XCOM is a fun, but unforgiving series. For friends of mine who've entered the franchise from a more casual gaming perspective, they find it difficult to handle the losses inherent to XCOM, as they can be strategically crippling in the long run if not controlled adequately. This guide is meant to increase accessibility to XCOM without sacrificing the fun of the tactical combat and the powerful feeling of strategically managing your forces.

[ANGRY STATIC] by Jarvy-CA[jarvy-ca.deviantart.com]

Savescumming is not a replacement for skill. It takes time to see how a mission can pan out differently, and multiple attempts can set you back over an hour if it continues to go badly. As a rule, stick your weaker troops to higher cover, give defensive bonuses to frontline troops, and try to kill what pods you trigger in one turn. Ideally, saving frequently should only protect you against time lost to the Under-The-Avenger bug and other glitches, and not against your own mistakes.

There are also times where a situation will pan out poorly, regardless of what you do. Sometimes, a soldier will die and there will be nothing you can do about it. At this point, it's best to take the loss of one man, recover the body if possible, and evac quickly and safely if not. Remember: you're out there to complete a mission and get out; no objective is worth losing everyone for.

Even then, sometimes you can do something about it, but the economy of your time dictates that it's better to take a loss than to be stuck on a mission, doggedly trying to spare one person. You know the value of your time better than I do, so this is up to you to decide, but often losing one low- to medium-ranking troop every once in a while is natural. It's XCOM. It evokes a feeling of loss that is central to completely experiencing this game.

EDIT 4/15/19: There has been an official response regarding savescumming!
https://twitter.com/XCOM/status/1116793107713069056

I find there are a few good times to save on the Avenger:

• After completing and before launching a mission. It's good to have around four of these saves, creating them one by one, then saving over the oldest one in the list when I have need of a fifth, and so on. I usually use one save per stretch on the Avenger (between deployments), initially saving over it when the Skyranger gets back and then progressively saving over it as I make more and more deployments, changes, or scans until finally saving over it before deploying on a mission.

Example: I get back from Operation Clone Toe. I save over Game 3, Save 1. I change Joe Schmoe's outfit, scan an intel package, and get a new soldier. I customize him, set his skills, and then save over Game 3, Save 1 again. Operation Goat Choir requires me to deploy. I save over Game 3, Save 1 before going into it.

In the base game, saving before deployment lets you go back and rearrange Menace 1-5's constituents if the squad composition turns out to be wonky. In Long War 2, saving before entering an infiltrated mission leaves you the option of going back to before mission launch and boosting infiltration, possibly reducing the amount of enemies on the field (though keep in mind that enemy presence cannot be reduced below "Extremely Light").

• When the Avatar Project meter is filled. I usually create a separate set of saves for this where I try to make the best of the 20 days given to reduce the Avatar Project. One is at the beginning of the 20 days, so I can redistribute my efforts as needed to salvage the playthrough. Then I put one at the beginning of every mission, like usual, but under a save file separate from the standard four.

These can be as numerous as you need them to be, and if necessary, you can go back to the previous standard strategic saves to start moving towards that black site or story mission before the doomsday clock strikes midnight again.

This is where things get frisky, boys. I currently have seven tactical saves. When I need a new one, I save over the oldest one. Exceptions include when I've uninstalled a mod and I'm seeing a notification that says the game may be unstable without those mods, at which point I create a new save until I know how it affects the game.

But anyway, back to business!

• Save at the beginning of the mission. This provides a clean-slate checkpoint that you can come back to at any time. Most missions are done in 10 turns or less anyways, so going back to the beginning isn't necessarily bad. It also allows you to dash with your first moves, letting you recover the item that much quicker without risking permanently breaking concealment and triggering on your first turn. Granted, dashing is irresponsible and should be used sparingly, but it's less punished with, well, savescumming. I usually don't save over this one until I've finished the mission.
  
• Before hacks. I have a special save I call "hacksave" dedicated purely to this task because it's an odd mechanism that's very XCOM: make the hack, get a powerful reward. Lose the hack, get a powerful punishment. It's good to create this save early in your turn because each action performed by an allied soldier will reroll the dice for that action, possibly yielding different results for the same hack.
  
• Before using Reaper or Serial. You know it well: the feeling of not killing with that first slash and wasting a four-turn cooldown ability. It was a Muton that did it to you, wasn't it? Of course it was. Real talk, saving before starting a chain allows you to rethink that chain multiple times, possibly letting you see new combinations of damage for maximal output.
  
• When moving a soldier so that a third or more of what they will be seeing is currently blocked by fog of war. There's no real metric for it, you'll eventually get a feel for when a movement (especially melee) will possibly reveal another pod of enemies. Try to gauge when this will happen and preemptively save so that you aren't caught unawares by a new battery of threats.
  
• At the beginning of each turn when there are more than five active threats on the field. Five's a good tipping point from "manageable" to "OH GOD EVERYONE'S DYING FROM SHOTS THROUGH FULL COVER". This allows you to see how the turn pans out with your best efforts, and if it doesn't go well, you can employ more damage control-esque options (like flashbangs, freeze grenades, etc.)
  
• Before breaking concealment. You want to make sure that ambush goes well, and that everyone's shooting when cover's blown. Seeing how the ambush goes this turn, then gauging whether it's one of the better outcomes you could've had lets you decide if this turn was the right time to reveal yourself.

More situationally, you may also want to save before a critical shot. However, you should not rely on savescumming each shot, because your positioning should already be such that you have a decent chance to hit the enemy without the enemy having a decent chance to hit you.

These are general guidelines that work for me; if you need more contingency saves, then you do you. You can also strip them down as much as you like; just having two saves that are made at the beginning of a mission can give you a "Bronzeman"-esque mode where you accept what happens everywhere else, but you have protection against gamebreaking bugs!

Thank you for reading! What are your habits in savescumming? Leave a comment below and let me know! I may just have to integrate it here.