I’ve noticed no relationship between start point and soldiers you get.
Balance your loadout to do what you need to do. Need to capture some plasma toys? Get the arc throwers. Need to kill quickly (like to stop a terror mission)? Get aim bonuses. Need to outlast lots of enemies? Grab vests and medkits. Not sure? Focus on everyone’s specialties.
Don’t overlook grenades, honestly. I tended to look down on them for a while, because the damage they do isn’t particularly good, but:
A) You can use them to destroy cover, which means that other shots are far more likely to go home
B) They don’t miss. Ever. If you’ve got something that NEEDS to die, you have a 100% guaranteed 3 (or 5 if you have an alien grenade) points of damage to it.
C) Low damage is sometimes an advantage, namely if you’re trying to capture something. A grenade on a thin man or a floater puts it right in that “easy to stun” sweet spot of HP.
I’m still up in the air on vests, and if you’re playing on classic, medkits are actually sortof a bad play on anyone except a support character who can carry 3. SCOPE for snipers only, pretty much of the time, but they’re brutal for that.
Another beginner question: When I want to use a grenade or rocket, the mouse gets hyper-touchy and hard to aim. Why is that? Just change mouse sensativity?
Probably part bug and part on-the-fly-line-of-sight calculation. =/
Well, I’ve clearly arrived at this party late, but I’ve recently started playing this and boy am I hooked. The tactics of combat are great, and whenever I think I’ve got the measure of the game, it throws me a curve ball.
As a noob, I’ve nothing to add to the tactics discussions. Except that I’ve colour-coded my soldiers’ armour by roles (and there are more roles than the 4 classes). Anyone else do that?
For those folks playing on 360, how are the controls/gameplay?
In my experience, easier to use than mouse/keyboard (I’m playing on PC, but with a gamepad), mostly because you don’t need to keep clicking ‘OK’ after every action.
The camera’s a bit iffy, but it’s that way on PC as well.
In regard to colour-coding, I tried to do that but most of the maps are pretty dim and tend to wash out the colour. Fortunately, six team members aren’t a lot to keep track of.
I’m generally satisfied with the 360 setup. Some lagging on alien activity, but can’t tell if it’s 360 specific or just part of the overall game.
Also, you can download the 360 demo if you have xbox live.
Two minor control annoyances that frankly should have been caught with any decent playtesting on a non-pc (mini-rant as follows):
-You can’t “bumper over” between soldiers when you’re outfitting them for a mission. You have to exit one soldier’s screen then manually select and go into the other’s. It basically makes a half second task take two or three and has to be done for each soldier in the squad. (note: you can bump between in the barracks, but not on the mission equip) I abhor such menu inefficiency. If Final Fanatsy III could get it right back in the 90’s on SNES, why is this stuff still an issue?
-When you’re in shooting mode, you can’t “bumper over” between you’re abilities, you have to use the 360 arrow pad which is very cumbersome compared to just using the bumpers or thumbsticks. There are so many more accessible buttons on the 360 than the arrow pad, you shouldn’t have to move your hand off the thumbsticks.
Once you get used to the control quirks though, it’s a great console game. Highly recommend it if you’re not sure your PC can handle it (mine couldn’t run the demo).
I started to do that, but eventually I dropped the idea.
The action icons when the character is selected work just as well, for me.
I named my squad with the names Col. Trautman calls out over the radio to Rambo:
"Company leader to identify Baker Team - Rambo, Messner, Ortega, Coletta, Jurgensen, Berry, Krakauer confirm!
…
Talk to me, Johnny."
Rambo ended end getting medic skills in my current squad.
This has no tactical or informational merit, so feel free to ignore it. That said: Mutons are all bastards. All of them. Hate hate hate. “Ha ha, I blew up the car where your medic was healing your sniper. I am huge jerk.”
Are Mutons the only ones who throw grenades?
If so, they suck.
Mutons and elite mutons, yes. 
Though I think Cyberdisks have an AoE attack as well. (in fact, I don’t think they have a single target attack)
Don’t the Floaters throw 'nades as well?
Always.
Red = Close assault
White = Sniper
Yellow = Heavy weapon
Blue = Armed with stunner
Purple = Armed with medipak
Grey = Rookie without a specialty
What do I need before I take on the alien base? I got a team wipe last time, so I’m thinking hold off for better armor.
Well, just as I was getting hooked on this game, a game-breaking bug means I have to go back to a save from a few hours ago.
Got to say, I’m not impressed with 2K’s handling of this: by all accounts they’ve rushed the game out with several game-breaking bugs, and then don’t respond to the support requests, so I have no idea when or if they will fix the bug that I’ve seen.
FYI bug is all soldiers “on mission”.
Not that I ever noticed, no. Floaters are AWFULLY early game to have grenades.
Alien Base isn’t REALLY very difficult. Aliens come in fairly discreet chunks and a cautious approach means you’re not dealing with very many at once. I did it first playthrough on Normal with Carapace armor and ballistic weapons.
Mijin yes, bugs suck and I could do with faster fixing, but REALLY? You went “a few hours” without saving? 
No; I tried to persevere with just 3 soldiers and then rookies for a while, hoping the game would eventually realize and I’d get the rest of my guys back. Just doing a couple of missions like that took ages.
But, luckily, I wasn’t playing ironman, so I could now just go to the first working save which is probably not losing very much real game time (20-30 mins).
I’m not going to do this though. The game of “Let’s do a mission, then see if the game broke and I need to do it again” is not one I want to play.
I… think I might be fucked.
I’m on my second file (abandoned my first because I had no idea what I was doing and screwed up panic levels), I think I may be a little too slow. I’m fighting mutons and have yet to build the containment chamber. What did I waste my time on? Carapace armor. Literally the only thing I’ve researched was carapace armor, its prereqs, and the arc thrower.
Don’t get me wrong, I took down a group of three mutons with basic armor and weapons without losing a guy, but a battle just broke out between four Mutons, three Thin Men (flanking my sniper no less) and three Sectoids. I have 6 guys, but they’re all in basic gear.
Oops.
First I tried a save where I did all of the priority research/engineering ASAP, but then I found the story arc rapidly meant I was facing guys with three energy bars while I still had the same guns you start with.
Then I tried ignoring priority research, but that seemed to mean the alien ships upgrading very fast and panic levels getting out of control (even though I was doing all the ground missions no probs).
So now…I’m playing on Easy. This is the first time I can recall needing or wanting to drop a game’s difficulty from its default.