• Terminal feels utterly mandatory early game on impossible. Her heal dramatically extends your squad's operating time, she can get rid of a lot of annoying status ailments, and if the worst happens she can stabilize people at range rather than having to waste a person's turn hoofing it over. The increased HP relative to damage dealt and the interleaved turns making alpha striking all opponents to death before they shoot impossible means that healing is a lot more valuable.
• MVP so far is Zephyr. Despite not having a gun, it turns out that 100% accurate punches that hurt like gunshots and also apply random horribly debilitating status effects are really powerful. As she promotes she gets absolutely silly - she picks up the Templar's parry from XCOM2 almost instantly, and her second promotion gives her more melee damage and also makes all of her punches nonlethal, meaning that she hands out naps like it's going out of style.
• Verge is a high priority pickup if you're fighting Grey Phoenix, since Mutons and Vipers have bad will so he can clown on them easily.
• Axiom raging out is frequently more of a benefit than it is a penalty given that when it triggers it instantly gives him a turn, so just hype him up at every opportunity unless you're getting ready to evac.
• Claymore sucks horribly out of the gate, though I haven't had a chance to level him yet to see if his skills compensate. Super slow movement plus shotgun is not a good look, and the frag grenade is difficult to use unless you plan to shoot it immediately, which in turn takes his entire turn.
• Torque can stack a million dodge very easily, so I have her geared to go punch things a lot with a stock. Tongue grab also has tons of utility, both offensively and defensively. Bind is sometimes useful in small encounters.

• All items are free actions, which means they are insanely powerful. Never, ever take the field without using as many utility items as you can afford, because a ceasefire grenade or a flashbang can turn an entire turn in your favor without even taking an action to do so.
• I'm still getting a grasp on the economy, but field team spam seems nearly as vital as satellite spam from XCOM1. You have zero natural income without field teams, and your ability to control unrest heavily depends on having field teams spread around liberally.
• The power of field teams means that intel seems to take a big priority early on with regard to resource selection. Elerium is only used for research so you don't need a big shitpile of it early on when you can't afford an agent to speed research along. Credits move into a dominant spot once your field teams are established, because items are so powerful in this one and you also need to spend tons of credits to implement a lot of research projects(for example, finishing enhanced armor research means you have to spend 200 credits to actually get the upgrade).

Captain Gordon fucked around with this message at 20:59 on Apr 24, 2020