Also idk what difficulty is the game balanced around? I play on Blackbeard, if there's supposed to a be a strix spawn on the 5th one, then this is irrelevant, at least there would be some challenge to justify the grind.
I always play on Captain Kidd (easiest difficulty) and because of the inherent difficulty of the mod I would suggest that anything more is just you being a daredevil or masochist. Then again I go for 0 fatalities and sometimes 0 injuries per mission as well if it can be avoided. Those self imposed restrictions I suppose do increase the effective difficulty by alot (since frustrating reloads are imposed). Then again I rarely have more than 10 hands per base to avoid the massive salary bonuses, while ive heard of people who've got over 30 including a bunch of slave soldiers.
Its really a matter of picking your poison.
My 2 cents considering recent game experiences:
Siberia Base:
Tornado Rocket Mortar kicks ass! Humanists Supersoldiers are likely to get stunned by the seductress' 'charm'. 80% Thermal Vision is really tough to play around.
Don't rely on smoke cover, hide your units instead.
...
Mansion (Academy):
Novice Robes are a good outfit to 'scan' through walls in all directions. SENSE 3 isn't much but you can spot foes with it quite effectively. TK Projectors are AWESOME to break multiple layers of walls. It's just a bit tricky to fight with the smokescreen caused by the 'explosion'.
Unfortunately ive never made it to having these toys (TK, Tornado) or just never invested in picking them (novice, charm stuff).
I always go in with 8-9 hands all wearing Thief, plus maybe 2 Syns to hunt/kill with.
Ive discovered probably the most effective tactic for mansions is to KILL as many as possible to force the rest into a surrender. Because then you get all the other stuff hidden in the walls that you cant reach or dont have the time for (ahem, nuclear materials).
Your first/last hand always spawns on the roof and use this to your advantage to see where the map blocks have spawned. Unless vertical map block changes have been implemented (I just now realized one reason this feature may have been requested now...) it means that you can predict all the way to elevation 0 where most things will be. Most specifically the Wizard Towers and the Neophyte Shower Rooms (the security map block).
If you're looking for treasure chests you need to look for a 2x2 open courtyard with a garden in it. If its not on the map neither are your treasure chests. Also worth noting that a north balcony room has a bag of cash in it, and there's a gun magazine on the south side.
The Security map block will have big spawn points for mobs on every floor, its an open cieling shower room at the top, then a generator room, then a small bar, and on the ground floor its a kitchen. I send a Syn with a charger laspistol through there to inflict murder and she picks up a bigger weapon like a tommy/shotgun/blackmarch smg when she finds it.
Siberia:
Its meant to be a hard mission that says "nahh, youll need unusual tactics for this one". You should have a plentiful supply of baby nukes gathered from supply ship runs by now, and this is the mission where you want to use them. Its tempting to want to collect as much loot/corpses as possible but on the Surface you're just going to have to destroy. Either that or lots, and lots, and lots of hellerium grenades, and put someone on Mortar duty with plasma mortars.
(tornado rocket mortar does sound ideal for this, but thats a
heck of alot of weight and inventory to carry, it can be handled alot more efficiently with smaller items).
If you can find the humanist leader be careful with him because he's got the briefcase you're after.
Get underground as fast as possible, I suggest using force blades so you can tear the supersoldiers up. Ironically I think the biggest danger is the humanist instructors with nuclear lasers, there always seem to be alot of them down there and they come out of nowhere and rape you. I always seem to spend alot of time performing first aid on my hands in those tunnels.
