O.o
I made a similar personal mod as well and I have almost exactly the same rank names. I have:
Rookie
Squaddie
Operative
Senior Operative
Agent
Senior Agent
Commando
Specialist
Great minds think alike yes?
Gah I was hoping to find some detailed information on how ufo detection and missions work. Despite numerous playthroughs I must admit to still not knowing how exactly it works. Not that it's really needed if all you need to do is shoot 'em down as they come. The wiki wasn't particularly informative on the subject.
So anyone here knows how it works exactly? From what I gather the regular ufos you detect (wich vary in class) are mostly there just to be shot down and don't carry out missions, while the ones that do carry out missions cannot be detected. I also gather that the aliens stop sending abduction missions after certain satelite coverage is achieved. Ufo with a definite mission that I have been able to detect however are the ones trying to shoot down satelites, wich only pop up if you ignore the regular ufos (wich I suppose means the regular ones might have a scout mission).
I haven't really payed attention to the amount of alien missions (terror and abductions) per month. There's probably at least one a month, but are there more? I also assume the ufo objective in the hyperwave intel report is flavor text, as I don't think I've seen them carry the mission out if I ignore them.
Hypothetically (and extremely unlikely, it's hard to fail at safeguarding the skies) if you were to lose a bunch of satelites where the aliens were previously no longer abducting, would they start doing so again?