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[Sordid]

Well you do get a nasty accuracy penalty for dual wielding. Which, admittedly, you can get rid of with the ambidextrous perk, but why waste it on that when you can get something more useful, like night ops or stealth?

[Sowelu]

I can't BELIEVE how hard I'm failing at this game.

I'm really realizing that fewer mercs with better weapons is REALLY important, especially if you want to have a freaking chance in daytime missions.  Long range rifles ASAP, and if that means you only get two of your mercs from AIM and just worry about decking them out with great stuff, well, so be it.

My twin-silenced-Micro-Uzis doctor is still a total badass in close quarters, seriously, under ten tiles he is THE best member of my team...but, well, when we're getting peppered from thirty tiles and only two team members have any weapon with a range over 19 tiles, life starts to really suck.  I've got all this shiny AET ammo, but I tend to soak up around ten damage a round, and it takes two rounds to kill a guy in a wide-open field.  I guess the solution is "run away more often"...

What I don't get is, why is this game so hard?  I mean, I know I could play a lot more patient, stay way out of range using binocs, mine the hell out of things, take the helicopter into action as soon as night falls and then evac as soon as we get hurt or daylight comes.  But seriously!  I'm playing on the easiest difficulty level, playing on Tons of Guns, enemies drop all gear.  By all rights, the easy difficulty level in a game SHOULD be a lot easier than this, because I'm not in college any more and I'd like to have a chance by the time I've restarted two or three times D:

I know, I know, I can just modify the settings to tune down the difficulty...  I think I might have to do that.

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

Are you playing the original version?  I know there was a re-released version that made the game way harder.

[Sordid]

Well gosh, of course you're going to get massacred if you charge over an open field during daytime. The way to win daylight missions is to not do them. Get NVGs, camo, and silencers, and move in at night.

[woose1]

Er... why are you guys using so many people?

My build:
Lynx (AIM)
Custom merc with:
85 in marksmanship, agility, strength
75 in health
70 in dexterity
50 (Or about) in leadership
0 in medical, mechanical, and explosive

And I pour the rest of the points into whatever I think I need.

Take over Drassen, train militia like crazy, head over to Chitzena, do the same, then wait for a bit, order better mercs, weapons, etc. You should never have more than 6 people on a team at once. And I know this has already been said, but, ATTACK AT NIGHT! DO NOT ENGAGE OUTSIDE OF CITIES! SERIOUSLY GUYS!

Many people seem to think that there's a time limit, or such. There isn't. Wait for your mines to make enough money so that you can afford the absolute best equipment.

EDIT: Looking back over the stats, I think Danny can be a suitable substitute for Lynx. Not only does he/she-thing have the best HP and agility in the game, but it also has a high wisdom, which means it can train up that only above average marksmanship skill up quick.

[Granite26]

What's the alertness stat?

[woose1]

Huh?

[Granite26]

What determines when or if you see bad guys in the dark, stat wise

[Sordid]

0 in medical, mechanical, and explosive

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong! Don't put 0 in any stat, because that means you will never be able to improve that stat. And improving stats, incidentally, raises your level. You can make one or two levels just by standing around dis/arming a mine to grind your explosives skill.
Also, it's a good idea to put 85 into wisdom for quick leveling.

As for mercs, I never hire any that I need to pay money for. Seriously, the guys you can pick up around Arulco are more than enough, especially Ira due to her high wisdom, allowing her to quickly become an elite sharpshooter.

What determines when or if you see bad guys in the dark, stat wise

Character level. Mercs with the Night Ops skill have an addition +1 per character level, +2 if they have the expert version (ie. don't 'multiclass' to another perk as well).

[woose1]

0 in medical, mechanical, and explosive

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong! Don't put 0 in any stat, because that means you will never be able to improve that stat. And improving stats, incidentally, raises your level. You can make one or two levels just by standing around dis/arming a mine to grind your explosives skill.
Also, it's a good idea to put 85 into wisdom for quick leveling.

I always hire people to do that job for me. :/ Medical isn't all that usefull if you aren't planning to get hit. (IE: Attack at night) Mechanical isn't needed in the early game, and explosive isn't needed until very late in the game. Those skill points, I find, are always better put into wisdom or marksmanship.

[Sordid]

Yes those skills are worthless, but the level ups that you can get by training them aren't.
Marksmansnip is completely worthless, you can leave it at 35. With the crappy early guns you're not going to be hitting anything even at medium ranges anyway. I mean, shooting is what you do in the game, it's the most used skill and as such it's the easiest to train (case in point, again, Ira).

[woose1]

Really? Leave marksmanship at 35? I don't know how soon you're getting rifles, but as soon as I conquer Drassen, I order a shipment of them ASAP.

[Sordid]

I usually start out with SMGs, MP7 preferably. By the time you secure Drassen and the SAM site your marksmanship will have gone up considerably, since the lower a skill is the easier it is to raise.

[Sowelu]

Last game, I hit Chitzena then Drassen, and then my Chitzena mine died out within, like, a week.  That was disappointing.  I've never managed to take more mines than those two (San Mona clearly doesn't count), they tended to beat me down.  What happens when my Drassen mine dries up?  This game I was going to hit Drassen and then the army base, hoping to catch the bad guys with their pants down, but it seems that it is I who have been pantsed.

My current lineup is:  Danny (amazing stats, ambidextrous, doctor), Thor (good stats, good leadership, stealthy, doctor), IMP (leadership heavy, night ops expert), Ira, and Dimitri.  I -want- to get Raven really, really bad; she has amazing marksmanship, night ops and auto weapons.  When I ended up getting her, she was my single best operative by far, but we still got owned...so maybe I will go sit on my mine for a bit instead.

0 in medical, mechanical, and explosive

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong! Don't put 0 in any stat, because that means you will never be able to improve that stat. And improving stats, incidentally, raises your level. You can make one or two levels just by standing around dis/arming a mine to grind your explosives skill.

Huh!  Interesting.  This page disagrees with you, and it's what I've been going from.  Me, my personal way to gain experience levels has been taking off and putting on binoculars...I swear my IMP has gained at least two levels just from looking at people with binocs...I don't know if it's actually scummable or if I'm just lucky, but, there you go.

Are you sure that raising explosives raises your experience level?  Because I haven't seen stat gains improve my exp. level before on anything else, though I have never really used explosives...  I typically give my IMP 0 in mechanical and explosives, and 35 in medical--everyone should know how to bandage.

Wait, no, I was just confused.  You're right, each advancement point you gain in a skill can give you an experience level advancement point--except for training, that doesn't do it at all.  Furthermore, it IS based on skill advancement and not just practice--clearly it's harder to advance from marksmanship 99 to 100 than it is from 35 to 36, but you'll get the same number of Experience Level activity points along the way.  So yeah, starting off with LOW skills is going to make your Experience Level raise a lot faster.

Spoiler: Advancement mechanics (click to show/hide)

Okay.  Fun facts.  Someone with 100 wisdom will gain skills twice as fast as someone with 50 wisdom, someone with 0 wisdom won't gain them at all.  Chance to gain a skill point is based on distance from max--IE, someone with a 35 Marksmanship will gain points 65% of the time, someone with a 95 marksmanship will gain points 5% of the time.  For marksmanship, shooting someone gives 3 marksmanship training points.  If it's a hit, then additional +3, +(chance to miss/10), +(APs spent on aiming up to chance to miss/10).  *2/3 if you are dual wielding (but remember you get two shots), *1/2 if shooting at a crow (or nothing if you shoot at inanimate objects).  So if you spend three APs aiming and you hit someone with 70% chance to miss, you get 3+3+3+7=16 points (multiplied by your chance to actually get points based on current skill).  You need 25 advancement points to raise a skill (not attribute or exp level).  Your merc with marksmanship 35?  If he makes three shots like that, he's pretty much sure to gain a point of marksmanship.  Your merc with marksmanship 90 on the other hand will need 16 shots like that.  I should make a graph.  Oh yeah...and a level 1 guy would need to boost his skills by 14 levels in order to gain an experience level out of it if he did nothing else, which should discourage you from trying to get levels that way because it's just a silly amount of points.  A level 2 guy, more like 30 levels, and it gets way worse from there.

Oh yeah.  Question.  Is there a good way to make sure you don't get interrupted in a really, really close situation?  I'm pretty sure the answer is either "Grenades" or "Glow stick + sniper way off to the side", but I CONSTANTLY get into situations where I'm on the left side of a gatehouse, there's a guy with an SMG on the other side, we're both right up against the building--and as soon as I pop my head around the corner, I get pumped with all his action points for >100 damage.  It sure would be nice if I could get the first shot, but I guess that's why you need actual tactics...

[Sordid]

Oh yeah.  Question.  Is there a good way to make sure you don't get interrupted in a really, really close situation?  I'm pretty sure the answer is either "Grenades" or "Glow stick + sniper way off to the side", but I CONSTANTLY get into situations where I'm on the left side of a gatehouse, there's a guy with an SMG on the other side, we're both right up against the building--and as soon as I pop my head around the corner, I get pumped with all his action points for >100 damage.  It sure would be nice if I could get the first shot, but I guess that's why you need actual tactics...

Distractions work very well. Simply shoot at the guy from another direction, preferably from far away (even if the shooter can't see him, just shoot at the place you know he's at). He'll turn to face the new threat, then your nearby merc can sneak up on him from behind.

Another fine tactic is to entrench yourself in a room with only one exit - enemies tend to gather on the other side of the door, where you can then take them out all at once.