My every soldier carried an obligatory Laser Rifle in his backpack, taking it out and firing it every chance he had, achieving 3 objectives at once:
- the more stuff you carry, the faster strength and TUs of a soldier grow
- he always has a backup weapon with infinite ammo and decent damage
- everytime your other units are searching for that last alien, you must choose some barn or cabbage and SHOOT at it at full auto, RAPIDLY rising shooting accuracy.
In addition to laser rifles my commandoes always carry autocannons with HE or Incendiary ammo, creating havoc every time they can and scaring enemy to death. Later you can replace autocannons with Heavy Plasmas and those Blaster Launchers, but before that, it's the best way for heavy loading soldiers.
The only downside to this is somewhat reduced TU count in the beginning, and you also have to set up the gear for every mission, which is a drag. Unfortunately, original XCom doesn't have loadout templates.
Unfortunately, original XCom doesn't have loadout templates.
The discovery portion of XCOM matched with the dreadful mystery of XCOM, overlaid by unknown levels of complexity, is what makes the game feel real/alive. It makes the gamespace feel much more wide-open than it really is. When you first experience your own base under attack, the feeling is "holy shit I didn't even know this could happen and wow I did not plan appropriately for this eventuality!" In the reboot, it mostly just feels like another mission, where the layout is totally decoupled from the actual decisions you've made. And you're much more likely to have trained commandos at homebase rather than a ragtag bunch of rookies with "failed experiments" gear (eg laser tech and maybe some grenades lying around).
That's just one more example to illustrate how the original XCOM was as much about creating tension through the limitless possibilities of the unknown. Each and every decision was less like a chess game and more like a desperate gambit.