How to git gud?

[Ellie]

Before I want to start this off I'm going to admit I didn't really play the first long war, I'm on veteran difficulty, most of my XCOM 2 experience is vanilla, and that I'm not upset in the slightest that the game is kicking my butt
But I am curious, because the missions tend to vary between "easily manageable" and "4 pods active at one time and entire squad is wiped before evac arrives" and I'm completely lost how to recover from or prevent a situation like this.
I know you want the infiltration to be as high as possible so you don't have to deal with so many enemies, but I either have to choose between very few soldiers who can't handle a pod or two anyway or not full infiltration. Some missions have very short timers as well to prepare. Do I just ignore these missions until I have better tech? I know you can't win every battle but this seems to be happening a lot.
Any advice from people who are actually good at this would be appreciated, thanks!~

[Biasface]

Seeing a giant brick wall of enemies can be intimidating but in LW it isn't too bad, and may even be par for the course (I haven't gotten very far). You have many tools at your disposal for dealing with enemies, from flashbangs to area suppression. If you put ceramic plating on all your soldiers they can even take a hit or two (which is also less likely thanks to the increased cover bonuses).

[mattprice516]

The alien activities that generate missions are happening whether you know about the mission or not. When you get a mission with higher duration, it means you detected it earlier in its lifetime. There's some randomness to detection, but it largely depends on how many rebels you have working the "intel" job. Avenger scanning at a Haven also counts as 4 rebels' worth of intel job.


If you're not getting missions with durations you like (a "normal" mission duration is about 5-6 days to get a squad of 5-6), try putting more rebels on intel.


Alternatively, if it's a mission that doesn't require killing everything, try taking just 2 people and doing it stealthily.

[redscare]

Barring some exceptions (very good reward + mission type that MAY be done without a fight), I'm not doing any mission I cannot 100% infiltrate with at least 5 soldiers. I learned it the hard way with the first mission after tutorial

You get a shitton of missions every month, and best case scenario you have 3 squads (and more like 2 and the rest in the hospital). Cherry-picking missions is the name of the game

[trihero]

Barring some exceptions (very good reward + mission type that MAY be done without a fight), I'm not doing any mission I cannot 100% infiltrate with at least 5 soldiers. I learned it the hard way with the first mission after tutorial

You get a shitton of missions every month, and best case scenario you have 3 squads (and more like 2 and the rest in the hospital). Cherry-picking missions is the name of the game

Seconded. The second you dip under 100% the pod sizes can climb to 5 in regular missions which almost guarantees some wounds (in some missions they have huge pod sizes regardless of what you do like supply raids). Occasionally I will try a 90 or 80% infiltration if desperate for the reward but anything lower than that is inviting the grim reaper to lawl on your troops.