Suggestions for Equipping Troops (Apocalypse)

Here are some tips for equipping your troops.

Early game. If you like playing real-time action, always equip a stun grapple as your secondary weapon. Put machineguns, autocannons or whatever else you like as the main weapon and put a stun grapple in the second hand. This serves two functions. Firstly, it gives you a very strong weapon against those annoying close-combat aliens (multi-worms and poppers). Secondly, it will ensure your capture of living aliens, something that is essential to developing toxi-guns.

Another idea is have all of your soliders with two of the same weapon, it will increase your killing power. At first you will have worse accuracy, but it will pay off later as your solider get better. Have one solider who is your 'stunner' with more stun grenades, and dual stun grapples.

Always carry several stun grenades on all your troops. Not only can you use them to capture aliens, stun gas also evaporates faster then smoke, so you can use stun grenades to clear smoke. Lastly, an alien in stun gas will try to get out of the cloud and so it stops shooting at you. Each troop should always carry a medi kit, as you are bound to get hurt, and medi-kits save lives. Research and equip beam weaponry as soon as you can, since ammo is bound to run low.

Mid-game. As soon as you have toxiguns, carry them on any mission where you will encounter only aliens, and don't carry other guns. Toxiguns have a high refire rate, so you can keep your other hand free for other things, and you won't capture many energy shields without toxiguns. As soon as you have energy shields, equip them. Equip other weapons you would like to use as you research them. The two kinds of alien grenade are quite usefull, and some of the other equipment is nice too.

Late-game. Late game tactical combat is rather easy. You should have the energy shields, toxiguns xcom armor that you need to take out the enemy easily. For combat against aliens, make sure your troops are equipped with toxiguns, plenty of the best ammo you have for them, some stun grapples to capture those few aliens you still need a live specimen of and stun grenades to take the aliens smoke advantage. For raiding enemy buildings, you don't need energy shields if you have the xcom armor. Equip your troops with dual devestator guns, xcom armor and any other weapons you would like to use. Only the heaviest of explosives or concentrated devestator fire has any chance of hurting you with xcom armor, so don't worry much about it.