One-handed use is the best thing about them, but pistols also give a reaction bonus, significantly increasing the shooter’s chance of getting interrupt fire on the enemy’s turn.
Medikits aren’t hugely useful until you get improved armor, so that your guys can actually take a hit on a regular basis. Still, they’re cheap and light enough that everyone can have one on their belt, just in case.
The UFOExtender fan patch adds this, and it is the best thing ever.
I agree with firing the bad soldiers, but I generally limited firing to bravery. Less than 30 bravery, and they were sent packing. I’m fairly sure of that metric. Later, low psi defense was also screened out unless there was a very good reason to keep them. If a character didn’t qualify for an r, h, or g, they are also fired.
I think (but I’m not sure) that weight is determined by the number of spaces an item takes up. IIRC, a rifle is 4x1, but a pistol is 2x1. If a solider carries too much weight, they start each round with a fraction of their normal time units. Stronger soldiers can carry more weight. Giving an auto cannon (4x2) with three extra clips(2x1 each) to a character with 20 strength will leave him able to stumble only a couple spaces each turn, but somebody with 80 strength can easily add a stun rod. Other than starting with reduced TU, there is no penalty for carrying too much.
Pistols are standard equipment for my grenadiers. Rifles and heavy weapons take an accuracy hit if you’re carrying an item in the other hand, and my grenadiers carry primed grenades at all times. (Which reminds me, you should be having your grenadiers prime their grenades for contact detonation (0 turns) in the first turn each fight.) I don’t give my heavies pistols. If there’s a wall to take down, I make sure it’s down with authority! If I need to put a rocket through a small gap, it’s not a shot I want to take.
Dammit, I need to play this game again.
First thing’s first- whether it’s UFO Defense or Enemy Unknown, the original game had a hyphen: it was X-com (I’m not being picky here; it’ll help avoid a lot of confusion). That said, with regards to what others have said above:
-don’t worry about low bravery; it’s a self-correcting problem. Statistics improve organically in this game; if you want better accuracy, shoot a lot, if you want better bravery, make more bravery checks by getting shot and/or having your friends killed.
-don’t ignore lasers. They’re cheap, light, take no elerium, fast to research, can be sold for cash if you need to, and the rifles can (sometimes) fire three auto shots per turn. Also, sectopods.
-I’m not sure what you mean by “normal” difficulty, but if you’re running an unpatched version, you’re playing on beginner. An unfortunate bug.
-Having a grenade proceed a soldier into every room is a great way to destroy valuable equipment and/or civilians. Don’t do it unless you know there’s nothing you need in there.
-Research is what drives the game. Don’t neglect it.
-Have fun. Or else.
A resource you’ll find invaluable (if a bit spoilery, but if you’re on a second playthrough, you’re probably okay) is http://www.ufopaedia.org/
That was my attitude. But I found strength was slow and/or annoying enough to improve that it was worth my while to screen for it.
On second thought, I was confused. I gave pistols to my stun bomb launcher troops, not rocket launcher/blaster bomb troops. They’d have a stun bomb launcher in one hand and a laser pistol in the other hand. And you can’t blast through a wall with stun bombs.
(1) Fire your soldiers that are bad. I usually take about half of the recruits I get. Low bravery is an instant cut. Then I divide them into shooters, heavies, and scouts. Shooters have high aim, heavies high strength, and scouts are my worst soldiers.
(2) Use rockets to blow buildings up. The way to clear a building isn’t to send a rifleman in. The way is to blow up a wall and then fire a rocket in.
(3) High explosives can be used for (2)
(4) Keep your soldiers in teams of 3 or 4
(5) I usually go with laser rifles as well. Plasma weapons are useful to sell, and I never have enough elerium or clips to kit out my guys.
(6) Armor is very important. I can’t remember the name, but you want the 2nd best stuff. It’s hte best performance/price point.
(7) Keep an interceptor that doesn’t use elerium for weapons or fuel to take down small stuff.
Damn you guys! 
Because of this topic, I’m playing XCOM again. I bought it over the summer but didn’t get around to it until this topic rekindled my love of that game. However, I have a confession: I really suck at this game because I never learned how to play it properly.
A decade or so ago when I last played this, I had a cheat file that basically gave me infinite money. I would never worry about managing resources because I had pretty much unlimited resources. I started each game with multiple bases around the world filled to the brim with stuff. I had hundreds of scientists and engineers working full time all the time and covered the globe with my fleet of warships.
So I tried to play this game the last week. Each month, I lost funding. By March, the UK signed a pact with the aliens. By June, I lost Brazil and most countries were pissed at me. My monthly funding dwindled down to $2 million while my 100 scientists cost me $3 million per month. I had to restart.
So now I’m going through a fresh playthrough and taking all of the stuff people have said to heart. But what I want to know is, what is a good balance of scientists to have? 100 at the start is enormous, but 10 is too little.
Also, I start out building a 2nd base so that I won’t lose Europe, though that probably won’t be up and running with interceptors until the 2nd month. I tried to locate my bases at an antipode position, but the antipode from Los Angeles is in the middle of the Indian Ocean near Australia, so I relocated it to Ankara, Turkey instead to protect my European funding sources. I’m thinking of locating a 3rd base when I get to it somewhere in Antactica, and a 4th at the North Pole if I get that far. How many bases is a good amount?
During my 2nd playthrough, so far I’m not even into February yet and I’m a bit stuck on an alien terror mission in Havana where Sectoids are taking over my brain. I have no defenses against that. What can I do to beat them? Also, the part about using expendable soldiers is not an option with me. I save and reload if any of my guys get killed, so I have the same crew from beginning to end. That’s at least one style of playing that can carry over from a decade ago.
For classic X-Com, you want to build up your scientists gradually - 25 is a fine number starting out, and a lot of the early discoveries are easy. As you get more funds (and more revenue from selling unneeded alien junk) expand the number. I think 100 is probably a good END game number.
I usually end up with 3-4 bases - only two have Skyrangers and are equipped for recovery, research, and manufacturing. The others are radar-and-interceptor stations, and don’t have more than four soldiers with decent gear to at least make a token effort at defense if discovered.
Resist the temptation to put bases in the Arctic or the Antarctic. You don’t get funds from them.
Mind control is tricky to defeat. Especially early game. Remember the rules : If any alien can see one of your guys, then the psionic alien can target that guy. The psionic alien can try several times per turn to gain control, so it will happen sometimes. If your guy gets controlled and you don’t have a way to stun him, just make sure your other guys stay away from him - the alien will have to use time units each turn to maintain the hold, so it’s impossible for him to control your entire squad at once. Eventually, one of your guys will get close enough to put a bullet in him.
Wrooooong !
The way to offset rookies accuracy is indeed the laser rifle (or better yet, the laser pistol - cheaper, lighter, fires faster, still enough oomph to one shot a sectoid or floater), but not for that reason: it has infinite ammo, and no reloads. Six words: all full auto, all the time.
While each individual full auto shot has terrible accuracy, you can squeeze out 6/9 of them per turn. If they’re say 15% to hit each (which is what the average rook shoots full auto at), that’s at little over one hit per turn on average.
By comparison, aimed shots might have say 65% accuracy (which is actually kinda high already, if we’re talking rooks), so you’d also get one hit on average… but statistics are more accurate over large numbers (i.e. more shots means lower standard deviation). Sometimes statistical aberrations will even go your way and you might hit that 15% three times in one turn. OTOH, at best you’re getting 2 aimed hits.
Plus, all that firepower missing the thing you’re aiming at is still landing somewhere. Might hit another alien, or inconvenient scenery (revealing more targets), or blow some stuff up. Or, admittedly, hit one of your dudes in the back. Who cares, if they’re forward it means they’re just another rookie with a laspistol 
And if the mission involves Chrysalids, they’re carrying that grenade in their hands at all times, already primed. Take the bastards with you.
I agree with this (I think I usually started with around 20 scientists), and I would add one more point (that others might disagree with) – don’t worry too much about funding from XCOM countries. After the first part of the game, the money you get from them pales in comparison to the money you can make crafting laser cannons and selling alien junk.
If you’re really having problem with an alien terror mission, for instance, just skip it! I think I usually ended up skipping at least half of all terror missions, and I’d skip 100% of all terror missions that happened at night. That never stopped me from completing the game.
Well I’ve managed to beat that stupid terror mission. The good thing is that the Sectoid was merely berzerking one squad member over and over, and so I was able to dodge the fire. I didn’t expect to have to fight one of those floating alien discs this early though, so that took more than a few hits (I only have rifles right now). Luckily, laser pistols just finished manufacturing, so the next mission will be easier.
I’ve never skipped night missions, apparently that’s a normal thing with you guys. Those are fun!
Question: I know in Terror from the Deep, I can stand in front of a door, face it, then right click the square behind the door to open it without walking through. Is there a way to simply open and close doors without moving through them in UFO Defense?
How close do you have to get to a proximity grenade to detonate it? I think I threw one at the feet of an alien but he was able to move away without it blowing up. Later I ran past it from 2 squares away and it didn’t even do anything!
How much protection do I get from smoke grenades? I’ve tossed it at an alien before (accidentally), but it blew up and I could still see it. I was under the impression that it created a sort of artificial wall that you can’t look through
Does anyone know if soldiers of yours suffer falling damage? If I run off a 3 floor roof and land on the ground, is there damage to any of my guys?
I believe there is not. And it makes a great shortcut.
Definitely no falling damage. It’s a “feature”.
Just me, probably. I try to look at the big picture. “Sure, I’m deliberately letting aliens terrorize you now, but you’ll thank me later when I take out Cydonia!”
One more question. I’m at September and I know that I’ve not played this as efficiently as I can (I’m just now researching the Avenger and everyone has laser rifles). I’ve got about a month or two to go before I can blow up everything in the sky. If I simply shoot down an alien vessel and not plunder the crash site, will that be bad for the countries the craft lands in? I’m sick of landing missions, I just want my research to hurry up and finish so I can move on but like every other day there’s a craft somewhere I have to chase. If I can ignore crashed sites without the country making a pact with the aliens, I’d rather do that because I have more than enough money right now.
Nope, I believe blowing the UFOs out of the sky is enough as far as PR is concerned.
Actually, apparently I lied, per this article. Basically your rating at the end of the month depends on how many points you scored, and while shooting down UFOs gives you points completing the landing missions gives you even more (a lot more depending on how well you’re doing). But shooting down the UFOs is enough to prevent them from accomplishing their missions (be it abduction, terror, base building, pact making etc…) and that’s what gives you the big negative points. So I only half lied, I suppose.
Is there a way to force a reaction shot using Auto and not Snap? I’m in October now and most of the aliens are Mutons. One shot doesn’t kill them usually.
Are you not using automatic weapons? Usually a couple of hits from a laser rifle (or maybe 3 from a laser pistol) is enough, I think.