Sorry for being unclear.
I was recommending after a cult is terminated and an alien communicator is researched, that missions begin popping up, involving coordinates occupied by hybrids and sectoids, which are reaching out via the communicators trying to repair the now damaged cult. After all, its a big hole in their plan.
This mission would be a bit easier than ufos, and more importantly, easier to reach with dragonflies / hummers, since it would be a static mission instead of a speeding ufo.
As for the mission content, perhaps a small bunker with plenty of hybrids, better armed (and protected) than normal, perhaps a few moderately well armed sectoids, and items that expose elements of the hybrids. Genetic alteration equipment, and other stuff, which can then be used to track caravans. After all it feels like there isn't much reason to track said caravans, other than a mission popping up.
One of the reasons I'm recommending this, is the likelihood of getting promotion 3 seems really uncertain before the invasion, and being invaded without rockets, fighter jets, or larger carriers seems like a nasty game over condition, and fighting to get these up post invasion, even by a month is a little frightening of a prospect, but i don't know how harsh the invasion is the first 3 months in xcf.
I almost wonder if the requirement for promotion 3 should change, as requiring a live alien capture when you have no fighter jets, while not impossible, is a little shakey. Especially with how nasty sectoids are now, and how ufos easily outrun any promotion 2 craft
Perhaps the requirement should be adjusted for instead infiltration of hybrids, and interrogation of a higher up hybrid to confirm alien commanders irrefutably? This way one can become ready pre invasion. Much more reliably.
It also feels really weird how of all the evidence, interrogation of literally any alien is the key to promotion 3, not uncovering a hybrid plot, not shutting down a cult and showing how crazy it is, not exposing existence if aliens or alien tech, but interrogation of a live alien. Yet capturing one feels like it would require promotion 3. I don't know what is involved in alien containment but I figure it uses space age tech which is heavily restricted, and it doesn't feel natural waiting to nab a live alien for promotion 3. The tactics readout for promotion 2 also doesn't even mention alien origins, and since the ufo changes this is a little rough to get, even if some show, dragonflies and hummers rarely reach them, and if you do, its a nasty fight. It feels like you need to get really lucky to get promotion 3, and it feels like your goal of termination of a cult doesn't matter, despite the tactics page saying this is what you should do.
At very least, we should have some changes to say what you need to do in the general strategy page after promotion 2, for what we are supposed to do, as for a while i thought research was broken, since you really don't run into aliens in the first 2 years,and if you do, it takes gobs of research to unlock alien containment.
I'm just not sure, it feels like a very shakey, odd, and un-natural transition to promotion 3, and considering how important promotion 3 is, i think it should be made more reliable, even if it was segmented off slightly to where bigger things like rocket launchers, high explosives, and craft rockets were behind additional barriers.
