Mnemoidian

Parts of the XCOM: Terror from the Deep soundtrack will haunt me for the rest of my life.

Geoscape:

Battlescape:

Here's the reason: Random.

The game does seem more likely to generate soldiers from high-population, developed areas (US, Canada, UK, Russia), at least in my game.

My "final team" consisted of 2 from the UK (no gift), One japanese (Gifted), one argentinan (Gifted), one US (Gifted) and one greek (Gifted) soldier. Clearly the UK is not gifted? (Or... more likely, RNG was not in my psi-favor on 2 of my best soldiers :P)

@Village_Guy: I got several danes, several norweigans. Only a single swede.

Of course, all of them testing negative for the gift meant they all had to go.

I played very conservatively, so I didn't pick up more than one suit of Skeleton armor - which I gave to my primary sniper, with the motivation that I wanted him to be able to reach high locations quickly... which is pretty much what I'd do again.

It's probably a clever marketing.

If you show a gamepad, it'll look "approachable" for the common gamer. If you show a HOTAS, it's a huge investment.

He talks about supporting HOTAS, rudders, Oculus Rift, etc, so don't worry about it, so don't worry about it?

Funny how some of you seem to have not even seen Battleships... I think I did 4 or 5 of them...

No satellites shot down for me, though. I did have a couple of rough months where a bunch of UFOs were slipping by, as a result of some poor decisions early on.

@The_Laughing_Man: 14/18 was good enough for me.

Here's a screenshot of when I got the "As a Scalpel" achievement.

@mason: It's just "As a Scalpel", getting excellent in all categories on a terror mission.

~40 hours into Classic, I'm starting to feel this way. It's been really great up 'till now, but now I'm sitting at what I am assuming the very last... thing... I need to do to finish the game, and I want to power up my squad a little more first, and grab some achievements (low priority, but so close, so why not?)

I've lost 2 countries - but that was very early in the game, before I really knew what I was doing, now I've got 2 countries at level 3 panic, everyone else at level 1. In actual missions, there are really only 2 really dangerous things left (Sectopod and Ethereal), but even then, I'm playing it safe enough that they typically don't really pose any threat.

Then again, hard to criticize the game when I'm delaying doing what the game is telling me to do (and I'm probably ready for :P)

In my ~40 hours of Classic mode, admittedly not using a lot of explosives, I've not really noticed any missed rockets (or grenades) at all. If anything, I've had the feeling that Rockets were super-accurate.

Weird spell of bad luck?

Beyond what everyone else has said (squad-sight snipers getting line of sight on everything), Snipers also get a skill that gives you benefits for shooting from higher ground than the target is on.

Not sure, but I think there's always a benefit to shooting from a higher ground?

And, of course... Chryssalids and Berserkers can't get to you.

My Snipers are the backbone of my strategy and of my success (Classic, not ironman). I've been training a new sniper because I wanted to use a full psi enabled (I know that's overkill, but...) team, but having run with a pair of snipers for quite a long time now - I've found that it's really efficient.

So, 2x Sniper (Scope, Skeleton/Archangel armor), 1x Support (Medkit, Arc Thrower), 1x Heavy (Scope, Titan armor), 1x Assault (Shotgun, Arc Thrower, ghost armor), 1x Assault (Rifle, Scope)

I'm pretty annoyed about the Heavy, as I realize I should probably have picked HEAT ammo now, and he's my strongest Psi (101) soldier... so not really sure what I'll do with him. I'll probably just stuff him in Psi armor and head to the final mission. Also planning to replace the rifle on my second assault and equip her like the other assault.

Also debating with myself which armor suits I should put on which classes. Specifically what to put on Support, Assault and Heavy (Snipers are pretty obvious, as long as they have squadsight).