsters that are newly identified, but I disabled for most everything else.

2 - Seems to be a bit glitchy... but it works only / really when they're fully stopped and you have no other orders.

3 - Answer is yes, you can only heal other people, but it works well... you just can't heal yourself for some reason.

4 - Guess this game doesn't have that. There is an R&D and an Engineering aspect of it... but no base you can actually look in, other than when you're fighting in it.

5 - Still haven't found a way.


Other little thing I thought was interesting... a pilot went down after an air battle. I rescued him, and then took him along on a subsequent follow-up mission. Oddly enough, he'll stay with you as an additional soldier through each mission you go on before returning to base. Furthermore, he'll even gain experience points AND... you can update his attributes, which I thought was kind of funny. It would be cool if I could keep him long term as a fighter, but not really how it works I think.

You can't, even in AS 2nd game. Same. You can in AS.

Welcome in these games, even I find AS is the best, AM and AL have to be played at least once.

Thanks! I'm really liking them. I often found the NEW versions of X-COM 1 and 2 went by too quickly. I also felt like I was being "led" to do one thing before I could do another thing... like in King's Quest or Space Quest type games. I know that's kind of the same here, in terms of research, etc... but these games seem to be paced more to however much time you want to put into it. I kind of like it that way.

I played all three back in the day when they were new, but thought I'd give it a go again since I bought it on GoG. I have the third along with teh other two on a compilation CD, but I'm hoping that GoG eventually gets the 3rd one again so I can go down that route. They package their games up really well. Last time I tried to play AM on a modern computer, I had a hell of a time getting it to work, and this packaged version by GoG "just works" perfectly as it should.