Squad sight is still pretty rad, but it loses critical capability unless you use Head Shot.

I've yet to use Mimetic or ghost armour. I place electric skin on my my assaults for a little passive scouting, the legs that allow jumping and the eyes that increase the height advantage on my snipers, and Neural Damps across the board. 

I don't find Sectopods much of a challenge. I can often catch two of them (and their drones) within the radius of a single EMP, which shuts them down completely.

MECs, in general, are a little over-powered, especially in regards to proximity mines. Sure, I could choose not to use them, or snipers, or gene mods, but should I really be avoiding everything that the expansion added, just to feel challenged?

I'd take a perpetual stun lock over having a mind-controlled, fully upgraded assault trooper with limitless free reaction shots situated in the middle of my troops. No joke, she managed to put more troopers into recovery time than the aliens of the last 4 missions combined. The way I had my troops deployed was part of the issue, but knowing the room contained a sectopod, his drones, and at least three other enemies, bunching my troops up to maximize the damage they would do when I breached the room seemed like a good idea.

Still, though, I'm finding the game easier, and I'm finding a fair minority of others saying the same thing. I think the expansion has opened up squads to more powerfully optimized setups. There are now squad combinations that are undeniably unbalanced.

You should get Long War mod for EU, makes the game much better (and harder, be sure to play on Normal if you previously played on Classic). 

Grappling hook bug?

Well some good news is Long War EW alpha is coming in a few weeks. Playing the downgraded EW to play Long War right now. God it's fun, first month is over Russia left me and I got a healthy size barracks of 40 with only 13ish rookies to promote. Need to get more air defenses up but they are 200$ a pop.

GetGamesGo.com
 
January 26, 2014  $9.99

http://www.getgamesgo.com/product/xcom-enemy-unknown

backs out of the room slowly...  

Link for mods is dead.  I'm going to start X-com Unknown for first time.  Any suggestions for very desired mods to XCom Unknown? 

There are no must have mods if you've never played before.  As great as Long War is, it is going to totally frustrate anyone who isn't really prepared for it, and hasn't learned (mastered?) the more basic aspects of the tactical battles.

That said, depending on what kind of cosmetic changes you like, there are some mods that improve/change the look of things, but again, they are not necessary.

That was one of the best things about EU, it was very playable after the patching.  Balanced is in the eye of the beholder for the most part, but if this is really your 1st play of the game I would stick with Vanilla on Normal or Classic depending on your tolerance for difficulty   And of course Iron Man.  Always play Iron Man.

Ahh, I don't believe there are any unofficial patches, it's Steam only isn't it?

I don't have EW yet, but whatever version Steam gets you to on just EU seems to be just fine.  Granted, some people complain about any number of things, but you kind of have to actually play the game 1st to know if any of those things are really that annoying to you.

I do love what the Long War mod has done for the game, it makes some things better (and some things arguably worse, or if that's too strong, different), however, the vanilla game does everything pretty well too, and while more options, more missions, more this, more that, is good for longevity, it isn't really necessary for the 1st time player to bother with.

Learn the vanilla game, enjoy it, and then, if it starts to feel stale, or feels too lacking, poke around for mods.

Yes.  And as long term player of TES games/ skyrim, I can attest that the unoffical patches are excellent - and well worth installing.  Steam hasn't removed them, so far.  And I expected steam would.

Well this sucks... no more Xcom expansions (coop and mod support NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!) There is a patch coming. (only bad thing on that is it will delay EW Long War but they do have tools ease the transition.) (and no more Civ 5 DLCs/expansions) 

I have played something like 150 hours mostly in ironman, and i can tell you that there is no way to name a save file.

The only way to tell one game from another is by the marker that indicates game number.

So lets say i play my first game without ironman mode then all the saves i make along the way will be marked Game:1, then i start a new game and make a save all those saves will be marked Game: 2 and so on. Because i restart ALLOT(to try to get soldiers with best possible stats and best possible map) i had like 80 something game saves.

About the mouse. To try and help you i must know the following things: What mouse do you have? Does it have a software? What sensitivity you have set in Windows, in game, and in mouse software?