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Balancing Out the Panic

That title may sound like a funny way of putting it, but ultimately the whole point to the game is managing the Panic Levels of the Member Nations so as to lose as few as possible, and when you put it that way, well, Balancing Out the Panic is really what you are doing!

There are a number of ways that you do this, but not all will be fully within your control...

Missions - Assigned & Special

Basically as you scan you will trigger a selection of different missions but you have no control over where they are located save for being able to select between the three specific locations for each mission. With any luck at least one of them will be a high-value area under high panic, but with bad luck several or all could be, which means while you get to lower the panic in one country, it ends up increasing in the other two.

Then there are the Special Missions that you get handed by the Council - they can be a bit harder and a bit more involved, but they always end up removing a large chunk of panic from wherever they are located.

Satellite Launches

Launching Satellite coverage over a country has the immediate and instant effect of lowering Panic Levels, and that should be one of the go-to options you choose when you have very high Panic Levels on some of the countries that do not have Satellite coverage - but this only works once per country so bear that in mind.

Because of that limit it is a good idea to hold on to your Satellites or build a few extra and only apply them to high Panic countries. If the country is in the blue, don't assign a Satellite until it is higher in Panic Level so you reap that bonus.

Bear in mind though that to do this you have to get aggressive on building the Satellite support facilities, and you should build the Satellite Nexus as soon as you can, since it allows you to control up to 4 Satellites as opposed to just 2 from the Uplinks. Once you reach the point of having full Satellite coverage for all nations though, you may want to seriously consider replacing Ulinks with Satellite Nexus facilities as that will allow you to free up some space on your base for other buildings, like extra Labs and Workshops (which should be built adjacent to each other if at all possible).

Remember that the more Satellite coverage you have, the more income you receive from the Council at the end of each month.

Placing Interceptors

While this has a less stellar impact than placing Satellites, when you provide air cover for each region you do gain slight improvement in Panic Levels as well as gain a reduction in how rapidly their Panic Levels rise. This is especially true for regions that have experienced UFO activity.