Getting there, I'm beginning to kick over the anthills and capture commanders, 8 more alien bases to go. Have started the research on the waspite commander atm. Will leave the 2 ethereal bases to last. After a bit of testing there, I think what happened in my previous mission was I wasn't facing the waspite commander square on, as I'm able to heal a gazer soldier of his fatal wound while he lies stunned on the ground. I need to build an Avenger but I'm waiting on getting mass cannon weapons to equip it with, quite powerful but range is less than a battleship's weapons by a bit.
So in conclusion build the avenger and capture a live Ethereal commander is all I really have to do I think before I can attack Cydonia but I wanting to wipe the aliens out as much as possible before then. Like I've $72 million in the bank and still have 10 funding countries near the middle of April 2000 so I have time unless you can lose 10 countries in 1 month. I've played games where I've lost 2 or even 3 in a bad month but usually that's early on and is about as bad as it gets. One other reason to clear all the remaing alien bases is that it will get rid of the almost non stop supply missions I'm getting atm, see attached picture.