I'm part way through my first playthrough of XCom on Normal difficulty and have unlocked the Foundry project for 'Stealth Satellites'.
The description text says something about it making satellites harder for enemy UFOs to detect. Why is that a good thing? I have interceptors over the continents where I have satellites and if a UFO comes I can normally shoot it down and get a UFO mission, which tend to provide benefits without the costs of abduction missions for example.
This question is almost the opposite of What is the point of using interceptors to attack UFOs?
Anyone do this project and get a benefit from it? Answers without spoilers preferred…
Best Answer
I do not want to spoil the game much, but in late-game you will have certain big UFOs turn up that you may or may not be ready for. These will not be taken down by your interceptors so easily and a few showings from these might even lead to your entire Interceptor fleet getting wiped out or them being just plain useless.
This will cause you to leave some of these UFOs alone without doing anything. This usually has a repercussion of them attacking the satellites. A successful satellite take down will increase panic in the country by 2 points. Again, this may or may not overwhelm you with panic-stricken countries, depending on how well you stand in game.
So when you do reach this stage you want to have those satellites survive so that they do not drive panic up anymore than you want. This is the only reason you would want stealthy satellites.
Personally I would rather have satellites in stock ready to launch so that when one gets taken down I can launch another and get panic reduction in the area. Especially effective if panic is almost maxed out in the area.