Issues with mision generation

[sheaim]

Third save in a row went into the bin:

1. Entirety of the first two (!) months went by with a single Strange Creatures mission, which was a Muckstar fest (11 muckstars counted in an open field with 0 cover. Any move made, no matter the save-scumming ended with both agents dead without taking more than one shot). All other missions were cult apprehension missions with nothing in-between, and those dropped pitiful amounts of useful weapons.

2. First month went with almost all missions being Strange Creature missions, and those being horde missions with big mofos (spikeboars, muckstars, zombies) with no "easy" missions in-between. Cult missions giving little respite, with a single AK dropping and nothing else, not even Raks.

3. first month missions were anything BUT CA missions, all human missions being homicidal maniacs.

I'm not saying there's something wrong with the mission generation, but man am I unlucky.
Never had this issue going THIS hard in any previous versions.

I know, I know, get good.

[psavola]

It's just bad RNG.

Further, Environment Alert missions don't incur any point penalty for aborting, so you definitely have to figure out when is the time to take your chances and when to run. While you need something for Promo I and later as one of the paths for Promo III, you're in no particular hurry to get these during the first month or two. I think I usually end up aborting almost all these missions (unless you get the single/few enemies variant of the mission) during the first two months, because there are just too many enemy units (or too tough ones) to cope with with a car. Until after you obtain a helicopter I have a decent anticipation of being able to deal with at least some of them.

While cult missions do incur point penalty for aborting, it's only rarely you need to abort outright. I suggest going in the night to reduce the chances of cultists seeing you straight out and reaction firing at you if they face you. Research non-standard weapons and get 'Shotgun' right away. That's a significant improvement on start of game shotguns. Because these shotguns usually deliver enough punch to kill with one hit, you don't need to worry that much about reaction shots. You need little else to begin with (though I usually have a light sidearm for longer shots; glock is sufficient for this). I use very rarely the arms loot of early cultists, but they do spawn some stuff that is useful, particularly double-barreled shotgun stuff (especially useful against early-game zombies).

Early game homicidal maniac missions are actually extremely lucky for you, because capturing a maniac alive gives you a kevlar vest (and a lot of points), and I don't think it makes sense to spend the effort researching kevlar vests otherwise before you have progressed on the research and put up some research infrastructure.

[sheaim]

Funnily enogh it was an Enviro Alert mission that got my fourth save going.

Found a rock where the bloody Megaworms couldn't get me and plinked at them until all were wounded and proceeded to expend all my ammo.

If one of my agents didn't have 120 sanity at that point I'm not sure I'd make it lol.

As for the shotgun thingy - I know. It's just in these 3 saves there was precisely nothing going right for me.

[Stone Lake]

IMO, first months performance is basically meaningless, unless you're aiming for fastest HQ (~mid-97) or something. The RNG can screw you over several times with either bad safehouses / slow military envoy, bad outposts / slow osprey, bad promo 3 prereqs (caves / deep ones), bad alien gear ( multitool), etc.
Perfectly hitting all of those is pretty much impossible - and the game doesn't expect it to be the case. It doesn't matter much - you aren't going to outtech aliens unless you really know what you're doing - getting perfect RNG ain't the part of it.

[Rag]

Found a rock where the bloody Megaworms couldn't get me and plinked at them until all were wounded and proceeded to expend all my ammo.
As for the shotgun thingy - I know. It's just in these 3 saves there was precisely nothing going right for me.

Cheesing 2x2 enemies by standing within 1x1 paths will never stop feeling good and I always look for such possibilities when facing them even if not needed
I didn't realise the shotgun was a big upgrade over the small shotgun as i tended to only use it at close range where the small shotgun still worked, should give it a proper try at some point

On my current run I somehow got an alien scout ship landing in January 1997, I expected to need to savescum like mad but the combat knife was ridiculously effective and the main difficulty was just sending the car ahead of time to reach its landing site. You'd think it would be a massive boost to my campaign but outside of an early alien containment facility I can't use anything from it for like 1-2 years. I got a second landing site around August 1997 but sadly I lacked a proper backup save to reach it that time. RNG giveth and taketh, but usually taketh

[psavola]

On my current run I somehow got an alien scout ship landing in January 1997, I expected to need to savescum like mad but the combat knife was ridiculously effective and the main difficulty was just sending the car ahead of time to reach its landing site. You'd think it would be a massive boost to my campaign but outside of an early alien containment facility I can't use anything from it for like 1-2 years. I got a second landing site around August 1997 but sadly I lacked a proper backup save to reach it that time. RNG giveth and taketh, but usually taketh

Getting an alien corpse early (say, in the first half of 1997) is good because that allows you to research various (rather costly) things and eventually build alien containment. Then you can capture aliens and start interrogating them. In the early game this is most important for getting a deep one and therefore unlocking the underwater missions. It might also allow you to get an early capture of sectoids if you chance upon, for example, military shot down a ufo mission.

[Rag]

Getting an alien corpse early (say, in the first half of 1997) is good because that allows you to research various (rather costly) things and eventually build alien containment. Then you can capture aliens and start interrogating them. In the early game this is most important for getting a deep one and therefore unlocking the underwater missions. It might also allow you to get an early capture of sectoids if you chance upon, for example, military shot down a ufo mission.

As if by fate you said this and the military just shot down a UFO and I got a navigator, I might actually manage to make a Skyraider in the first year compared to my first campaign when I think I skipped the Skyraider due to getting promotion 3 around the same time...

Edit: ...which just happened again as I forgot you only needed *one* of the promotion 3 prequisites not all of them, so once again I don't get to use the Skyraider due to the skyranger / Kitsune coming at the same time. Feels bad.