X-Com and TFTD work more smoothly with fixed cycles. Somewhere in the range of 10k-20k cycles should be OK, but you'll have to experiment to see what feels right to you, as it's a bit subjective.

Also, the tactical mode has an options screen where you can change map scroll speed.

Thanks, turning that down to the lowest setting solved the problem.

Unfortunately I just lost the game and can't get around it without restarting. I missed a terror site early in the month (it was almost exactly half way around the world from me and as my sub arrived it vanished) on the last day of the month I took out an alien base... then two hours before midnight on the last day of the month another terror site spawns. End result? Even though I just took out an alien base a few hours earlier, my funding is cut and the game ends because I failed to get to the terror site before the month ended. That sucks 🙁

I think TFTD is prone to that. Same thing happened to me my first attempt.

I hate the terror missions on TFTD, they're even harder than in "UFO: Enemy Unknown". In too many occasions the score I got was so low I felt I should have left the aliens kill everybody witohut intervening. These missions also cost me my best men. Depending on the game difficulty and how much money you have you can ignore them.

If you don't respond to terror sites, the affected country may pull its funding and allow aliens to set up a base (in their territorial waters in the case of TFTD). Of course you can offset the loss of funds by building and selling alien tech, but it kind of sucks when your former allies enter into a "pact" with the enemy. The terror mission aboard the cruise ship often annoyed me... it seemed like there was always one last panicked alien holed up in a cargo hold or passenger room that took ages to track down.

Ditto. This also happened in "Enemy Unknown", but since the maps were smaller it was less of a problem. As for the funding issues, a simple trick that works in both games is to never destroy the closes alien base to yours. Then you can attack their supply ships every single time. And since the have "landed" they are undamaged, which means you have more stuff to sell when you're done. On the minus side, this also means their full crew is alive when you arrive.

it was almost exactly half way around the world from me and as my sub arrived it vanished

That's weird. Terror sites shouldn't disappear if a sub is heading for one. I used that to coax the missions into daylight. Send a Barracuda at them to delay for a few hours until it's daytime and then send the Triton.