So I have beaten Long War twice on lower difficulties but now want to do an impossible run. I had always taken Egypt as starting country for boost to air sustain, but I keep reading that Quai D'orsay is the best on impossible to help reduce panic and generate cash. Thoughts?
France Quay d'Orsay is universally agreed to be the best starting bonus, period. It's not just the panic defense (though that helps a lot), it's the extra scientists and engineers that help you snowball faster. Other bonuses are more fun, but if you're looking to minmax, you go France.
People also forget about the 40% cheaper intel scans. This adds up a good bit over the course of a run. You need a minimum of 14 scans (the first is "free") to locate Exalt, and you need to scan about twice a month, costing $150 per month. So you save at least $420 in scans over the course of a campaign. It's not huge compared to some of the other bonuses, but its a nice juicy cherry on top of everything else.
For comparison, Special Warfare School and Roscosmos, two pure cash starting bonuses that pay out over a similar span of time, yield $1720 and $1700 in total savings, respectively. So you're getting a quarter of these bonuses from intel scans alone, on top of faster research, faster engineers, more panic defense, and even more cash from corpses.
Quai would still be one of the best starting bonuses in the game without this. I really don't know what they were thinking when they designed Quai.
Oh awesome thank you! Is there a research order that is considered meta for early game as well?
Xenobiology and Alien Materials into Alien Weaponry for fast laser is the super-standard, you grab Xeno and AM to get early requests, then you go for laser -> adv laser. From there you grab some air tech and armour and you free to go. Easy, incredibly reliable, you gain access to decent weapons early and you get laser cannons for your planes.
The other strat is to go for a Gauss Rush, there's guides for that, it's pretty fun and it's not hard to pull off if you're confident you can push trough a bit longer without new weapons.
In both cases you need to avoid the only pitfall of Quay d'Orsay, that is blindly accepting all requests and finding yourself without resources to continue, but if you're experienced with the mod you should know more or less what you can give up.
Optimal research order is usually considered to be Gauss Rush, but Lasers is easier for beginners. MEC Rush is also possible.
Quai is pretty much the S+ tier starting bonus. Then S tier would be Special Warfare School, Cadre, and Wealthy Benefactor. The reason for these three is that they are the three best North American starting bonus, and North America is the best starting continent. The only downside of Quai is that you don't start in North America, and you want to expand to NA as soon as possible (it should be your second country), but it can be difficult to defend two continents that early. There is also a risk that the aliens infiltrate North America if you start anywhere else, which significantly hurts your campaign.
Quai is a somewhat more advanced starting bonus though, as it requires good decision making on how you will use your corpses. For a beginner, one of the NA starting bonuses may be easier to play.
I usually go with the US Special Warfare School start. The lower prices save a ton of money over the early / mid game. Since I play with the Van Doorn in March mod, my first officer comes online pretty quickly.
Plus, it lets me get a jump on getting the North America bonus so I get cheaper planes. Starting in the US means I'm 1/3 of the way there. All I need is enough money to build a Sat Uplink and two Satellites, and I'm in good position to be ahead in the air game by the end of the first month. Selling absolutely everything from the first couple of missions makes this very possible.
I do this instead of Quai D'orsay because I don't hire soldiers (it's part of my headcanon and another way to challenge myself). I only get soldiers from mission rewards and Council requests. As such, I need every soldier I've got to be as good as they can as fast as they can, which means getting Squad Size 1 ASAP. Each additional soldier on the team means another body getting mission experience, which means my entire barracks promotes faster. Having an officer means each soldier gets passive bonuses and extra actions earlier. And since I'm not hiring soldiers, I also have to manage fatigue spirals due to a limited barracks - and the first officer perk helps with that.
So the Special Warfare School does a number of things:
- Jumpstarts the air game with cheaper planes and monthly maintenance costs via "buy three, get one free" math
- Fast-tracks officers, squad size, and overall gained XP
- Helps me manage the upcoming summer fatigue spirals
- Saves lots of money in the early and mid game
- Fits my headcanon, so lets me get deeper immersion into the game
France is probably the strongest, America is also reall, the interceptions are better, and its a 3 country continent that lets you get the continent bonus early.