Let me start off by saying that I've been playing this game for more than 10 years now. I remember being 11 years old and getting the demo disc in PC Gamer, and I was caught between pants-wetting terror and pants-crapping wonder at what would soon become my favourite PC game of all time. I've beaten this game as a melee-only character, as a pure Psi user and other types of "challenge runs" as well. As a result, I'm very familiar with the enemies and areas and it's difficult to "put myself in your shoes", so to speak. All the same I'll try to address your criticisms.
1. The Enemies As one of the above commenters pointed out, this is an RPG. This is not Call of Duty. You don't just run around with an assault rifle and "push the button and the mans fall down" (thanks Yahtzee). Different enemies require different strategies. I'm bored, so I'll tell you how to every one I can think of.
The pipe hybrids are nearly defenseless with their slow attack animations and can be melee'd to save ammo. If you have trouble with these guys, go play My Little Pony. The shotgun hybrids are a little tougher and have a ranged attack, so it's best to hide behind a corner and let them run to you, then dash out and melee them. Monkeys should be dealt with in the same way. Avoid engaging them at a distance due to their powerful psionic attacks. Let them come to you, crouch down and one-shot them with the wrench and enjoy your bag of chips. The protocol bots are really best avoided, though when you have a higher agility stat it's not hard to dodge the explosions. Don't waste resources fighting them since they don't drop loot. On Engineering, in the cargo bays, you can lure them under the cargo lifts and then crush them. Not really worth the effort, but pretty funny. If you ever are forced to shoot one, a single armor-piercing round with a high Standard Weapons skill will kill them. The giant robots LOOK murderous, but surprisingly they have no close-range attack so you can simply run up against their faces and melee them over and over. When they're almost dead you can choose to either finish them with the wrench and take some damage from the explosion (viable on easy or normal) or run away and finish them with a bullet (hard/impossible). You can crush these guys under the cargo lifts too. Cyborg midwives can basically be considered shotgun hybrids with boobs. They deal considerably more damage, but you shouldn't take any hits if you deal with them properly. Hide, wait, smash. The spiders are some of the most annoying enemies in the game. Surprisingly durable, they can take several rounds to kill and never drop anything useful which makes them an irritating resource-sink. I usually just kill them with the shotgun as that's the type of ammo I least care about wasting. On Ops, when you're ambushed by 4 of them after inserting the sim chip, just run away. They can't climb ladders. Cyborg assassins are annoying. Their ranged attack is powerful and spammable, and they try to kite you by running away instead of just charging at you. Like anything else, you can stun-lock it if you bash it with the wrench over and over and usually should, but there are a few places in the game where it's better to just pop a few armour-piercing rounds into them. Rumblers are big, slow and dumb. You can usually defeat them in melee without even taking damage just by circle strafing, but later on when you're fighting several at once it's best to use your incendiary grenades or anti-personnel assault rifle rounds. Psi-reavers can just be avoided until you find the brain stem. Eggs and worms are a HUGE pain in the ass. I hate them more than any actual "enemy" in the game. The worms should be wrenched, but you have to have good aim and timing. The eggs? Check them carefully for annelid glanks, then just shoot the ones that are immediately in your way. ALWAYS have a few anti-toxin hypos on-hand in case you fuck up. You can buy them from the replicators on Deck 3, IIRC. Cameras: shoot them. Turrets: either hack the security system, or if you don't take hack, lean out for a moment and make them fire a volley at you, then lean out and shoot them with armour piercing ammo.
That just about covers it, I think. There's a way to deal with every enemy efficiently and safely.
2. The Maps This is part of the immersion of the game. The level design is intentionally claustrophobic and disorienting, and the cold, mechanical environment goes perfectly with the incredibly hostile inhabitants. Indeed, the environment is as hostile as the enemies. I admit it is sometimes easy to get lost, but there is a minimap, a nav. marker system, a compass, audio logs and emails to point you in the right direction. As for the bridge confusion... which type of bridge do you think you're more likely to find on a spaceship? I think the most confusing part is when Delacroix tells you to find her in the "cargo bay". Many players, including me, went back to Engineering and tried to find her there when she actually means the ones on Command.
3. The Weapons Actually, I agree about the weapon degradation. It was a great idea but they break down too damn fast! What's nice, though, is you can edit user.cfg and add the line gun_degrade_rate x.xx where x.xx is anything between 0 and 1.00. Some people like to tone it down about half-way, others just set it to 0, and still others think it's fine the way it is and leave it at 1.
Once you get the hang of the game you'll realize it's not that hard to be very efficient with your resources. I'm surprised you say the game is stingy with hypos of all things. They give them out like candy. I've gotten to the point where I don't use a single med hypo until the Body of the Many, and I usually end the game with thousands of nanites to spare. Just play carefully and methodically and rely on snacks and surgical units for the early game, and annelid healing glands once you find them for the mid game.
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