Piratez would be better if there was a "doesn't hate players" fork, but it's otherwise pretty good if you're willing to do melee.
X-com Files seems more difficult entirely based on enemies being better than you (for a good portion of the game, anyway).
I'm getting what you mean... Got lucky on a couple early missions, then had two in a row that devastated my game.
Hopped out of the van, first guy swivels to look around - don't see anything - take a single step forward, shot at from 7 different directions, kills all 4 agents since missed shots hit the other guys. Everyone dies in one shot.
No problem. We can bounce back. Order a few more recruits - Crop Circles in Brazil - should be easy. Send a car with two agents (last vehicle and last recruits). A zombie or something is there and a farmer down the road. Approach slowly, unload tazers into zombie, doesn't go down, on its turn, walks forward, kills one agent, walks forward, kills the other agent. Cool. Cool.
Christ, I want to like this game but boy it feels like it doesn't want me to play it.
In comparison, X-Piratez has, in my opinion, a much easier start: Your starting units can basically go toe-to-toe with any other baseline unit and win. The problem is that your units are vastly more costly than theirs later on (since they're yours, duh), and they have enough variety that it becomes unfeasible to properly gear yourself for every encounter... and it gets worse because misinformation is an active thing.
One of my worst missions was what was supposed to be a milk run... two baseline soldiers and a civvie, so I take a training team. Once I land and get across the map to the main area, I learn that the place already got attacked by zombies, so instead of a bunch of nobodies, I'm away from my ship, team scattered in a long trail, and fighting against an opponent my real combat team would be evenly matched against.
Also, as I recall, zombies are practically impossible
to knock unconscious with conventional means (okay, kind of hyperbolic...) in both XCF and XP, so I wouldn't fuss about it early on.
Edit: I think I was mixing up the ability to knock them out (which is still kind of annoying, based on some of their unique qualities) and how hard it is to keep an entire map of them disabled at the same time if you're aiming for 100% capture.