Replayed a SH IM campaign up to a point (got bored in June 1999 because I had already done almost everything except the ethereal arc and had a dozen psionics with PST/PSK 95+/95+ to deal with any real threats in any mission), this time with no ironman cheesing at at all (no program restarts). Essentially the same outcome as before.
A few further thoughts how you can streamline SH play - obviously you could instead try additional handicaps to make it more difficult as well:
1 . Capture and train rats, and eventually shadowbats, to act as your recon. Especially with IM, you will want to use smoke and/or darkness and these will be essential and help the game tremendously. Rats are usually no problem at all (eventually you have an overflow of them), but capturing shadowbats can be tricky and you may need to use them only sparingly in the most important missions only, to avoid losing your precious batties by stupid accidents.
2. Go for cover: surfers early (as also advocated by Stone Lake). This opens up the osiron missions which give useful information, very useful early-game weapons and osiron boxes, which with luck give you extremely useful items. The beach business missions can be quite dangerous without dogs, so I usually wait until I have some. Cover: surfers also opens a path to get started on the underwater arc.
3. try to get started with psionics as early as you can. The three early-game ways to get it is sectoid leader (from Gertrud Ellison mission), Dr. Alpha (animal psionics) or capturing normal and then alpha werewolves and werecats (RNG-dependent). In my last two games, animal psionics through Dr. Alpha was the earliest and easiest path (you can get it already after Promo II and the mission is relatively straightforward even if finding the last critters in the maze is always a PITA). Once you start training the psionics (especially hybrid psionics), there is nothing stopping the game. If you don't get lucky with hybrid missions and getting access to hybrid recruitment, this takes some time with humans, so the more time you have the better. Especially after you have obtained Helix Psion, you can MC essentially all the enemies with ease (with multiple PSK/PSK 95+/95+ psionics).
4. Let Dagon build manor(s) and let them be until one develops into tier 2, then deal with them. This ensures you can get early access to EMP which can be very useful down the road.
5. Get started with the underwater arc soon. Abyssal artifact delivery might be the earliest and easiest way to get started first with researching the deep one corprse, then going for alien containment, and finally a capture. Underwater arc provides many useful things.
* Underwater arc will eventually provide you with Power Armors, captured from Gillman Hero, which will turn the game. Repeated Undersea city and Tasoth Factory missions will also diminish you money issues significantly.
* One of the biggest early-game benefits are aqua plastics and plastic aqua-armor, which is very useful also on overground missions (good protections except from bullets). Plastic aqua-suit also gives you 0% damage from choke which allows you to spam gas grenades, TAC+gas, etc. everywhere without damaging your main units. The aqua-suit is also eventually essential for Dimension X.
6. Kill off Black Lotus first (if the RNG is favorable) because it is by far IMO easiest and if you have taken care of other Promo III prerequisites already, the rest will be much smoother after Promo III. The avatar capture is easy from the special mission (only Red Dawn and BL have extra missions to get the commander) and the HQ is easy as long as you have enough dogs and rats. It may be profitable to build your initial base in Asia so that both the root of all evil and BL HQ missions will be within OSPREY range.
7. Get started with the ghost arc as soon as you can (maybe wait until armored vests + shields). This provides you with PSI weapons which are incredibly useful for capturing heavily armored enemies (like MIB heavies and the gillman hero) and stealing their armors. If you kill them you don't get the armor. Manus can be very good for killing enemies when you don't care about the armor anymore.
8. Once you're strong enough (in 1998) research and trigger off MIBs. MIB missions give you lots of loot: lots of tritanium, very good lasers (so you don't need to bother with alien laser junk; also useful in ghost missions) and in stealth bomber phase you can capture the heavies (using EMP or ghost arc weapons) and obtain their power suits.
9. For the same reason as 3, you should start the hybrid path as early as you can, like in early 1998, (to get access to hybrid recruitment and thus strong psionics). I have always gotten hybrid missions started by capturing the hybrid envoy from Red Dawn HQ but you can get there through Exalt HQ brainer as well. Nowaways you could probably get lucky through Den of Villainy missions as well (requiring basics from the Cult of Apocalypse).
