What’s a benefit of timing Satellite Uplink facilities so that they finish by the end of the month

xcom-enemy-unknown

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?

Best Answer

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.

Related Solutions

The benefit of launching a satellite “a few days before the monthly report”

The effects of launching a satellite are:

Immediate panic reduction in the country you launch the satellite in.
Monthly income from the country you are providing satellite coverage to.

Waiting until month end to launch satellites is the most efficient way to manage panic without losing out on the funding increases from satellite coverage.

If a country is already at max panic and something happens to panic that country again, there is no effect. So by waiting, sometimes you can have a country at max panic "absorb" some panic that you would have needed to deal with if you launched the satellites earlier.

There is no funding benefit for an early launch. As long the satellite is launched before the council report at the end of the month, you get full funding from that country when the council gives its month-end report. The funding increases easily offset any maintenance costs.

The maximum number of countries that can leave the XCOM project at the end of the month

In the ini files, there are the following settings:

PANIC_DEFECTIONS_PER_MONTH_EASY=1
PANIC_DEFECTIONS_PER_MONTH_NORMAL=2 
PANIC_DEFECTIONS_PER_MONTH_HARD=3 
PANIC_DEFECTIONS_PER_MONTH_CLASSIC=8