Do I need to restart or is the game this difficult?

[Troche]

I am playing normal difficulty and on about day 145 past the first crisis.  All my units have Warden armor and I have a few laser weapons.   I am stuck on a "Terror" mission that is just impossible.  The aliens have well over a dozen units (robots, drone ships and these other giant lizards) that can just about one shot kill me.  If I don't do the mission I lose that region so it seems something I must do.   But the cost is very high as I will lose at least 3 top units doing it.  I can't get anywhere near close to the units with assault units because if I don't kill them and the other units near them, the assault unit will be dead on next turn.   I don't see how I can be behind on research as I have 10 researchers and have unlocked laser weapons.   What is the key to being ready for rapidly scaling alien fights?  All the ones before this were pretty much a cake walk

[Beltorn]

Well, overall, sounds like you're quite a bit behind on tech, you should have Guardian or even Stealth armor already unlocked. 10 Scientists is not even the full 12 man complement for two labs.
As for panic, usually, it's best managed by Interceptor shooting down UFOs a that reduces panic heavily. 

What's your loadout and composition for the mission? Do you have Dragonfly dropship for 10 man squad or are you still on Skyranger?
Do you use grenades? Specifically, smoke grenades to protect from Cyberdisks and drones. Also, Flashbangs to suppress and approach sebilians (crocs)?

[Rakiii]

The "Terror" missions are harder than normal crash sites but you dont need to win every battle and it´s more clever to just retreat sometimes.... but probably not in this case.

Loosing the soldiers is not good but it´s quite common thing there (especially undergeared). You can replace them quite well (with training centre, training,... )

On the other hand you could retreat (drop the mission) and use 100 OP to reduce the tension in that region (if you have/can get 100 OP and use it) to prevent panic going above 100 (it will probably negate panic from the lost terror mission unless you used the button recently). It depends on the current panic level.

Edited April 17 by Rakiii

[Albion]

I´m in Day 158 (on Normal difficulty) and it seems fine. I´m on laser weapons, with upgraded Guardian armor, but I only recently got it. In case you are not doing this, I recommend:

1. Having plenty of medikits. Also, note that medikits have unlimited uses and they can heal you some HP even if you don´t technically have an injury. Always be healing.

2. Use the heavy armor variant.

3. Flashbangs are great when you are just encountering aliens, as it eliminates their reaction shot.

4. Unless you are doing ironman, you can reload from a previous save quite easily    I really try not to lose my soldiers and have to restart the training.

[fusion-waffle]

Some terror site missions can become very challenging if the number of aliens attacking your troops becomes overwhelming.  It is easiest to clear maps without taking casualties when your entire squad can isolate the aliens and pick them off in 1s or 2s. Sometimes a terror site mission can get out of control where you have your 8 xenonauts fighting 8+ active aliens. In that situation, if you stand and fight you will start trading the life of 1 xenonaut to kill 1-2 aliens, and then as you suffer casualties and don't have the collective damage output & TUs to eliminate or suppress enough aliens per turn, it becomes a death spiral.

These "fair fight" situations where your troops become evenly matched or outnumbered by aliens happen rarely outside of terror sites, so they can be a harsh learning experience!

If you recognise the number of active aliens is starting to become overwhelming, it is a good signal to retreat -- perhaps fleeing in the drop ship, if losing the mission but saving the squad is acceptable, or falling back somewhere (ideally behind walls breaking line of sight with as many aliens as possible, some enemies may forget to chase you) where you can concentrate your remaining survivors & attempt a comeback.

Edited April 19 by fusion-waffle