Another possibility is providing a piece of intel as a result of a dialogue encounter.
From spoiler reasons didn't want to pry your plans with them, how combat and non-combat NPCs will influence the campaign, but always thought this as one of their purposes. But probably because talking about interrogations and dialogue encounters, before you implemented them, led me mistakenly think it will be like in Shadow Watch (i.e. scripted interrogations as non-combat encounters in between combat ones, where dialogue options may lead to different clues and missions). Now seeing it's simulation-strategy approach, of course.
Barbarians don't even influence district parameters, AFAIK, so naturally one would expect some sort of closure later?
Note the capital LOT. It wasn't a lot, it was a LOT. Yup... a LOT of hours in that play.
Was that useful? I HOPE so.
Tbh. your perception of time spend to be "a LOT" may as well be more useful information than exact playtime with nanosecond precision.
Am preliminary thinking that the progress is a bit slow, indeed. Also in comparison to how fast our party is leveling and some enemies are tier 4 equipment or so, yet haven't caught a lieutenant or found a facility...
That said I see no problem overall, seems wheels underneath function well. Naturally, to reach satisfactory balance entails a bit of iterating upon, but I suspect it's easily achievable with a fair number of parameters at disposal Daithi has.
Content is likely the single area with the biggest gap between current and final, so yeah, trying to get a few more in. Have most of images etc, so it's mostly just adding the data. In final, likely 2x as many items as will be in this update.
If I may, would suggest adding primarily items diverse from those already in (opposite are upgrades, for example, eg. two assault rifles we already have). Just thought that content - like missions, perks, allies, items, crafting,..., might actually suit EA. To keep people interested with a new stuff... There is always demand for more items. If you add too much now, could have worse position later? To be clear - just musing aloud, totally clueless here.