Item Weight

Item weights are represented in Strength units. For example, an item of 18 weight units requires a bare minimum of 18 strength points for you to carry without suffering an encumberance penalty on your TU refresh rate.

Therefore, if you want to micromanage your items for a very weak soldier, add up the weight of all the items you want to issue the soldier, then compare the result against the soldier's strength. Add or remove items as necessary while keeping the weight vs. strength level balanced.

Item weights are a heavy influencing factor for determining throwing distance.

The following represents a complete list of item weights for X-Com UFO Defense/Enemy Unknown. TFTD item weight list to follow.

Pistol..................5 
 Pistol Clip............3
Rifle...................8
 Rifle Clip.............3 
Heavy Cannon...........18
 HC-AP..................6
 HC-HE..................6
 HC-IN..................6
Auto Cannon............19
 AC-AP..................5
 AC-HE..................5
 HC-IN..................5
Rocket Launcher........10
 Small Rocket...........6
 Large Rocket...........8
 Incendiary Rocket......8

Laser Pistol............7
Laser Rifle............10
Heavy Laser............18

Heavy Plasma............8
  Heavy Plasma Clip.....3
Plasma Rifle............5
  Plasma Rifle Clip.....3
Plasma Pistol...........3
  Plasma Pistol Clip....3
Blaster Launcher.......16
  Blaster Bomb..........3
Small Launcher.........10
  Stun Bomb.............3
 
Stun Rod................6 

Grenade.................3
Smoke Grenade...........3
Proximity Grenade.......3
High Explosive..........6
Alien Grenade...........3
Electro Flare...........3 

Motion Scanner..........3
Medi-Kit................5
Psi-Amp................10
Mind Probe..............5
Elerium.................3

Corpses:
Jumpsuit...............22
Personal Armor.........24
Power/Flying Armor.....26 
Sectoid................30
Snakeman...............40
Ethereal...............25
Muton..................40
Floater................20
Celatid................35
Silacoid...............40
Chryssalid.............40

The remaining items cannot be picked up, but are included for completeness sake: 

Corpses (continued): 
Reaper*................50
Cyberdisc*.............50
Sectopod*..............50
Hovertank*.............50
Tank*..................50
Male Civilian..........30
Female Civilian........50 

* That's 50 for each quarter

Unused Items*: 
Unused slot**...........1   
Unused slot............22 (Same as above, but heavier)
Unused slot............22 (Ditto) 
Unused slot.............1  (Appears to be a type of plasma clip) 
Unused slot.............4 (Pistol variant. Slower, less accurate, 1x1 in size)
Unused slot.............4 (Unknown)

*The game has six unused item slots. Unfortunately, there's no known way to get them 
 into any of the item transfer screens. Otherwise, they'd make six extra weapons, clips,
 or grenades, but the bullets fired would look like a tank/cannon round, they won't have
 proper labels, and they won't have Ufopaedia entries. They can be added to the Skyranger
 with a ship store editor, and they'll appear in combat, but their obdata.dat entries have
 to be tweaked so that they work.

**The first three unused slots are an unnamed multi-barrelled laser. 
  Prime attracting feature: 15% TU Autofire @ 50% accuracy with 40 laser damage
 
Note: In TFTD, the above slots are used by the gauss clips and the drills