Yeah, getting my party almost wiped out within two turns of engaging a handuful of Muttons and a single of those mechanized units that shot only once and then made itself scarce was an obvious enough message. It got reinforced some time later when I shot down a large lander with muttons and while I managed to take them down, I traded casualties one for one with them and almost all survivors ended up in the hospital for 20+ days. That was with some heavy saving and loading too. At least the synthsuits I got out of that mess made the rookies somewhat useful as something more than cannon fodder.
Ironically, on the strategic layer I'm doing great the last couple of months - 5K and 8K scores, primary from shooting down UFOs with the Thunderstorms. I got a bit of research too after successfully assaulting a reptiloid village, though bringing down the dragon turret was pain - ten turns of focused fire and lobing AT RPGs at it. Still at this rate I'm at a loss what I need to capture/interrogate in order to unlock research of alien weapons and better protective armour than the cyberarmour. While the synthsuits are neat, people in them tend to get one-shotted by muttons even more often than those wearing the cybearmour.
On the tactical level, there are issues. Right now I have two types of missions spawning. First, those that are walk in the park with cybearmours with people getting wounded only due to critical hits. Second - those against tougher alliens where without saving and loading like a champion my veterans suffer unsustainable casualties. There are a few mission types that are kinda in the middle ground - sectoids and floaters primary, where the enemy is dangerous however perfectly manageable as long as I'm paying attention.
Underwater missions deserve a special attention - bringing anything but veterans, even as expendable cannon fodder to reveal the enemies seems pointless because those simply don't have the TUs to do so before being shot by aliens out of sight. At best I'm losing couple of my best people each time I try to assault one of their lured ships and the only bright point was that I finally got enough salvage to build that Ironfist or something heavy transport. On the downside, I'm not getting more than couple of plastics per mission and after all my underwater adventures I just got enough for second plastic swimsuit. Is that intentional or am I just unlucky?
On a more positive note, I finally got enough floater corpses to recover grav modules and built my first hovertanks. Its debute was neat - they seem to make excellent damage sponges at least against floaters, which were the first UFO I shot after said tank was operational.
