I was interested in seeing tactics using a 4 man squad for the entire campaign. Using 2 MECs and 2 SHIVs is like having an 8 man squad, and half of them are disposable. Well, technically all of them are, since you keep the suits if the MEC soldier dies, you just lose the ranks. SHIVs are just easy mode. The first couple of months are the hardest and I've already seen how that streamer handles that. Badly.
I thought the suit was lost when the MEC dies?
and yes, SHIV are easy mode. No one really uses them, but see the video I linked. Hover Shivs unlock fairly early and are the only ones that are actually expensive, but they never die due to 40 def + flying target def (another 20) and massive hp, so you just need to get to them without losing the game - which also is fairly trivial since standard shivs with laser cannons already are incredibly powerful (85 base aim, 20 def, auto repair and enough hp to survive all early game attacks)
I realize Classic exalt mission is not exactly hard, I should have recorded the double sectopod terror mission I did before that without any losses because the sectopods were suppressed by one shiv and therefore had -90 aim penalty on every single shiv out there while my shiv had 85% chance to hit. No tactics, just flying in, triggering enemies and shooting them dead.
Heck, I killed a sectopod using basic SHIVs with Laser cannons because it couldn't reliably hit due to permanent suppression
Since you also skip SO MUCH research because you only need to unlock a few key things to max out your shivs you can have these plasma cannon hover shivs probably by the time you have carapace armor, laser rifle troops. Plasma cannon gives them another 10 aim (up to 95) while dealing 10+ damage each hit. 1-hit everything except cyberdisks for two months until muton elite and sectopods show up.
btw, did I mention Shiv ammo is like 10 shots before having to reload?
on an unrelated notice, what I see when watching some normal playthroughs is how amazingly expensive stuff is because you have nothing to sell. On Impossible, you can easily sell 50 sectoid corpses 50 thin man corpses because of the hordes of enemies you get to kill. Money isn't really an issue on impossible.