Ran into a squad of these today, and came to the conclusion that they seriously lack killing power. The MTF troopers were dealing 2s in damage at times, the only one who was at all threatening was the Leader with volatile mix (very nice). The Troopers at least need some kind of ability or damage buff, right now it's like fighting conventional military grunts.

That's kinda what I was going for. But if you think grunts are too weak then I will gladly buff them.

did had an encounter them and like you said they act like conventional military grunts. I would say thought maybe just add a more class variety like a heavy gunner and sniper. overall thought the were fun to fight. maybe also to make them more unique than the rest of the third party factions (as I use a lot of 3rd party faction mods) give them maybe better psionic protection, a farther stealth detection range (because scramble gear) or have them in larger groups, maybe 8 at most

the unts equipped with scramble gear already have inreased detection range, and immunity to mind affecting psionics. what I might do is equip tier two gunners and whole tier 3 with scramble gear.

I ran into them just now and I got pretty cucked, was like two seven man squads, they'd beat the living ♥♥♥♥ out of the aliens in like 3-4 moves before they'd turn around to beat me and my 7 (modded) man squad up, after several playthroughs of the same mission with diffrent tactics like have the aliens fight mtf before cleaning the MTF up, try to only activate one pod of mtf before getting the other, I've found myself quite stuck, I saved the game right before the retaliation event but everytime I reload to hopefully get a diffrent scenario I keep getting met with the same MTF squads that crit my xcom troopers with 11 damage, killing them instantly.

^ I decided to go into files and make the MTF friendly just so I could progress in the game, now the two MTF teams are fighting eachother, honestly just hillarious at this point

They should be 6 person squads at most. It's unlucky that it spawned two of them at the same mission, as they won't shoot each other, and will be a pain.

Personal balance suggestions, based on legendary difficulty:

Scramble Helmet: Nerf to +5 aim instead of the godly +15.
SCP-4MMO: Spread radius to +3 instead of +7.

I may post more here as I continue my play through.

Wait till you see Scramble helmet Mk2 with +30 Aim. I'll consider nerfing it a bit.

So should i just be avoiding these guys in the early game? In a lot of the scenarios I've runned into the MTF, and they just wipe the floor with the aliens and me.

In a particular instance, I ran into hammer down and in a single turn they wiped out 2 pods of aliens and when the next turn came they swept the floor with the remaining pod with only one of the grunts taking a single point of damage. I closed the gap with my 4 man squad but they'd suppress fire locking down all my units and since they did 4-7 damage per shot. They'd essentially instantly kill any of my units if hit. They have return fire which just means if I attempt to retaliate, they'd consistently land shots because of how high their aim is. The only reason I won the battle was cause the commander was bugged floating in the air on a destroyed second floor building out in the open. I was down to one soldier by the end of the mission.

So going back to my question, should I just avoid them like the plague? Because they just seem to just obliterate everything in their path. I get that their suppose to be an elite force, but I feel like the "fodder" units stats are incredible high for the early game.

I didn't really consider them to be op, as fodders can be taken down with any two attacks, or any critical hit, and their damage is 2-5 and 6 at most during critical hit, at first tier, but considering there's six units, maybe i should reduce it to 2-4.

Also hammer down shouldn't be avoided as a plague, but rather burned as one. They have zero resistances to explosives/fire/melee/acid, and all the other things.

I'll keep that in mind with using more elemental damage when facing them. Out of curiosity, I noticed that whenever you spot the units, they're able to get a reaction move out. This is fine cause this is a normal thing that the alien ai does. However I noticed they get to take an action after you trigger the encounter. Is that a caveat in how raider factions work? I bring it up cause it's fairly common for me to encounter them when out of concealment, and they'll move in your general direction while taking cover. When I end my turn and it's their turn, they've moved up a significant amount when reacting, and can easily flank units due to that and usually leads to a secure kill on one of my squad members.

Should I just prioritize engaging from concealment to obfuscate this issue?

When it comes to hammer down, I nerfed their mobility, so that shouln't occur with them. About Scamper move point though, I thought this was regular behavior for pods of all factions.

It might be. I've only used your Raider factions, so it might just be a normal thing for all of them. Just thought it was sorta odd for them to behave differently from the aliens like that.