Strategy (Long War)

Economy

Long War's economy is very different to vanilla. While launching satellites will increase your income, satellite spam is not the answer to all your problems like it is in vanilla. Satellite uplinks give only one satellite per uplink plus adjacency and satellites are more expensive, so the cost of increasing your satellite coverage is much higher. The extra income you gain from each satellite is lower, since a country will already fund you 50% without a satellite. Your satellite network must be protected by interceptors, and interceptor maintenance is expensive - in fact it's likely your single biggest expenditure each month. Even with good interceptor coverage, eventually the aliens will get annoyed enough to send battleships after your satellites, so you will need to occasionally replace them. With all of these factors combined, launching more satellites will only marginally increase your income. You can improve this aspect of your income by thinking about efficiency - cover high income countries and cover whole continents to improve the efficiency of your interceptor placement. Prioritising aerospace research will also help, since it will allow you to reliably shoot down UFOs with fewer interceptors and less damage taken, meaning less interceptors needed and less maintenance.

A large amount of your income will come from the sale of alien artifacts. Long War presents you with a lot of missions, which means a lot of alloys, elerium and corpses to sell - chances are you'll have considerably more of these things than you can sensibly use in the early game. While satellites don't give you so much direct income, the extra UFOs you can assault with more satellite coverage will mean more artifacts to sell, and hence more income indirectly.