A thing that would go a long way for the game: ensure that the tutorial explain how the information key work (d-pad up on controller 1 on keyboard). It could be that at the beginning of the second section the game stop until you press that button. As of right now most of the time the mission is explained by Cortez's dialogues, and in some cases (Short Fuse, In Shock) it's not enough. Also some times new players don't know what their character does, and this would help to.

   Everibody who begin playing spacelords and starts to know how antagosist know have the same suggestion/question, why the antagonist has to win to get a decent score/rewards/etc...? As I get to know the game better I understood a little bit why is this the case, and why after all this time antagonist have to win to earn something. But while I was scrapping to get a 1.1 more on my adventure path to get those weapon skin, I start to put some thoughts in the interaction between those two aspect of the game.

   In a week I can relaiably get a score of at least 8 in all mission, with most be 9. If from today I queue only antagonist for the rest of the month, maybe I can relaiably get a 0.6, the antag role is hard. If I want those juicy adventure path I need much more. The only way to get an high score relaiably as an antagonist is to hunt noobs and lowering your mmr, this might not give you scores higher than 7.8-8, but it give much more on the adventure score than just do raider or try to be an antagonist fairly.  As it stand right now, the win or nothing rewards for the antagonist with the adventure path reward a behaviour that hinder the growth of the playerbase.

   I also have a series of gripes with the antagonist system that I foun entangled with each other so let's begin. The raiders can give up a mission if the majority want to, the antagonist must endure wathever the matchmaking serves him. Especially considering how much more frustrating antag is than raider, true the raiders would get a free win so my next gripes is that. It make no sense than if the antagonist run the raiders automatically wins, there still is a level that would not complete itself antagonist or not. In this times if an antagonist run, it wasn't very influencial on the match to bengin with. It's not chess the pieces will still moves even if the opponent isn't there, unless we talk about the mission altered difficulty wich can be altered during cutsene (Indeed the game already do that in small amunt). But I have a bigger gripes with the altered difficulty, little annectode first:
  "A breath of hope" my mmr at the time 44%, I have a friend with me of mmr 36% wich is also the average mmr of the team. There is an antagonist of mmr 20%, the game set the difficulty at 40%. The antagonist was awful, but the two other members of my team (and my friend to) start to brack like toothpicks for the sheer spawn rate. The antagonist leave after the first monolith is acrtivated. He could have stayed in a corner doing nothing and we would have lost the mission.
  There should be a cap on the maximun difficulty based on the lowest or second lowest mmr (or it could be the ighest difficulty at wich the second lowest mmr won a mission). You can introduce an lower cap as well.

    In general I think that every palyer should have two mmr one for raider the other for antag. The reason is my current mmr is valued at how good I am to carry noobs as raider, because I mostly avoied play as antag. And this can be said for most of the newer playerbase. If I start mathcmaking as antag however the skill required is to 1v4 people with my same skill (at least in theory), you can't expect that a 40% mmr raider behace like a 40% mmr antagonist.

  I speak from a prospective of one who mostly play raider, and do some antag mission only for adventure rewards. I think taht the pvp aspect of the game is quite odd, it's mostly matchup knowledge and gain that knowledge it's painfull. For example I didn't know that if you dodge against a Kuzman you die, or that Alicia can kill you  with a dodge. And I don't know the counterplay to the previous strategy. The point is pvp can be a completely different beast, and you can go pretty far without knowing  any of this stuff, my mmr is 40%. Yet if I try to be an antagonist I get paired up with groups at 50% mmr who definetly know mostly the pvp.
  I just got in a match when they culd just shut down all my engagement, because I didn't know any of the matchups. I could try to do that mission, or spend around the same amount of time in a soft ban. I understood how they shut down me at the third failed engagement, and there was no point continuing other than make me incredibly salty. Yet this soft ban make my expirience at learning the pvp even longer, than it is.
  I don't understand why the antagonist get a ban for forfeit. If I leave as a raider there are 3 person who have to pull my weight withuout the lives I wasted. In other hero shooters I get a ban for forfeit, because the rest of the team will lose most of their engagement. But who hurt an antagonist that forfeit? The ads? The elites? If I get matched against some of the best players of the game do I have to be their punching bags or get a ban? Those details escape me.
   I think there are some quality of life improvement that could help the antag expirience. Have two separate mmr for raider  and antagonst, so at least if you played raider to high mmr you can try to swith to antagonist. it would also help to find people who lower their mmr in order to bully noobs,  as the two mmr would differ greatly (at least they would have to lower two mmr instead of one). Also remove the forfeit penalities, it would make antag more accessible.

EDIT: Just did a game. We were in 3 people, one of us was a kuzman rank 6 who wuldn't be able to do the mission normally. We got paired with a purple rank 1 one rak. I struggle to almost get even with him, the rest of the team got demolished. Thatas what the current adventure path results.

  I played a lot "upside down" recently and having to fight a lot of elites I changed my opinion with them. I liked a lot how old elites works, mostly because they kept the pace of the game fast. They weren't eassy to learn, but after then it was fun to deal with them. Current elites feels like open heart surgery, but not in the fun way.

Napalm Elites: I didn't play to much with them, however I have a few comments. In certain mission, especially "a breath of hope" their most impactful contribution are special tropps and mad dogs. Now that ads are more dangerous, bazooka ads aìcan be deadly. The fact that they can just call special ads after spawining with no counterplay, I'm not saying it need to be changed, but it's a critical difficulty spike that need to be watched out. My other problem with napalm elites it's their ability, after they activate it only wardogs raider can brawl with them. The other must shoot them, but the ability is a visual overload and tend to screen the napalm elite itself.

Melee elites: I guess I'm fine with them after the graple change, but sure they aren't particularly fun. If you can burst them they are ok, if not it's a long process when you can't do anithyng else. I have a problem of letting them alive while I have noobs in my team, because I know that if I don't kill them we will lose lives. Another problem is with the glow associated with their ability, it dosen't works with certain lightning conditions, most notably in "mind over matter".

Fifth council's shotgun: I'll put this here since it's related to the melee elite, I think that the fifth council's shotgun have a ridiculus knockback. During the mission "In Shock", I was at the bottom of the stairs at the beginning of the bridge. Two shotgun ads apear, and one second later I'm at the top of the staris with no health, I was laugthing as thay made me fall down the staris in reverse. During the mission "upside down", a downed melee elite was able to fend off two raiders at once, someone should look into this.

Snipers: My biggest problem with them is inconsistency, their reaction time is so low that most close range option are inconsitent. As a rule of thumb if you bring a character\weapon good against melee elites won't bee that good against snipers, and the reverse is true too (there are exceptions of course). At best you can bring something that work in a awkard way for both, and when you have to carry noobs you kinda have to. While using a close to mid range character attacking a sniper become a goose chase, and if the sniper graple you, or even only walk in your generakl direction there is nothing you can do to stop her from teleporting. I strongly belive they shouldn't be able to cancel theyr graple into a teleport. It's possible to land a hit, but you have to catch here by surprise, and since we have no way to know when this happen (the stress bar is useless at his point) some player get negative reinforcements from those rare istances. In missions like a "breath of hope" (and the one with the fatties, I don't remember the name) when you have to kill full stack snipers, it's frustrating to have your progress shut down by someone who try a cheeky hit.

  I've been noticing some issues on steam after the last 18 Mb patch. In the mission "Destroyer of worlds", after Aneska refuel with sucess, the empowered plasma barrage glitch. The balls compenetrate each other creating a cloud instead of spreading out, for how the stun works if you get hit by one ball you get it by EVERY ball, killing any raider on one side of the map. Also the missile barrage seems to be faster and deal more damage, if you have less than 100 hp, you have few seconds before get downed, and at that point ou are dead.
    Also the damage of the weapons dosen't add up, and with some characters against 5th council shoting isn't an option. I played to an higher than I'm used to, but I hardly belive the differece between 39-40% and 40-41% can be so dramatic.
   The last thing I wan't to report is the ability of Shae, bewitch, not working properly. A bewithced enemy will be defensive and run away, but when needed he will see you perfectly. Especially snipers elite, they see me coming and teleport if try melee, and if at 0hp they will shoot me regardless of distance.

   After playing with the new changes let me share what I've learned today. Melee elite now spawn invulnerable to CQC, I don't mind the change, but after seeing how my teamates reacted to it I want the phrase "FOOKING SHOOT AT IT" added to the weel. Snipers elite now spawn twice, unecessary and unimpactful in my opinion. All the religions are wrong, the true gpds are a races called "napalm elites", who smite their divine punishment trought holy orbs that for some reason have more than 100 hp. The tools we had to deal with all of this called "weapons", now feels like nerf's gun against the improved enemies health. I onestly didn't thought the combo could be five hit long. I will admit taht I'm a bit salty to have lost all my progress to improve my mmr in the last few days, but I think that change the game to something completly different isn't good for the game right now.

  On a related note I have to tell about my last match of the day. It was "white noise" on the last heat segment the cooling system kept going off. After we killed the spiders they would spawn again after few second, one time back to back, three times in a row. During this mess a herd of seven melee elite kept killing us until they ran out of aleph. The mission endend in the final phase when a teamate kepst suiciding over and over again. The mission was hilariously unplayable, as it is the whole fifth council campaign right now given the density of elites. I have one question, did u
really had to increase the health of the both the miners?

PS I don't know if it is the timing or some collision physix taking over, but the dodge straight up don't work anymore. A few times i dodge on prevision with a green ping and I still got hit by a punch.

  I'm not an expert raider myself, but if I have to put my finger on the worst parts of the game are my first matches and the matches with new players. The fact is that often they just don't pul their wieht or end up just going afk. And that's a shame because the rest of the game is great. Since recently I've been helping a friend of mine beginning the game and I've collected some suggestion to help new players.

- Substitute Harec from the beginning raiders: my friend play snipers in almost every shooter she can, but she hate to play Harec. He is quite complicate to play in a fast pase game, and require a lot more experience. It dosen't appeal to snipers main from other games, and risk to misguide them about the game. If we confront him with other  natives raiders, Shae is more forgiving and Doldren is more straight forward, both of them would be a better starting raider than Harec. I know there are lore reasons, but not lose one fourth of the new players base should come first.

- Give players training grounds to try new raiders: my friend is scared to try anithyng but Kostantin, she fears to perform poorly. And she had some good precedents too, yesterday all the HIVE we found ended up going afk, one of them costing me an aleph reciver. It's ok to expect that exerienced player can figure out a character on the fly, or at least don't be a dead weight, it's not so easy for someone new. Even the fact that the training mode as to be unlocked completing five times the mission, i understand the intent, but it cut out new players from having something they actually need.

-Remove the antagonist win conditions if there is no antagonist: i'm talking about sudden death and the fact that the ads spawn rate increase over time. Again I understand the presence of certain mecanics make sense with an antagonist, but for new players they just feels like undeserved middlefingers. Consider that new players  will encounters those mecanics trought afk and toxic players, so it feels even worse.

Edit: Quick note on the Aleph changes gone live today. You guys really hate new players don't you?