Why are there no manual saves?

[Malidictus]

Look, I get it. This game is supposed to be "hard", so limited saves makes sense. XCOM had its Iron Man mode where only a single save exists. Fair enough. However, we here already have a "lenient" save system option to choose when starting a new game. Why doesn't that have a manual save feature?

Here's what prompted me to ask this. I explored a mission for a while, got my soldiers pretty stressed out so I took an elevator up to the dockyard and rested in a room. Then the elevator stopped working, so I had to restart the game. Starting it back up again... it loaded a save file from 30 minutes before. Apparently, the game didn't save at any point in the interim nor did it save when I rested.

Why are we relying on autosaves? If the game already lets me save-scum (which it does), why not let me save when I want to - in case I need to go eat lunch, or go to bed, or I feel like playing something else. Can't. Must wait for an auto-save. At this point, it feels like the "lenient" system is just as strict as the strict one, since I've apparently hit all the save points in the mission.

[Riut]

Gonna have to second this.

Basically I would not ask for manual saves if this were a less buggy game because I feel like without the bugs, this would be a cool game to ironman. But I've yet to go a single mission without some glitch happening that made me reload an earlier save like one of my marines just deciding he won't be moving anymore after being grabbed and freed by a runner.

I'd suggest patching the option in until the game reaches a point where stuff like this doesn't happen.

[Doomer]

there is manual save.
each time you let you marines rest in safe area, the game saves.

[Ham Solo]

Originally posted by Doomer:

there is manual save.
each time you let you marines rest in safe area, the game saves.

That's not a 100% chance, you don't always get a save when resting.

[I Throw Spears.]

Originally posted by Ham Solo:

Originally posted by Doomer:

there is manual save.
each time you let you marines rest in safe area, the game saves.

That's not a 100% chance, you don't always get a save when resting.

This. Had a terrible time on a certain indoor ship level, as the save only happened 50% of the time it felt.

[Malidictus]

Originally posted by I Throw Spears.:

This. Had a terrible time on a certain indoor ship level, as the save only happened 50% of the time it felt.

Might be that map itself is bugged, since I had saving issues on it, as well. Wasn't doing saves when resting AT ALL. Tried it multiple times, never got a single save. Even tried extracting and going for another run - same deal. The Techer Drone also didn't like riding the elevator so it would spawn randomly stuck in the air.

Originally posted by Riut:

Basically I would not ask for manual saves if this were a less buggy game because I feel like without the bugs, this would be a cool game to ironman. But I've yet to go a single mission without some glitch happening that made me reload an earlier save like one of my marines just deciding he won't be moving anymore after being grabbed and freed by a runner.

Yeah, this. I've had a soldier permanently "performing an action" so they couldn't be healed. Had to extract. Had an elevator stop working (would constantly act like not everyone's on board). Had soldiers falling through the ground and disappearing. And that's just off the top of my head. This game is plagued by race conditions causing broken states. I've already had to reload and restart multiple times.

I think my main point is... the game already has a separate "Iron Man" mode where your saves are limited. Why is the "Not Iron Man" mode also so restrictive? Isn't that the point of having options?