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[Iduno]

So as others have said: max out your brainers asap. More brainers mean better stuff, better stuff means fewer deaths, fewer deaths mean better, more experienced hands.
For a lot of the stuff you'll want better manufacturing as well, the main base can't house enough runts, if you also want all the neccessary research buildings and those sweet medic buildings (most of which have brainer space as well) that you'll want to get your gals back on their feet quickly.

If you sell your starting 5 hellerium (you can produce more), and any non-stunning weapons (keep bats and handles, sell early-game swords - you'll have better ones before you need them), you should get 1 brainer very early January. I can usually get 2 more at the start of February if I've been doing well in easy missions, then about 2/month after that. They're expensive, but they also get you points, which increases your long-term income. You'll need a second prison pretty early, but ransoming common enemies (tough guys/gals, church neophytes, nurses, etc.) is fine and profitable.

Take every "save a sister" mission you find (extra gals), probably every temple raid (easy when you know where enemies will be), and dark sacrifice (poorly-armed enemies with interesting loot and sometimes a gal). If they're too tough, run (take what you can). I think your gals only gain stats when they've knocked out or killed an enemy (not friendlies), so doing every mission you can with 5 or 6 gals (early game) is important. Pogroms aren't too bad, because the mutants can fight, but don't take them on until you're sure you can fight. And more difficult enemies have better loot/knowledge to interrogate them for.

If base defense missions are difficult, try to put all of your burrows (and the upgraded animal pens) and barracks (and upgrades) right next to your hangars and airlock. Those are the only places gals spawn, and hangars/airlock are the only places enemies spawn. You don't want half of your people on the other side of the base and half fighting.

But most of the difficulty seems to be related to time. There's the easy base defense against nurses and drones now in March-April, Doom Guys (from the video game) start showing up after a while, then mercenaries (mutons), bases, star gods...

Also, try to build/hire on the first of the month, or close to it. You pay upkeep for the entire month, even if you don't have use of the people/building until the next month.

[MCreeper]

Turns out, you can meet some reticulans as early as first year. First april "Distress call - shipwrecked gal" gave me two reticulan hybrids with molotovs and bandit knives.

[Rolan7]

Oh yeah, I wonder if that's new to J15 because I got it too in my personal game.  Might have even been April for me too.

[Iduno]

I found 2 with nice laser weapons in the first few months in J14. It seems semi-common as maybe a scripted encounter. But then you just don't usually see them again for a while.

[Rince Wind]

It is just RNG I thing, just like some factions can disappear for a long time.

[Chiefwaffles]

Well thanks for all the advice. Just ended my third playthrough which went significantly better. I have also learned about the magnificence of expendable attack dogs, ideally next to the lift and hangars. I went a decent bit past the doomguy raid (which I only lost one gal to) but ended up stopping because I dropped the ball on codex research and just messed up in general with research.
Side note, I love the mortar so much. I raided a neophyte bootcamp with it. I just dropped a shell in the middle of the facility and pretty much killed or panicked the extreme majority of their guys immediately. It was glorious.

Still not sure as to balance brainers and production. I had a decent amount but by the time I had stopped (about... 2.5 years in? Maybe?) I had only just gotten enough brainers to cap the starting lab. I'm just unsure in general how to afford rushing brainers fast enough while also improving my income.

[Rince Wind]

Spoiler for the succesion game: I maxed out the lab (+mess hall) as soon as I opened the save, in Juli of the 1st year.
And we had a costly loss, otherwise I think my predecessors would have maxed the brainers earlier (only 3 slots were open).

More brainers allow you to take on more/more difficult enemies earlier, those are important for research and might give good loot. Engines are always nice, and you'll probably loot more Slave A.I.s then you need.

[Iduno]

Still not sure as to balance brainers and production. I had a decent amount but by the time I had stopped (about... 2.5 years in? Maybe?) I had only just gotten enough brainers to cap the starting lab. I'm just unsure in general how to afford rushing brainers fast enough while also improving my income.

Luckily for you, brainers gain you points for everything they research (mostly for interrogations?), which slightly increases your monthly income and also your infamy bonus at the end of the month. You should be able to cover your monthly maintenance and wage costs just with infamy bonus, so other sources of income are less important. If you bring back most enemies alive, you can make a bundle (partly because you keep needing to ransom captives). Runts aren't really worth hiring more of until you want to make x-grog or chateau.

If you don't buy anything but brainers and bandages the first few months (3-4), you end up with a good number of them. In my most recent game on the middle difficulty, I'm at 13 brainers at the start of June, and just started building a person lab (bit costly at 950k, but projects are starting to take too long to research). Also, 3 prisons because the other 2 kept filling up. You also get a feeling which stuff in your inventory you'll have more of (mutant meat, soylent, hellerium, low-end weapons) that you can safely sell off.

Edited to add: I also usually keep research at 1 brainer less than excellent, so if I get a good research roll, it actually helps.

[Aoi]

So I just came out of a few missions that made me wonder...

The first one gave a report all hostages taken, yet I got the Murderer title on one of them. Evidently setting somebody on fire and letting them surrender counts as killing them...?
Another mission had one kill but I somehow managed to loot two dead bodies.

I got a Reticulan ship in early June that landed me a pair of lasguns... kind of galling though, as despite my attempts to take them hostage, all three of them sort of accidentally died with one punch to the head, each.

Corollary: Assaulting a Large ship with only two gals in July is a bad idea.

[Iduno]

Another mission had one kill but I somehow managed to loot two dead bodies.

Sometimes people miss with guns and shoot their friends. Or a civilian killed someone.

I got a Reticulan ship in early June that landed me a pair of lasguns... kind of galling though, as despite my attempts to take them hostage, all three of them sort of accidentally died with one punch to the head, each.

Stun rods/cattle prods can't kill. No damage also means enemies don't stay down very long, so starting them with a pocket las-charger or self-charging laspistol (don't need ammo, and do small enough damage to help get hostages) can help.

I love that reticulans have very useful knowledge, and also complete garbage. I'm waiting to interrogate them until I've gotten some of the boring researches from other hostages.

[Robsoie]

On my new run, i'm only 4 or 5 months in and after several months at +1500 points every months, i just got one at -1000something for unknown reason (as i still interrogate non stop people and mass produce(set to infinite i mean) and auto-sell x-grog as every months)
The month that followed i got to +500 score fortunately while doing nothing different (out of going after a military ship that i knockout-ed lots of enforcers and military police and that to my surprise didn't got me that much negative point at the end while still getting a positive score on the month).

I really wonder what happened at the apparently very bad month (despite nothing seemed out of the ordinary), i guess that's one of those case of those "big negative score landing ufo (excavation mission i think) that happens out of your radar and reach and that you can't do anything about it" , fortunately i didn't had another one on the month that followed.

[Aoi]

In other news, I can go on wholesale slaughter, punching robots to pieces with my bare hands, taking people hostage, and generally making an enormous mess of paramilitary forces for like 200 notoriety.

I got 700 for burning down a barn with no casualties.

Another mission had one kill but I somehow managed to loot two dead bodies.

Sometimes people miss with guns and shoot their friends. Or a civilian killed someone.

Ah, for some reason I was thinking that you only get end-of-mission looting rights for units you kill.

-----

Okay, exactly who are you supposed to kill in the Eurosyndicate Elimination mission before the timer's up? Or do you basically have to knock out everybody to get out of the map before they do their satellite strike? Answered my own question. It's 'kill 'em all'. Alas, I spent 12 turns playing cat and mouse with a tank until the thing ran out of ammo(!) on turn 28. And I still couldn't kill it before the timer was up.

[Iduno]

Has anyone else noticed Dioxine reduced the number of Humanists on the Humanist missions? Maybe a little bit too far?

I've been getting 2-3 white hoods in missions that used to have 4-5, plus other higher-tiered people. The missions are barely even training, and I'm getting massively reduced amounts of mutant alliance tokens.

[Rince Wind]

I've been having 2-3 for a while now.

[Iduno]

Were you under J14? The changelog mentions a bunch of (non-specific) rebalances, and I don't know if this is one of them.