Semore_Pagne

I'm on Normal at the moment, and my base is in Asia, somewhere in Thailand or Vietnam I think. I was hoping for some mountain or jungle missions, although most of my interceptions have occurred in eastern China and Mongolia. It'd be nice if there was a less ambiguous political view for the Geoscape, to make these distinctions a little bit more discernible.

So I'm about ten missions in now, and I've noticed an unusual frequency of urban maps. In fact, I'd say ninety percent of them have been on urban maps. Granted, I've only encounter the [not] sectoids and space lizards so far, and there certainly hasn't been any exact duplicates, or even a noticeable repetition of sprites, but it seems no matter where these buggers are shot down, they crash in some city or small town. In old X-Com, the maps were determined by where the UFOs landed in the Geoscape, which had distinct, solid shapes decorated indicatively of their terrain. But the Xenonauts Geospace is so topographically ornamented, it doesn't seem from experience at least, there's a way of predicting the biome, or urban density, outside the obvious desert and non-desert appearance. This sort of subtracts the strategy of deliberately engaging the UFO's in order to land the mission where you want it. Back in the day, urban maps didn't occur very frequently, and they added new depth to the experience. Although they were colorful and interesting, you were also forced to approach the situation differently, because the alien locations were far less predictable, and protecting civilian lives (in the even of no cryssalids) gave you a secondary prerogative. But in Xenonauts, it feels like you ignore volumes of these cityscapes to pursue the tradition objective of bee lining for the UFO, which seems wasteful. I haven't had a terror mission yet, so I guess my big fear at the moment is that they won't be distinct enough from the regular missions to charm and intimidate you the way they did in UFO Defense and especially TFTD. Is there any warrant in these concerns, or have I just been a victim of coincidence?

This seems like a good place to inquire this: Can civilians and armed locals be mind controlled by the similar to, yet legally distinguishable from sectoids with psionics? I'm just getting to the point where they're using basic mind attacks, and I'd hate to have to take my UFO Defense Cryssalid strategy of executing all the local arms myself...