Being required to extract operators one has lost while playing Maelstrom right now is an ultra boring, unecessary gameplay element, because extrating an operator can be done outside of Maelstrom, and at the easiest difficulty level. What we would therefore suggest is to either:
Get rid of the extraction completely (ironic, we know), and replace it with the operator being unplayable for several MaelstromsRequire that operators lost in a Maelstrom be extracted at Critical difficulty level, to make this a little bit more of a challengeAdditionally a (shorter than usual) time limit might be added to the extraction runRequire that operators lost in a Maelstrom can only be extracted inside a Maelstrom run, as part of a side mission (takes the most effort to implement, but could make extracting operators & deciding to extract to avoid potentially losing an operator really meaningful)
Ah, yes, and don't make the level at which the extraction occurs random: What we do is of course to simply run through every level that come before the extraction, and we extract immediately once we have our operators out. Therefore, just make it always extraction in the first level, or always e.g. the third, with the requirement that the objectives in leves before need to be completed.
IQ Mini-Rework