The first Pandoran base appeared as a Nest as normal, but upgraded to a lair within a very short time.
My team still only consists of Level 2 - 4 soldiers.
The lair, populated by Multiple Sirens, and a Plasma Bomb Chiron decimated my team, that ended up missing several limbs, after each plasma volley, despite taking as much cover as possible, which became increasing hard as the terrain was destroyed. With no pistol skills on my Assaults and Heavy they quickly became combat ineffective. NO FUN.
I am only on Veteran difficulty, and having completed XCOM 1+2 multiple times I do have some experience with this type of game.
But this is ridiculous, I want to have a fun relaxing game, otherwise I would have chosen Legend (Ironman) difficulty.
In the games current state the Lairs are pure concentrated frustration, I often leave the PC frustrated and pissed off, that is not how a game normally effects me, or how it should be. I am not a hardcore gamer by any measure, I just want to have fun, and that is not happening in PP at the moment. And you doubled the Sawnery hitpoints ??? I cant even get to the Spawnery with my current team against those enemies.
I previous game I have had a Phoenix Base attack, where the attackers were 80% Sirens (Six I think), and my team were scattered all over the base. That was not easy.
The population of mission maps with random enemies, make for an overall difficulty level that is out of control.