Hello Commander! Our focus is on winning the war and saving the world. To save you time, here are a few things I’ve learned along the way.

Presently Milestone 4.18 is the stable release and so everything written here applies to Milestone 4. Ill update this guide in the future when later milestones launch.

This guide will focus largely on the early to mid-game, up through about Day 150 or so. This is in part because the later game isn’t yet fully finished and because the game does get a bit easier once you get past this point. By then you have several bases, experienced troops and good gear and can recover from a bad decision much easier. We will work through the Early Game together and then give some advice for mid/late game. We will also talk about soldiers, equipment, base placement etc.

This game can be challenging in its base mode. It’s doable but even soldier difficulty is hard enough that you can full team wipe easily. Most of this guide is written from my experience which is spans between Solider and Commander level difficulty.

If this is your first time I would strongly recommend soldier difficulty.

At the time of this writing, I would not suggest ironman mode. There are still some bugs to be worked out that could cause real issues without a save file to back up to.

The game will start on the “Strategic layer” which is basically the world map. From here you will manage your bases and detect/intercept UFOs.

See those three concentric circles around your base icon? Those represent your radar range. The first circle represents what you can see with 1 Radar array. You can add more, up to 3 total to expand your radar range out to the third circle.

• Stay ahead of the “interception curve”. Your crack squad of soldiers can only deploy if you can reliably bring down UFOs and UFOs will get harder as the game progresses. Falling behind here will make the game really difficult and is a hole that is hard to climb out of. As a general rule, aim to be starting a 2nd interceptor around the start of the 2nd month and to start building a pair of X-55s by day 120.
  
• Lasers currently are really really good and we want to get those right away. It’s worth skipping accelerated weapons and making a bee line for lasers in the tech tree.
  
• Unless you are very very late in the game, you never want to sell Alien Alloys or Alenium. To a degree your tech progression will be gated on your supplies of Alien Alloys and Alenium which you have to get from crash sites.

Attributes
Your soldiers and their experience will be your biggest asset as the game progresses so selecting the right mix is crucial.

• HP – how much damage you can take. This one levels up relatively slowly and seemingly a soldier that starts with low HP will always have relatively low HP.
  
• TU – how far you can move and still shoot. Shooting and throwing grenades is a % of TU so this is not the end all, be all stat like it was in prior Xcom games. Still though, low TU makes it hard to do much.
  
• Acc – your accuracy. This one levels up quickly but is punishing to level if your solider is low in this stat. Accuracy levels up based on how many TU you spend firing weapons. Shotgunners and Shield guys can get away with low accuracy because they don’t shoot as often, shoot close when they do, and their shots are relatively low TU cost. To “catch up” accuracy you will have to use a rifle/sniper/MG and you wont hit much since your accuracy is low.
  
• STR – how much you can carry. You will need this for armour, grenades and extra ammo. Grenades are your best friend and you want all your soldiers to at least be able to have a smoke or flashbang, preferably both.
  
• RFL – how likely your soldier is to perform an Overwatch shot. Overwatch is very very good but requires enough left over TU and enough reflexes to trigger it. Its good practice to always leave TU for overwatch shots but don’t base your whole strategy around it. 1) the Aliens have to move into your range to trigger it 2) it might not always trigger 3) you can still miss.
  
• BRV – how likely your soldier is to panic or go berserk. When it happens it can be really bad but being strong in the other stats will help keep you out of sticky situations.

Which attributes are best you ask? I look to have starting stats in the mid 50s for HP, TU, ACC, and STR. If some are in the low 60s and a few are in the high 40s that’s fine too, but stay away from any red stats. You can be a bit flexible on RFL and BRV so long as its not red (< 40).

To give you some idea, here is my top 3 from the chart below.


1. Dagle Valinski – Good and relatively high stats all around. Easy first pick.
2. Scott Lee – pretty good. The low TU will be annoying at first but will scale quickly.
3. Lev Davydenko – the low strength is going to be a problem. Id probably still put him 3rd here as he could maybe get by with being a sniper. He wont be able to fit heavy armor but at least he has enough HP that he might survive a hit

The rest are pretty meh and I probably would not recruit them unless I was under duress.

In the early game I’ve found my most commonly used 9 person squad consists of the following
• 2 Assaults – These guys carry shotguns. The shotgunners will be the most reliable damage in the early game and can 1 shot most enemies from point blank. Heavy armour is a must and its very helpful to have at least 1 smoke and 1 flashbang. They fair better with high TU to run to cover and still have enough left for an Overwatch shot. Since this is the role that is most likely to get killed aim for high HP soldiers so they can take a hit and not die right away.

As your squad suffers from attrition, I run most of my rookies as assaults and let them move into the other roles later once they get promoted a couple of times. They can get by with lower accuracy and don’t need a ton of starting strength to still be effective

• 2 Shields – these are your tanky boys. These guys synergize well running around with the shotgunners. They can absorb overwatch fire when entering rooms and scout for your shotgunners to run up for the kill. If you can manage it, have them carry a demo charge + a smoke or flashbang. Look for high strength, high TU. You can also park the shield guy in front of someone who is out of TU’s to block any incoming fire.
  
• 2 Riflemen – these guys are good mid range support and do well covering hallways and open areas. They can get by with lower TU but will need decent accuracy. These guys are good to carry med kits to heal and remove any bleeds.
  
• 2 Snipers – these will be your most reliable and consistent damage dealers. If they don’t move, they get a huge bonus to accuracy. Relatively early on, you can get close to 100% hit chances on enemies even behind partial cover and they can one shot the smaller aliens frequently.
  
• 1 Machine gunner – this guy is great for suppressing enemies from far away, destroying walls and cover to clear shots for your snipers and dealing massive mid range damage if you need it. The drawback is that their shots take a lot of TU, aren’t accurate and will suppress or hit your own troops if they are in the line of fire. If you have the strength, put a medkit on this guy too as they are usually centrally located and wont use a pistol much anyways.
  
• This isn’t sacrosanct, salt and pepper to suit your playstyle.

The HEVY launcher was terrible up until some balance changes a week ago. I haven’t spent much time with it on the latest balance patch and so I really can’t say if its better now. Previously it was extremely inaccurate and would tend to kill your whole squad with friendly fire. Simply throwing grenades was more reliable.

First of all, you will get shot, you will get wounded, and you will lose soldiers. This is part of it. If you make it through a mission with no wounds and no deaths, you are either very skilled or very lucky. Probably both.

Xenonauts tactical combat is hazardous. With some random bad luck a mission can turn south quickly. Spend all your TU’s to run up and peek around a corner? If there is an alien there, your dead! Miss all 3 shots of that point blank 75% shotgun blast? That sucks, but it will happen. If you are out of TU and nobody is around to smoke, suppress or shield…sorry but your shotgunner is probably dead.

For that reason, running soldiers around individually is a very risky proposition.

Fire teams

I recommend loosely splitting your 9 man squad into 2 groups with each one going either left, right or middle. In the typical case, each group with have 1 assault, shield, sniper and rifleman. Send the machine gunner to whichever side you think will need extra suppression or cover destroying capabilities. Using two groups will strike a nice balance between fast and safe.

Snipers get a huge accuracy bonus for not moving. 100% chances are hard to come by in Xenonauts. Provided the sniper hasn’t moved, they can often get 100% hit chances on enemies even behind partial cover and from far away. Therefore, they are one of your primary sources of damage, clearing out the open spaces so the assault/shield pair can move up to the buildings without getting shot to pieces. In the early game, they can very often 1 shot enemies.

I find that shields and assaults synergize well together and will be your primary “explorers”. To breach a room, you can have the shield guy to open the door and soak up any overwatch fire. You can then bring an assault guy in to run up and take a shot, hopefully one-shotting the alien. If you miss that shot, your shield boy can pop smoke, shoot too, flashbang or simply shield the assault.

Your rifleman and sniper shouldn’t be too far behind your shields and assaults though. They will clear out the large open spaces that shotgunners can’t reach and take pot shots where they have line of sight. You don’t want them too far away though. They will sometimes need to help out with flashbangs/smokes, or give overwatch cover to stop any aliens from sneaking around corners on you.

Most cover can be destroyed in Xenonauts.

The machine gunner is your best source of long distance suppression and cover clearing and also does really strong and reliable damage at middle ranges. Are there a bunch of aliens in the warehouse? You could send your assault/shield pair up to run in but that’s risky. You could toss a demo charge to take out the wall but you still have to get pretty close. The last thing you want to do is uncover 3 aliens in your face and your shield guy is now out of TUs.

Solution : use the machine gun. Even if the MG only has a 10% chance to hit, the MG can shoot in a 10 round burst. The expected value, in this case, is 1.0 hits which is wayyyy better than a rifle shot at 65% accuracy. If you don’t kill the target, the other 9 shots will likely destroy the cover (making your rifle shot a 90% shot) or suppress the enemy.

You will probably want to turn off overwatch on the Machine gunner most of the time. Due to the wide bullet cone, this guy will tend to light up your own squad and either accidentally kill or suppress them on overwatch fire. Only leave it on if he is in front or facing an area that he cant light up your own troops.

Your three best friends are SSS - smokes, suppression, and shields.
The main mechanisms to reduce hit chance is cover, smoke (which is basically just portable temporary cover) and suppression.

Cover will reduce hit chance by 20-40% and you will want to take advantage of cover as much as possible, but it is not a “get out of jail free” card. The aliens have surprisingly good accuracy, much better than you do. They can hit you behind cover and from a decent distance way more often than you might expect.

Smoke
Smoke is your best friend. If there is hallway,choke point, or corridor, where an alien could pop out and start blasting – you better smoke it.

Each smoke tile reduces accuracy by 20% and the area of effect is pretty big. Shooting through the cloud will cause 100%+ penalties to accuracy and so the aliens usually wont try. Aliens are clearly non smokers and usually will not run through your smoke cloud as well.

Most missions, I want every soldier to have at least 1 smoke and probably average throwing 5 or so per mission.

Suppression
Suppression is caused by throwing flashbangs or by shooting enough rounds at an enemy. Once suppressed the enemy will lose any current overwatch abilities and will start next turn with only have half their TUs and suffer a penalty to accuracy. The way the % based TUs work, that usually means the enemy can only take one shot or move.

All of these are pretty major debuffs and that goes for you too. Some shots take more than 50% of your TU’s meaning you won’t be able to do those at all that turn, even if you don’t move. Being suppressed makes it very difficult to do very much useful that turn.

There is no GUI indicator showing if an alien has enough TU for an Overwatch shot, so you better assume they can and suppress them unless you know better. If you try to run your shotgunner right up to them without suppressing them first, you might wind up taking a few shots.

Regardless, by the end of each turn, any aliens you can see need to be dead, smoked, or suppressed. If not, if they shoot you they will tend to hit you around 90% of the time if you aren’t behind cover. Even with cover, around 50% of the time.

If you wind up stuck in a room with an alien and a choice between taking a 70% shot or a 100% smoke/flashbang - do the latter. If you choose to shoot and miss, you are dead. If you smoke/flashbang, it still isn’t great, but you will probably live to fight another turn.

On heavy armour:
Damage output is highly variable, and ranges anywhere from ~50% to ~200% of your weapons base damage. The same goes for the aliens too. Unfortunately this means you may take 0 damage one time and get one shotted the next.

While your armour scales as the game progresses, so do the aliens. As a result, the net lethality of an alien to one of your soldiers, which is pretty high, doesn’t seem change that much.
Anecdotally, an alien seems to be able to one shot your soldiers about 30% of the time in base armour but quite rarely when wearing heavy armour. You will want to equip heavy armour on anyone with appreciable experience. Your soldiers probably don’t have the strength for it right away though. Aim to go heavy armour on your soldier soon after they can carry their gun, secondary and a grenade.

The base level tactical armour gives 6 armour, equipping heavy armour doubles that to 12. This is a huge increase. For reference, Warden armour gives 8 base and 16 heavy. Thus heavy tactical armour gives better protection than base Warden armour.

The accuracy penalty isn’t great but can be offset by the tactical module. By the time your riflemen have the strength for heavy armour, their accuracy is probably high enough that when taking good shots it doesn’t change the picture much.

Getting out of the Skyhawk
This is the most dangerous part of a lot of missions. Ill write more about this soon.

Most of your money will come from your tranche’s of monthly funding. Your monthly funding is based on the panic levels of the various regions, so when you see a UFO GO SHOOT IT DOWN.

DON’T SELL ALENIUM OR ALIEN ALLOYS unless you are very far into the late game. These are constantly in short supply and will be a limiting factor on your technological progression.

• Sell your junk. After each mission, you will wind up with Alien magnetic weapons, cleaner submachine guns etc. There is no reason to keep these.
  
• Sell alien corpses – you only need 1 corpse to do the autopsy research, then 8 more if you want to do the engineering ballistics project on the corpse and then 20 for the tier 2 ballistics project. I usually sell most of the early corpses you find, especially cleaner corpses as we need money early. Afterwards, somewhere in month 2, Ill do most of the tier 1 ballistics engineering. I don’t typically bother with the tier 2 ballistics that requires 20 corpses.
  
• Collecting the bounty on UFO site – you will probably want to use this sparingly, as you want to salvage the Alenium and Alien Alloys from the crash sites, but the need does arise. If you find yourself with enough Alenium to short on cash

At the time of writing the Air to Air combat mode is still rather unfinished and so I haven’t messed with it much. There may be some exploits or ways to do better than Auto-resovle attacks but I haven’t experimented much with them.

Interceptors in pairs are completely viable until well into the late game. You should aim to get your 2nd interceptor online around the end of month 1. Equipping your interceptors with an autocannon, extra armour and sidewinders (as soon as you unlock them) is about the best you can do, at least early on. Used in pairs, they can take down medium UFOs pretty easily and without taking too much damage.

Later on, the enemy ships will have more armour and cannons wont be as effective by themselves. You can equip one interceptor with laser lances, or with phoenix torpedoes. These are great for stripping off the armour from targets so your cannons can do their job. You wont be able to fit armour though. That interceptor will need to stay at the back and shoot from range while the 2nd one flies up close with cannons and sidewinders.

The real limiting factor for interceptors is their range. They can only fly out to around the 3rd radar ring before needing to turn around. This will mean that even though you have a radar base in north America, you cant really do anything about what flys around until you get interceptors to that base.

For this reason, we want to get the X 55 up and running as soon as we can. To do that you will need to research UFO hull plating and then research the X-55 project. After that you can build one in engineering for $800k provided you have a free hangar. The X 55 is the upgraded version of the interceptor and has a much greater range, approximately 2.5x. With that range, you can cover more than half of the map.

Base placement
The game seems to encourage you to place your first base to cover Europe and Africa. This will be your first and only base for a little while so choose wisely.

For your first base, My suggestion is to pick somewhere in Egypt. As a general rule you want your radar to cover as much landmass as possible. I find that lining up the edge of the 2nd radar circle with the edge of West Africa and the Northern edges of Norway gives you a good balance of radar coverage now and useful radar coverage later once you add radar arrays.

With this placement we can cover about 98% of Europe and ~90% of Africa with only two radar arrays. We can add expansion bases nicely with this selection of our first base as well.



Your first buildings

You will have either $2.5M (Soldier) or $2M (Commander) to spend.

Certain buildings like Labs and Workshops and living quarters have adjacency bonuses so we want to plan ahead a bit. If you think of you 6x6 base grid like an Excel spreadsheet with A1 being the top left square and F6 being the bottom right square, here is what I would suggest to maximize adjaceny.

• Cells A1-B2 – use this area for your generators, of which you’ll probably have 3, maybe 4
  
• Cells A3-B4 - workshop land – you will wind up with at least 3-4 workshops as the game goes on.
  
• C5 and D5 – use these to expand your living quarters into
  
• E4 and F4 – use these to expand your store rooms
  
• E4-F5 – research center – these 4 squares make good locations for your labs.
  
• F1 and F2 – it usually makes good sense to add another hangar here, which we will do relatively early.

You will start paying upkeep on buildings during each subsequent month of funding. Thus its optimal to build every building you want to build on Day 1 of each month. You may not always be able to do that perfectly due to cash constraints. Since we are in month 1 that’s not an issue.

Here is what I would recommend spending your initial cash on

• Laboratory ($500k) – You will need this to keep up with the pace you need for research. You will want to aim for 3 adjacent and fully staffed labs by Day 90. Build one right away and staff it fully as soon as possible. It will cost $50000 for each scientist you hire and your 2nd lab will accommodate 7 additional scientists due to the adjacency bonus. Thus you will need to set aside and additional $350k to fully staff.
  
• Living quarters ($250k) – you will need space for your scientists. Place this next to your current block of living quarters to maximize adjacency.
  
• Training Center or Medical Center ($750k) – Getting experience on your soldiers early is crucial to keeping pace with the difficulty scaling. The jury is out on training center first or medical center first. You won’t be able to afford both right away. The training center will ensure your soldiers are leveling up almost each mission and gaining stats quickly. Your soldiers will still level up though without a training center, just more slowly. The medical center will get injured soldiers back in action quicker and give dead soldiers a chance being revived. I tend to lean training center first as all your soldiers are inexperienced and if they get killed you can replace them without losing too much. Either choice is fine though.
  
• Hangar ($200k) – You will want to add another interceptor around the turn of the first month to start taking on the larger UFOs that are to come

If you are on commander difficulty, you will have $300k left. Use this to hire new soldiers, build things you manage to unlock via research and to hire as many scientists as you can afford.

During Month 2 and after, once you have your next tranche of funding here is what to think about building next.

• Workshop ($500k) – if you are on soldier difficulty you can get this right away, though you may not have the money to fully staff it until month 2
  
• Generator ($250k) – at this point you will need more power to add a radar array. Currently the generators give you their power capacity as soon as you place them, not once they are completed. This might be a bug
  
• Radar Array ($500k) – you will want to get this going somewhere during month 2 or 3 to expand your radar range as far as you can.
  
• A 3rd laboratory ($500k) – we will need more research capacity to keep up with our tech tree

What to expect
During month 1 you probably won’t see too many UFOs but the ones you can find, go shoot down. They will all be easy at this stage to down, mostly probes, maybe a scout. Most of your missions will be story missions against the cleaners or terror sites. Your interceptors wont have a ton of range and can only fly out to about the 3rd radar ring before they run out of fuel. They will automatically turn around so you don’t need to worry about them crashing due to running out of gas.

On terror sites, you need to complete these ASAP. For one they are a valuable source of resources and experience and unlock things in the tech tree early on. They also will add 20 panic if you skip them so don’t. You will see your first terror site around day 15. Completing this mission will unlock Warden Armour which you want to get going on ASAP.

As you follow and do the cleaner missions, you will probably discover and “clean” their HQ around the middle of month 2.

Adding a 2nd base

By the start of month 2, you should have a 2nd lab fully staffed, and an open hangar so its time to look at adding a 2nd interceptor and adding a 2nd base.
With your month 2 funding, you should have enough to build an interceptor, which will cost ~$500k. Running the interceptors in pairs will let you take down destroyers and other medium UFOs pretty easily and can take down larger UFOs when necessary. The pair of interceptors is completely viable until the late game.

Aim to build your 2nd base at the start of month 2 as well. I suggest placing it in North America, (approximately in Texas), or in central China.

The 2nd base will cost you $500k for the base. Initially, our 2nd base will just be a radar base so build a radar array right away for another $500k. We will add hangars and soldiers later on. The radar array will complete in the 2nd half of month 2. Your interceptors wont have the range to intercept there yet but you will probably spot some UFO landings which you can land at with your Skyhawk.

Later around day 90, try to add a third hangar, a store room and a living quarters. We will want to add a complement of soldiers to this base since we will use it for missions once we have an X3 dragonfly built.

Early game research
Prioritize research that gives increased monthly funding early and often. These unlock at various points in the story and several will unlock in month 1-2 as long as you are doing the missions. As long as you finish story research by month end you will still get the added funding. Use this to plan out your research a bit.

When we don’t have story line research to do, autopsy and observe any captured aliens. The autopsy’s will unlock useful info about the aliens and observations will give you more exp and better damage.

When we aren’t doing research on captured aliens or unlocking story funding we want better armour, laser weapons and better aircraft ASAP. Target the following techs when they come up.

• Aerial Warfare – this is default research that is available as soon as the mandated default research project is over. You’ll hit this around day 10 or so. Research this first ahead of MARS combat platforms to unlock sidewinders. This will make your interceptors more effective.
  
• Warden Combat Armour – unlocks once you have alien alloys which will come from the first terror site around day 15. This will let you build warden armour and is your best source of keeping soldiers alive early. Research this as soon as you can. You can complete it by day 30 and still keep pace with the story research that will pop up along the way.
  
• Alenium Power – as soon as you salvage some alenium, which you will get from UFO crash sites, you will unlock this. For me that is usually in the realm of day 35-40, around the time you down your first scout. Doing this research unlocks laser weaponry
  
• Laser weaponry – unlocked after researching alenium power. You also want this as soon as you can spare the research time. Laser weapons are really strong and will be a big power spike for your team.
  
• UFO hull plating – will unlock after you down and capture a Destroyer UFO. These start to appear seemingly during month 3 and you will need a pair of interceptors to take one down. You need this research to unlock the X55 Phantom, which is the improved interceptor. Once you unlock it, prioritize getting it done.

Early game engineering

Your engineers will be idle for some of the time during the first few months. While idle the generate some income which seems to be roughly equivalent to their upkeep.

Early on, I would recommend producing air to air missiles once unlocked as this will let you equip your interceptors with sidewinders. Once you research Xenobiology build a handful of stun guns as these will make capturing aliens alive much easier. You should also aim to build a 2nd interceptor as discussed earlier.

After that, once you have Warden Armour unlocked, try to produce enough for all 9 of your squad.

During months 3-4, our goal is to survive and advance. We want to get a 3rd base (early month 3), get lasers deployed (early-mid month 3), and get an X55 Phantom operational (month 4).

After you get your Day 60 funding tranche, you are moving out of the early game. By now, you should at least have:

• Have a 2nd lab and a 2nd workshop up and running.
  
• Have a 2nd base with a radar array
  
• Have a 2nd interceptor

Moving through months 3 and 4 the same rules apply: do the story research and handle any terror sites, shoot down as many UFOs as you can and try not to lose too many soldiers in the process.
You probably wont have lasers operational at the start of month 3, though you might have started the research. Once lasers are unlocked, you will want to build enough laser weapons to fully equip your squad. If you dont have enough Alenium initially do the best you can and fill our your arsenal as you get more.

If you haven’t already, add a 2nd radar array to your main base. You may need to add a generator to do this. You will also want to add and fully staff a 3rd laboratory if you haven’t already.
With your new funding, add your 3rd base, this works best in either in the USA or in Western China, whichever you DID NOT choose for your 2nd base. Same idea applies, add a radar array right away.

Go ahead and add two hangars to either your 2nd or 3rd base. Maintaining control of the sky is important to managing panic levels so we want to get an interceptor over here as soon as we have an X55 in sight. Your choice on which base to put hangars in however I find having interceptors in North America works well.

During month 3, you should start to see Destroyers, which are medium UFOs. You will need a pair of interceptors to take these down reliably. That is why we prioritized getting a 2nd interceptor at the ready. Once you down the destroyer and investigate the crash site, you will unlock UFO hull plating. This research is needed to unlock the X55 Phantom.

If you have enough money/alenium/alloys, invest in some of the base upgrades. The most impactful one is quantum laboratories which boost your research productivity and quantum radar which will detect more alien craft and give you more info on them.

Moving into month 4, you will need to start thinking about protecting your bases. The aliens can and will invade and destroy your bases though they don’t seem to until after month 4. I suggest building 2 missile batteries in your 2nd and 3rd bases. Your main base will have soldiers stations at it, so if they invade it you should be able to fight them off.

Around the start of month 4 you should be unlocking the X55, get one started in engineering right away. It will cost you $800k, 40 alloys and 25 alenium. 1 X55 seems to be a little stronger than 2 interceptors. Transfer your interceptors to your other base with hangars. Once the X55 is online, you can tackle destroyers from 2 different bases.

Congrats! You've made it. By this time you will have a handful of aircraft, good gear and experienced soldiers. From this point forward, you can still lose but it's harder to.

Somewhere into months 4 or 5 you will be tasked with capturing an Alien officer for interrogation. The alien officers will only appear on Observers and other 2+ story UFOs. Sometimes they die in the crash however, they seem to always be inside the UFO, usually on the highest level. Right now, the interrogation doesn't do anything and has placeholder story text indicating its coming soon.

Speaking of Observers, your interceptors will not be fast enough to engage them. You will need the X-55. Fortunately we prioritized getting it earlier.

A lot of late game content isn't fully developed yet (at the time of writing you can not finish the game yet). Ill add more here as time goes.

By the time you have the tech, alien alloys, and money for accelerated weapons, lasers will be right around the corner. The accelerated weapons are only slightly better than your base gear.
For example, the accelerated rifle does 38 damage + 5 armour penetration, vs 34 dmg +0 penetration for the basic ballistic rifle. At this stage most enemies don’t have tons of armour to begin with and so adding accelerated weapons doesn’t make a drastic difference.

Also…
** Spoiler Alert ** you will get a dozen or so accelerated rifles from the Cleaner HQ mission, which is plot based and is mandatory. You will probably “clean” the cleaner HQ somewhere in the middle of month 2.

Researching the Alien Magnetic weapons is what unlocks accelerated weapons but that takes around 1 week of research. Then you have to build them, which is ~another week. They also cost Alien alloys and $. At this point in your career, both are in very short supply and you probably can’t spare ~$200k and ~45 alien alloys to equip your squad.

The MARS combat platform is REALLY good in the early game. It has 80 TU which is 30-40% more than your fastest soldiers. The autocannon does great damage and the MARS is also pretty tough with 80 health.

The problem is that it will take a week of research and then $250k to build one and so unless you are really struggling early, I would not recommend it. At this stage of the game that is a steep price to pay. You will have to support that branch of the tech tree too, that means upgrading its guns and armour as you progress which will be more time and $.

Here’s the real kicker though, the MARS doesn’t level up or gain experience. Your veteran soldiers will quickly catch up to the MARS and eventually outpace it. If you added the training center early, it wont take that long. Your troops will probably be +7 to +10 on most of their stats after 5 or 6 missions and will be pretty close to the MARS in stats.