It turns out to be a great strategy, as it requires only one cheap Technology (Meld Recombination) and a meld cannister. Then someone told me its a good idea to rush a MEC in March and I decided to give that a try. I ran 2 successful campaigns rushing Carapace armor, and chopping my first MEC around July. With the alloy from 2 UFOs you should have enough for your whole squad. Its cheap too, costing 15 alloy per suit of carapace. The +3 HP granted by Carapace Armor will often save lives as both Thin Men and Floaters hit for 4-6 damage, which is likely to kill un-armored soldiers. It takes the same amount of time as Beam Weapon research, and upgrades the whole squad, rather than just 1 or 2 soldiers. Captured plasma weapons cannot be equipped until you research the corresponding plasma technologies, which take a very long time.Īrmor is a much quicker upgrade. You need to acquire 3 different Beam technologies to equip lasers on all soldier classes, and that won’t happen till the end of May at the earliest.

I didn’t like either of those strategies. The first few campaigns I tried rushing Lasers and then rushing captures to try to get plasma weapons. I’ve tried many different opening strategies for EU/EW.

Xcom 2 plasma rifle