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Next guide has quite a few of nice advises (spoilers beware): http://www.manapool.co.uk/xcom-enemy-unknown-classic-ironman-strategy-guide/

Although I don't get one of them:

Always time Satellite Uplink facilities so that they finish by the end of the month. There is no point buying them if they wont finish before the end of the month, wait until next month in that case.

What's a point? If you wait till next month for Uplink, then it will take 14 days to construct and 20 days for satellites for this uplink, thus you wouldn't be able to provide satellites the same month.

Any ideas?

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  • Related, but not a dupe of: gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/89534/…
    – agent86
    Commented Oct 31, 2012 at 21:26
  • 1
    You can build satellites, when there is no uplink for them yet. "No uplinks" is just a warning, that you may ignore. Besides, allegedly there are Council Request, when countries ask for satellites and launch them by themselves, without using your uplink (I've never seen such a request myself though).
    – vartec
    Commented Oct 31, 2012 at 22:54

1 Answer 1

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Part of the problem with building facilities is that you're tying up resources that could be allocated elsewhere. When you start building, the funds are deducted from your account immediately, but the building takes time to construct.

If you can't finish a satellite facility before the end of the month, you've taken a chunk of change out of your account that has no benefit for the current month. You can't launch new satellites and get your money's worth out of your investment before the new month rolls around. At that point, you'll have more cash available.

Therefore, it's possible that you could get some sort of benefit out of these resources by allocating them differently in the short term. Maybe a bit of research will complete, and you can devote those resources to building something that finishes immediately, or perhaps you'll get hit by something you're not expecting (loss of an interceptor, a council request, etc) and can use the cash to deal with the evolving situation.

Also note that one of your assertions is incorrect - you can build satellites without uplink capacity. There's a warning on the build screen for the satellites, but you can ignore it if you wish. Therefore, at the start of the month, you can start building both the uplink and the satellites, and launch them in the same month.

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  • wow, thanks a lot! I never really read that warning, just took it's red nature as a prohibition! Thanks, that will affect my gameplay a lot! Commented Oct 31, 2012 at 21:19
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    @SergeyGrinev, yeah, it looks like one of those things that should stop you, but then it doesn't :P You can also kick off several sat production projects concurrently - you don't have to wait for the first one to complete. This is kind of limited in utility if you're only building at the beginning of the month, but still worth noting.
    – agent86
    Commented Oct 31, 2012 at 21:22

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