So after many games of XCOM it appears that some tech items are a bit too strong, especially economic ones and auto-successes (and by extension, the card that refreshes things (UFO Navigation) is strong too).

For economy, if you get 2 of UFO power, Interceptor repair, Elerium, Alien Construction(sorta), or UFO tracking (you can send 1 Satellite or 1 Interceptor and boost it twice, effectively sending 3 for 1 credit) then most rounds you are not very pressed for resources. We can regularly complete a round without feeling under deployed and not need Emergency funding that much anymore.

For auto-successes, here are some examples:

• Get a SHIV and UFO Navigation and suddenly you can complete 2 mission tasks without rolling. A 2-3 soldiers can often clear a mission in a single round without much risk.
• Get a gun and a plasma cannon and you can kill ~2 enemies with zero or one rolls. Now a single Assault can realistically kill 3 aliens invading the base.
• Get both and you can stack on Crises like "limited to 3 rolls" or "the first 2 successes rolled on each mission task are ignored" and still defeat the final mission with 2 or 3 soldiers because you avoid most of the rolling.

Because of this I think we've found the game to be a little bit too easy. (Since moving to hard difficulty we have only lost once, and that was a silly error where the squad leader panicked and went way over budget. We played through the hypothetical scenario where he didn't make that error and we would have won.)

Has anyone else been finding this to be the case? Are the tech cards a little too strong?

Science has always been key to our victories, simply because of how strong all of them really are. There are only a few tech cards that I'm not happy to see on any given turn/scenario. That said, if your science guy has poor rolls, then the game is much harder. If he doesn't get the one that auto-successes science or lets him just build something for salvage, it can make the game pretty rough. Naturally, without the science, the game is much more about luck with the 1/3 chance of successes. But I feel that strength is what makes the science roll so rewarding. Unlike the other 3 jobs, that role has no direct involvement in either the win condition or the lose condition. The nav guy could lose the game with to many UFO's left in orbit, the Commander could lose the game by failing to protect the countries or by picking poorly on the crisis choices. The squad leader could lose by not properly defending the base or by simply failing the Final mission. The science guy has to feel vital to the success of the mission, to be a valuable member of the team, and for me, that is accomplished by the strength of the tech cards.

I do agree that they are very powerful. The UFO Nav is the only one I would really 100% agree is too powerful in general.

I think that's the reason for research and tech. I mad a post about the similarities between this and the computer game, and I had totally forgot about the advantages of tech. The computer game gets much easier as well when you have better tech, even if you are facing off against higher tiered enemies. Also, anyone who has played the computer game can tell you that it's always toughest the first couple of months. Think of it this way, at the beginning, you are facing off against a far technologically superior opponent with basic earth weapons. As time progresses, you start to equip your soldiers with better tools to combat the aliens as your team of scientists reverse engineers the alien tech and proceeds to make weapons and armor on par, and in some cases, better than the invaders.