I also prefer Squad Sight myself. Find a really nice spot with a good line of fire to as much of the map as possible, and your sniper can be the squad's Guardian Angel for all intents and purposes. The Opportunist ability is particularly nice in conjunction with Squadsight, since it improves your Overwatch.

Also I must concur with Grey Wolf's points. I did have a couple vets left over in the barracks, but losing an entire squad of veteran troopers who you've put a lot of time and love into *hurts* - make sure there's a rookie or squaddie there to catch rounds for them. (Well and hopefully level up.)

Armor is also imo THE highest priority, though laser weapons are a good second. You only need 6 suits of armor total, since you can simply un-equip it and shift it to another character. Which isn't to say you can't build more, but so far it's been easy enough to just rotate the armor usage.

Oh, one other thing I've found immensely handy:

Keep about 20 soldiers on staff. You shouldn't need more (at least as far as I've gotten); but having 20 means that no matter how many come back severely injured, you've always got more to take their place without having to worry about a mission coming up suddenly and you not having anyone to send.

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Finally: Having 1 or 2 Support soldiers with the 3x use Medikit ability is *golden*. I got through a mission stacked with 12 Chrysallids and 18 Civilians* without any casualties thanks to a couple of support troopers. It was a close thing and everyone was wounded afterward, but it was amazing that we survived at all frankly.

*10 of which were turned into zombies since it was a narrow bridge and every 5 feet *bam* MORE CHRYSALLIDS!

Ideally I'd suggest rotating them on missions so you always have 2 rookies or squaddies on the team to gain xp too.