Very nice one, man.
From readme of 1.15z:
"
- Fixed Explosives training's erroneous use of ExpLevel value for determining
experience rolls amount instead of correct Explosives one (maybe nice typo).
"

Sounds easy, but you need an optimal route and mine probably wasn't as I remeber having to fight some even on easy, I wouldn't know how to ommit all enemies at higher levels. Also, I used save&load to get explosives from S48, that might have been a bad choice, it's probably better to get it from S24. Finally, I'm pretty sure it requires some amount of swimming and that always depends on your luck.

S48 explosive is trapped, of course its about S24 ones, as you have to swim that way anyway. And of course it overall not reliable, due to swimming, creating explosive and possibly badly placed enemy at S1, but its not that hard to just restart the day. Beside of those it is essentially straghtforward, just boring, with moving on sector edges jumping into other if needed (btw its actually a valid exploit for more "real" game: as merc have to be not farther than 7 tiles to Selected merc, who "initiate" travel to other sector, its possible to teleport slow ones and rest them while moving along an edge. Fast merc move some tiles forward, likely they would still be less than 7, while keeping 5 AP left, then move to other sector, dragging all others that behind with him (of course that sector shouldnt have a possible interrupter near that border), so slow ones not only move ~4 tiles per turn, but also spend no breath on it).

Do you mean ENEMIES cannot miss a point-blank shot? I'm pretty sure my merceneries (bad enough or badly hurt) can miss at point-blank.

No, why? Instead of pressing done, thus starting a new turn with refreshed mercs and spending on it a 5 game mins; you move out of sector and starting a new turn with refreshed mercs and spending on it the same 5 game mins, but with slow mercs already standing on an adjacent to a Selected merc tiles. In "fair" case of pressing done, slow mercs, who would to move "fair" way would lag more and more behind a fast ones, unlike in "edge exploit" (anyway, that exploit is something player commit all the time while moving out of sector (and in ver 1.0 there wasnt even 5AP requirement to travel, it wass a pure cheat there), and its not some really required one, just could be used in case of need of moving far with wounded ones).

No, i mean any merc cannot miss a point-blank shot (not stab), but Enemies use a probability-based calculation in determining of their actions, and could act as if they could miss that shot. I think its needed to make them use knives, as otherwise always-hit shot would outweight knife option most of time (Enemies use a combination of estimated CtH and expected damage outcome to determine that weapon to use, in case of alternatives available to them). If you will have a save with a missing point-blank shot i think i would be easy to fix if it exist. But the way authors tried to make that game to work, they should always hit.

Would there also be any benefit if you moved out of turn-based to realtime and back? For some reason I thought of this this way. Of course you meant turnbased into turnbased, since this appeared as a note to one-day challange.

It may be just my feeling. I always use the least points at point blank for "normal" mercs and it works, but if it was Elio or someone heavily bandaged, I would use max aim anyway, because I THINK I've seen him miss even at point-blank. Now that I think of it, it might have been some other close and obvious shot (like one bush between us). Also, does one square diagonally count as point-blank?
I'll try to use this feature a lot and will let you know if there were any fails. But I don't know what you mean by save with a missing shot, I don't think all shots fired are recorded, are they?

No, not something i could think of as reliably usable, as real-time movement is drastically faster. Could be some marginal save of 5 mins if team will travel just prior next real-time turn will begin, but its not something manageable, unless you play with additional timer. Speaking about real-time movement - there is a game option "Fast Animations": strictly speaking its a cheat, as it increase an actual mercs speed in real-time, without any drawback (im not using it). Speaking about moving exploits - due to chess-ilke movement mechanic, its way faster to move diagonally (this one is obvious ofc, but still).
upd: I checked the travel stuff, and must say its more of exploit than i noticed: due to bug, travels to East, South, and West resulted in additional shift to North, East, and South, respectively, thus speeding moving in those directions. By now im already fixed it, i think.

Yes, point-blank include diagonal ones, and yes, any, even perfectly aimed shot could be missed if its not point-blank. That make knives basically useless as an actual mean to kill enemies, as even good merc could miss aimed stab, while any merc would hit with snap gun shot even from diagonal tile.
While save wouldnt preserve actual missed shot, it would keep the mercs placement, in case it important for a case. Say, for example, shots over building's corners works with some oddities due to isometric warp they have in game. While i never had a point-blank shot missed that way, i could imagine what in so buggy game as this one is it could indeed happen under some special, and unknown for me, circumstances.

Damn, I've always used "Fast Animations" out of impatience, assuming the clock speeds up accordingly. Looks like there is going to be another challange for me after the present game, especially that apparently 1.15z with new fixes is coming. Maybe you would consider the "Fast Animations" case a bug to fix (I don't know if it would be easy or even possible to fix it)?

I'm still using knives anyway in "go ahead" with gear inv - it doesn't use up ammo and trains dexterity (as a rule, a mechanic with an imperfect DEX carries a knife). Those are special situations, of course, when it appears rather safe and I try to use the feature of "attacker unseen by victim". I used to stab tappers just for training, but now I consider this an exploit/cheat, especially since they are healed (re-rolled actually) once you left the sector.
Speaking of knives, am I correct that however their condition (save for the chance of breaking below 50%) does not matter for their use (of any kind) being succesful or not, it does matter for damage done (quite lineary, it appears)?
As for save, I have disabled saves during combat, I hope a screenshot will serve the purpose.

18. From an old Strategy Guide: "anybody can bandage in the field, they just use more bandages."
I did not test it quantitatively, but I feel this might be wrong - the difference appears to be in speed, but not in amount of resources used. That actually makes me (as I play without HEALTHY) refrain from bandaging with someone who would be too good at it, so that I don't "overbandage" (what I mean exactly is I try to aim at CurrentHealth+BandagedHealth=MaxHealth-12).

There is a bug concerning seen enemies in F9 mode.
Hurl, according to the message, sees 2 enemies, only one is shown in F9 mode, both are seen in normal view (screenshots attached). Same goes for map view: one red dot/two red dots.
Noone else has any chance to see any of them.
Maybe that is of some importance: Hurl previously had seen the disappearing one, he had just been hit by him during enemy turn, the other has been spotted during that turn.

EDIT: As I continue playing, there is still something abnormal. "Hurl sees 1 enemy!", but that enemy is only visible in normal view, not in F9 mode, same in map view.

Somewhat related to this: a merc hit by a stun grenade (maybe other grenade, too) sees 1 enemy according to the message, without actually seeing anyone (this is from memory, no screenshots)

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.

Fast Anims
By fix I meant maybe you can speed up the clock by the same amount the movement speeds up. Of course, I can just turn it off an be patient, watching them crawl through a sector (I use slow mercs sometimes).

Knives
I think they really start playing a role with gear inv parameters. Many enemies tend not to die after 2-3 shots, but rather fall to the ground after you used a clip of ammo on them. That is a good occasion to finish them with a knife. And in my present game, I am on the verge of running out of ammo, so knives out!

OK then, next time I will use ALT-X, is quick.sav all you need?

I'm not sure how am I to check it? With my strategy it's 1 to 3 additional days of defending S2. Was the Reserve bigger, it probably would just become more boring, not really harder.