>>15457483
OpenXcom / the original UFO Defense is not hard at all. If you're capable of basic strategy, it's easier than NuCom and NuCom 1.5. The real difference is that in NuCom, you can realistically be forced to hinge a unit's survival on a coin flip which can cause a wipe. The goal of that game is to put yourself in situations with favorable coin flips and to avoid making bad coin flips. In the original game, you can have 14 soldiers in your starting craft who can realistically fire 3-6 rounds at a target per turn. The goal in the original game is to allocate your soldiers to situations where you flip more coins and the aliens flip less coins. You play it more like a tabletop war game than a board game. That's the confusing point for people who go back and play it, because they just walk in a straight line at the aliens and throw bad shots in positions that kill more of their own men than the aliens.
All of the aliens in the original game also have tactics that can be applied to shift the situation more in your favor. For starters, all aliens are powerless to shoot you if you end your turn where they can't see you (or move close enough to see you and shoot you). If you're struggling with the game, develop weapon technology first and foremost. Rifles can one-shot a sectoid. Laser rifles can one-shot a sectoid more often. This is because weapon damage in the original X-Com is calculated as a random number between 0 and 2x the weapon's power. A weapon with 30 power can do anywhere from 0 to 60 damage, which is then flatly reduced by the armor value of the defending unit. Another mechanic that can give you a great advantage is knowing what mutual surprise is. If you spot an alien in the same movement step that the alien spots you, there is no reaction fire. Any movement afterwards can be reacted upon. If the alien spots you but you didn't spot it, or vice versa, reaction occurs normally. This means that you always want to be looking in the direction you expect to uncover an alien, and gives you an attackers advantage when breaching UFOs.
>>15457467
I wish this mod were better. Cool assets and cool concepts but it's not only incredibly unfinished, but they're more interested in stuffing it with their own concepts than actually making a good experience for either X-Com or 40k. It'd be so much better if it had a better long-term plan for connecting technologies and enemies, and if it used a homebrew chapter as opposed to this "What if the Ultramarines had women and used lasguns and cleared entire space hulks with 10 scouts?" shit they're doing. I haven't played the Imperial Guard themed variant, but I imagine it's structured much better.