That was me in the last post. I've been messing around with vehicles a lot. I've really been liking the hover car approach in the first couple weeks. At first you don't need anything but Janitors against the scouts and probes but buy up all the Prophet missiles since these will run out fast when you start using them exclusively. I also buy all the elerium and Rendor plasma guns I can get my hands on but save these for the next week.
Always set cars and bikes to cautious. They seem to do just fine at launching missiles while dodging and cautious makes them a lot less likely to get killed. The interceptor is convenient as a troop transport but aside from taking more hits and having more space, it offers no advantages over hovercars and costs over six times as much. I usually sell mine to get more cars. A single car with two janitors focused on a probe will always destroy it, so if you want one for research, be sure and turn off one of the missile systems after it takes the first shot and make sure you only have that car focusing on the probe (probes are the pill shaped UFOs that don't drop aliens). Be sure and raid all the temples at least three times in the first week so you can get enough money to buy Warhawks when they become available. I try and get 5 cars right off the bat and 6 by the end of the week.
My reasoning on cars vs. bikes is this: Cars only cost slightly more than two bikes, offer twice the weapon hardpoints, and have a 2x2 equipment space that can equip a shield or other useful system. AFAIK, targetting systems don't help missiles at all but putting a shield or missile evasion matrix in there could be a nice precaution. Also, Micromanaging 6 cars is a heck of a lot less hassle than 12 bikes. While bikes are noticeably better at evading alien attacks, a single hit from just about anything will kill it.
As far as general equipment is concerned, I alway put the best possible engines in all my vehicles. Also, I like to purchase any and all targetting systems until the X-Com ones become available. I don't think these effect the performance of homing missiles though, so if you have vehicles with guns, put all your targetting computers in these.
At week 2 in normal difficulty, your cars will start getting shot up by the transports and fast attack ships. Fortunately, a couple Warhawks are usually available at this point and they can soak a lot of damage. Warhawks turn like a pig and can't evade for crap, so just set them to aggressive. I think it might increase their ROF and they seem to get to the target a lot faster. To keep your cars alive, switch up to Prophet missiles which have considerably more range and better damage and sell all the janitors. You won't need them anymore. Set the cars to Cautious and they'll almost never get hit due to the superior range of the Prophet missiles and the maneuvering ability of the cars. Trust me on this one. Janitor vs. Prophet means the difference between dead cars and untouched cars once the first manned UFOs start showing up. I usually equip the Warhawks with Rendor and Multibeam plasma and then upgrade all the Rendors to Lineage as it becomes availabel.
At week 3 the prophets may start running out, but you should hopefully be moving up to 4 Warhawks at this point anyway. If the prophet missiles start getting too low, start equipping your cars with Justice missile systems. These are one shot missiles that do a great deal of damage and can be shot from an absurd range. While they won't get as much punch in the long haul, the damage your cars can do by launching one shot and then flying home is still considerable and much safer than engaging with closer range missiles. I have no idea what the UFOpaedia is talking about with the ground target thing. They work just fine against UFOs. In fact it's a lot of fun to watch six justice missiles melt the shields off of an alien bomber class ship while the cars that launched them are already on their way home.
In my current game, I had 4 Warhawks and 6 Hovercars in week 3 and through judicious saving and reloading, I was able to down every UFO up to that point with only a handful of successful alien dropoffs and most of the reloads were due to a ship getting away rather than actually losing a car.
The most dangerous ships vs. cars and bikes are ones with missile systems. As these start becoming more common, you'll want to be careful to only attack at long range with your supporting vehicles and keep these ships occupied with your warhawks and X-Com craft (I wouldn't recommend anything below Retaliator for attacking UFOs although the Bio trans does make a nice troop carrier). I haven't experimented with missile evasion matrixes yet but loading one of these in might make a prophet equipped hovercar viable vs. missile equipped UFOs. I've heard really good things about these.
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