My first game was Classic Ironman, and things went pretty well for a while. I got a free satellite at some point during the tutorial and even managed to survive for a few missions afterwards! Then all my veterans got wiped out on a bomb disposal mission, and my next two teams of redshirts got wiped out in the next two missions. It was pretty much game over.
Since then, I've started probably 15 new games of Classic Ironman, skipping the tutorial, and in a few of them I've made it a few missions past the first UFO crash before giving up and restarting after calamity fell. However, I never seem to get a free satellite in these non-tutorial games.
I don't specifically remember what triggered the free satellite in the tutorial, so maybe I just haven't gotten far enough. Or, in some games, I'd already been building one, so maybe it wouldn't give me a free one since I didn't have extra satellite uplinks. Or maybe if you skip the tutorial, you just don't get one at all!
I'd like to know if you get a free satellite if you skip the tutorial, and if so, what conditions have to occur for that to happen.
Best Answer
You get a free satellite either by going through the tutorial or by just playing on Normal. You don't get one on Classic and I imagine you don't get one on Impossible either.