I completed a terror mission at night with only 10 soldiers against 5 cyberdiscs and a smattering of sectoids, and not only did I not lose anyone I even managed to save enough civilians to get a positive score. It took a while but I think I'm finally starting to get the hang of XCOM Classic.
Having researched and made personal armor and laser weapons for everyone also definitely helps...
Yeah, sounds like you've got the research you need to proceed. I mostly played TFTD (and poorly), but I remember flying armor was great in the original.
In X-com Piratez, I took out my first base successfully, and brought almost all of the hostages back alive (making me stupid amounts of money). The prize was the Academy Provost, who got double-teamed by my bugeyes. I also got my first gauss weapons that way, so I'm on my way to unlocking end-game tech.
Update on that: I got the very large ship, missed the medium ship, left the site of a large ship with the Shadowbat when I noticed I didn't have the right weapons in it, and got 2-3 large ships with the Fortuna. I brought back enough hostages to catch up on guild tech and have slaves left over (and steal power armor parts from the bodyguards).
The landed ships have a lot of people. The last ship I hit had 18 outside, including 2 bodyguards in power armor. One Bodyguard took a reticulan plasma crit to the back, killing him. A marsec operator got mind controlled through bugeye teamwork, chucked a hellerium grenade into a crowd of 4 (1 died, 2 wounded and eventually healed, 1 injured but standing), then got deleted with a gauss reaction shot by one of his teammates. I got two knocked out, and 4-5 were prevented from shooting effectively by gals getting into melee. I took 1 wounded gal that round (ended up with half of them in medical by the end of the mission), but 2 more guards were shot by their friends and got patched back up. Down to 9 opponents from 18 on the first round. The other bodyguard was a live capture, but only surrendered after everyone else was down. Most of the other ships were indoor fighting, so I could use doors to my advantage.
I love the mechanic that you can make a reaction check to prevent someone next to you from shooting the correct direction. Although it takes energy, and chainmail means I'm running low on that (and atom beers) by the end of a mission.