Oh man, thanks for the soldier squad share, I'm seriously looking forward to this.
Couple things for anyone playing the game that I'd like to mention without any real spoilers:
Prioritize weapon and armor research, you can get the best stuff pretty early if you try.
The random Experimental Weapons can be pretty awesome.
The PSI powers are pretty goddamn OP in my opinion.
I suggest 2 Specialists in your A Team, 1 specced for Medical and the other for Hacking. Hacking is ridiculously useful in the mid and late game, at least on normal difficulty.
And by far most importantly, GET THIS MOD:
Stop Wasting My Time
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=620600092This little beauty removes a lot of the totally unnecessary pauses in the game and speeds up the movement of the Avenger on the Geoscape screen. It also tweaks the soldier movement speed (increases by 10%) which may have in game effects but I've yet to see them. This mod almost makes up for how terribly optimized the game is and is a step in the right direction for the game in general; it does not, however, fix ALL the ridiculous pauses, especially the painful ones from hacking.