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 encumbrance 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.

Tip: All small items (one inventory square) are 3 weight units.

Item weights are a heavy influencing factor for determining throwing distance. Note that although ammo loaded into a weapon does count towards soldier encumbrance, its weight is ignored when throwing the weapon.

In the battlescape display, an item lying on the ground might represent a pile of items. In this case, it is the heaviest item displayed (usually a corpse).

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

Name	Weight	Name	Weight	Name	Weight	Name	Weight
Pistol	5	Heavy Laser	18	Small Launcher	10	Jumpsuit	22
--Pistol Clip	3	Rocket Launcher	10	--Stun Bomb	3	Personal Armor	24
Rifle	8	--Small Rocket	6	Stun Rod	6	Power Suit*	26
--Rifle Clip	3	--Large Rocket	8	Grenade	3	Flying Suit*	26
Heavy Cannon	18	--Incendiary Rocket	8	Smoke Grenade	3	Sectoid	30
--HC-AP	6	Heavy Plasma	8	Proximity Grenade	3	Snakeman	40
--HC-HE	6	--Heavy Plasma Clip	3	High Explosive	6	Ethereal	25
--HC-IN	6	Plasma Rifle	5	Alien Grenade	3	Muton	40
Auto Cannon	19	--Plasma Rifle Clip	3	Electro-flare	3	Floater	20
--AC-AP	5	Plasma Pistol	3	Motion Scanner	3	Celatid	35
--AC-HE	5	--Plasma Pistol Clip	3	Medi-Kit	5	Silacoid	40
--AC-IN	5	Blaster Launcher	16	Psi-Amp	10	Chryssalid	40
Laser Pistol	7	--Blaster Bomb	3	Mind Probe	5
Laser Rifle	10			Elerium	3

* Technically these corpses are the same object type, and have only 1 entry in OBDATA.DAT

Quick Reference for common item sets

Loaded Rifle + 3 one-space items*...........20

Laser Rifle + 3 one-space items.............19

Loaded Heavy Cannon.........................24
   + extra clip.............................30

Loaded Auto Cannon..........................24
   + extra clip.............................29

Loaded Rocket Launcher + 3 Large Rockets....42
   w/ all Small Rockets.....................34

Loaded Heavy Plasma + 3 one-space items.....20

Loaded Blaster Launcher.....................19
   + 5 Blaster Bombs........................34

Loaded Small Launcher + 2 one-space items...19

Supplementary items:
   Laser Pistol..............................7
   Loaded Plasma Pistol......................6
   Stun Rod..................................6
   Medi-Kit..................................5
   Mind Probe................................5
   Psi-Amp..................................10 

* All one space items (grenades, ammo clips, motion scanner, stun bombs) have a weight of 3.

Uncarryable items

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 

Note that for the large units, each quarter is worth 50 units.

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)

Note: In TFTD, the above slots are used by the gauss clips and the drills

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. 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. It's assumed to be a multi-barrelled laser as the default battlescape image shows the autocannon, although uses the laser rifle for its inventory image.

Sorted by item weight

Here's an alternate listing sorted by Item Weight. Does not include items that can't be picked up:

Weight Item

 3   Alien Grenade
     Blaster Bomb
     Electro Flare
     Elerium
     Grenade
     Heavy Plasma Clip
     Motion Scanner
     Pistol Clip
     Plasma Pistol
     Plasma Pistol Clip
     Plasma Rifle Clip
     Proximity Grenade
     Rifle Clip
     Smoke Grenade
     Stun Bomb

 5   AC-AP
     AC-HE
     AC-IN
     Medi-Kit
     Mind Probe
     Pistol
     Plasma Rifle

 6   HC-AP
     HC-HE
     HC-IN
     High Explosive
     Small Rocket
     Stun Rod

 7   Laser Pistol

 8   Heavy Plasma
     Incendiary Rocket
     Large Rocket
     Rifle

10   Laser Rifle
     Psi-Amp
     Rocket Launcher
     Small Launcher

16   Blaster Launcher

18   Heavy Cannon
     Heavy Laser

19   Auto Cannon

20   Floater

22   Soldier in Jumpsuit

24   Soldier in Personal Armor

25   Ethereal

26   Soldier in Power or Flying Armor

30   Sectoid

35   Celatid

40   Chryssalid
     Muton
     Silacoid
     Snakeman