The Strategic Limitations of Planet Earth

[P_Owl]

Step 1) Put a base in the middle east to cover Europe, much of Africa, and western Eurasia

Step 2) Put a base in south-east Asia to cover much of Asia, western Eurasia, and much of Australia

Step 3) Put a base in center America to cover both Americas moderately well.

Every time. The order may be different, but to min-max your bases you got to have as little of them cover as much ground as possible. In Xenonauts where your money can be quite tight, this is imperative. Maybe you can put your Asian base a tad bit north to cover all of Russia and build an Australian base, or maybe you can have a dedicated north and south American base, but having more than 4 bases (at least in my experience) is really pushing it, financially. 

Don't get me wrong, this isn't a bad thing; having people new to the genre figure this out on their own is kind of like a rite of passage, but it isn't really all that thought provoking once you figure it out. It's not even the game's fault, we were just born onto a planet that, through all it's positives, fails miserably in adding strategic and thought provoking decisions when it comes to base placement in the XCOM like genre of games. 

Now I'm not saying we gotta change the geography of the Earth for Xenonauts, that would be silly, and spit in the whole "cold war" aspect of the game, but what if as like a new game plus option there was randomized land masses and continent lay-outs. Nothing crazy or lore changing, just randomly changing how Earth looks so that when I do decide to play this game again I have another interesting decision to make instead of following the same basic steps. 

Or you could just remove the base placement mechanic. That would work too.

[Alienkiller]

In UFO ET that is easy solved: Build a Base in every Country or in UFO 2 swimming Bases (Carriers) too, to protect your Founders. Here in Xenonauts is an other Prinicple, but similar.

To have 3 Bases around the World makes no sense. Maybe we get other Options too with better Outposts or so, then 1 Main-Base and 2 small / medium Bases makes more sense. But atm. the Principle more small Bases with Radar and some Fighters and Storage is the best Option.

[Dagar]

FiraXCOM had a setting where it would randomize the money each nation gives you, altering the rationale to satellite coverage in the process (you did not build a base on a certain location there).

Phoenix Point has you starting at a random (?) point in the world and secure territory from there.

In Xenonauts 2, if they get their Cold War plans straight, you could alter the start by having only a few nations that support the Xenonauts organization from the start enough to allow you to build a base (or grant you an accordingly suited facility). That would mean that, to more of an extent than in FiraXCOM, each campaign start with a random seed has far reaching implications on how the campaign goes. If you have to first convince nations that the aliens are real, earn their trust and a good standing with them to build a base, that will also have an influence on where you want to do which missions. But to my knowledge, how exactly the strategy map is going to play and how the Cold War theme comes in is still in the concept stage (which also has me worried slightly that it might get dropped because of time and money constraints, which would be a shame).