I restarted 4 times, and i think i'm doing good now (normal difficulty). The hardest part is that you're almost helpless against nations leaving the council if you're unlucky with the abductions. I had to rush engineers and satellites, but the damn things take way too long to build. Almost everything takes too long to build actually, if you contrast it with how fast research is and how often you have to take missions.
On a previous save of that game, i had an A for my 2 first months, but the USA and Australia were at max panic and left the council during the 3rd report (which got me a B). I had to reload and do the first big story mission (i didn't realize that i could already make the key). This reduced panic levels before the report and allowed me to keep the nations. But the problem wasn't that i slacked off, i had satellites and uplinks in the building queue, but 3 days too late.
Story-wise, it's a bit weird that even though you're humanity's "first and last line of defense" (quoting the game), you're only given pocket change once in a while and have to barter to even be able to help the ones who need and want your protection, yet even if you ace everything you do, they can still abandon you at the drop of a hat.
It's like those rpgs where you're the world's last hope against evil and yet the merchants will ask you to pay for your equipment even right before the last battle that will determine if everyone survives or gets killed. Even the whole "uplink" thing is ridiculous : if you want to send and receive data to/from a satellite, you only need an antenna dish and some basic hardware. It would probably cost you only a few hundred $ and take a couple hours to setup or something. (I doubt however that it's a good idea for them to build their antennas under 100m of rock...)
Also i find it weird that they use the dollar symbol for the money unit.(Edit : wait, actually they don't, it's a "§") Are they really dollars (that would be hilarious) ? or are they thousands of dollars ? millions maybe ? It's all very weird and unclear, and while i realize that it's a matter of game mechanics vs realism, part of me isn't satisfied with all this handwaving. I tend to believe that game mechanics can be awesome and realistic. In this instance, it's not like they had no other way to balance the game. I mean, we're fighting aliens, they have a clear technological advantage, so you'd think the big problem wouldn't be "how many months until i can have enough antenna dishes" and "I hope that countries will give me enough cash to save their sorry asses instead of abandoning me because they're freaking out".
I mean think about the kind of budget that goes into a war. Does it feel to you like it's the kind of budget that your team has ? And is it not the most important war of mankind ? How expensive can it be to do maintenance on (brand new) elevator shafts ? So many questions...