[Japo]

Well I think money is indeed more or less scarce until late in the game, specially if you plan to build enough bases to cover the whole planet with radar and have at least three separate squads worldwide, which you should. Without any bad luck or doing anything wrong you can get a tank wasted every two missions, and replacing that is a huge expenditure (waste) that will slow down your development. Specially since as I said four soldiers beat any tank hands down.

Motion scanners are precious, and you only need, like, two (or one if you want) for the whole squad, it's not that every soldier needs one, the same with medikits. As you yourself note, exiting the Skyranger without knowing where the aliens are within ten squares, can be suicide.

The first thing you must do is of course not moving during the first turn. As you have noted aliens haven't moved yet at that point and wouldn't show up in the motion detectors. Obviously the best thing you can do is sit tight during that turn. Your only activity should be killing aliens that you've spotted before ever moving, and deploying smoke at the exit (more on this below).

I wouldn't use autocannons or any other explosive munition to create smoke, since smoke grenades are just fine and take little space and can be carried and used by soldiers carrying other weapons; and autocannons are worthless weapons.

I use smoke all the time, it's essential not to get killed when you don't have cover at every side. It's not true that aliens see through it better than you, you and them are equally impaired by it. It's night vision what's perfect for aliens.

The only nice trick is how you use smoke and your TUs and how you move. During your turn you move into the open (being careful to have line of sight into it so you would spot waiting aliens, not move into their field of vision without you being looking that way, because that would get you shot at). After you're done moving you deploy smoke on your uncovered flanks: this means that during THEIR turn, even if the aliens happen to move closer to you, they won't probably make up for the visual range smoke makes them lose. Then during your next turn you can move out of the smoke into the open again, etc. You control WHEN smoke appears, that way since this is turn-based, that gives you control on WHOM it benefits, and you keep the initiative always. During your turn you move in clear areas (and move in a way that guarantees you the first shot), but during their turn you're covered by newly deployed smoke.

There's a 100% safe tactic to exit the Skyranger with 0 probability of alien snap fire, but actually it can be done with soldiers only, not tanks since they're two squares wide and can exit only straight ahead. Here, numbers are soldiers, the A is an hypothetical stalking alien (facing east), #'s are the "walls" of the Skyranger, and ·'s represent your field of vision:

 ······
A ····
  #12#
  #34#

If you exit straight ahead you enter the alien's field of vision without seeing him, and bang you're toast:

 ······
A ·1·· bang!
  #·2#
  #34#

But if you cross your two first soldiers exit paths and advance obliquely (in this case 2 goes NW instead of 1 going N) you expand your angle of vision, spot the alien first, and bang it's him who's toast:

·······
A··2··
··#1·#
· #34#

Now I know in this hypothetical scenario if it were 1 who exited facing NE (instead of 2 facing NW) he would be toast, but as I said if the alien were that close you would know, that is if you were smart enough to use motion detectors--and wait one turn for him to move and reveal himself.

And in that turn smoke has come into play. First, you know there are no aliens within ten squares, thanks to your motion detectors. Second, when you're exiting, the aliens' visual range towards you is less than ten squares because of smoke. It's 100% safe. Now it's your turn and you can venture out of the smoke little by little always keeping the initiative--opportunity to shoot first during both turns.

Still you need to exit obliquely in this way to go against nearby aliens spotted by the motion detectors. If the detector told you there are stalking aliens on both sides of the exit area... Well obviously you must wait another turn without going forth, until the aliens move randomly so they disable that inadvertent trap of theirs.

But deploying a whole squad out of the Skyranger safely takes many turns after that. In this game impatience kills, it's better to play quicker turns (in gamer's time) moving little by little, cautiously, and reserving TUs to spare. You have to use the little cover you may have at that point (the landing gear), and end the turn with soldiers facing in every direction. You have to decide what cover will jump to each of your soldiers, and in order not to expose them you can't move them en masse, but you have to pour them out in a thin train and group them near the cover. Always running from cover to cover during your turn and deploying smoke in unexplored exposed directions at the end.

And always take into account vision angles while moving. For example turning a building corner in the obvious way can get you shot at:

    ···
   ····
  1····
###····
###A···
###  ··

     ···
    ····
   1····
### ····
###A ··· bang!
###   ··

You must do a slight roundabout from one square apart from the wall.

For the same reason never end a turn just at a corner, an alien coming around it would spot you and shoot you at point blank. Stay just one square short of the corner, and an alien coming around will get into your field of vision without seeing you, and you will get an opportunity to shoot.