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Newbie having trouble with economics


Matti

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I'm playing Xenonauts (Community Edition) for the first time. Medium difficulty. I have read some guides, but economy is giving me hard time. I set up my first base in North Africa where 3 radars cover all of continental Europe, Britain, Ireland, and parts of South America and Soviet Union. As recommended by guides, I waited to 2nd month before I set up second base in North America. 3 radars over there cover all of Central America and part of the South America. Both bases have total 11 hangars & aircrafts of which 2 are MiG-32. In addition I have made 2nd lab and both are fully staffed. In addition both bases have 3 missile sites and dropship. Yeah, I blew all the cash I had on 2nd month. I have raided most of the downed UFOs for better money. On 3rd month maintenance cost is very near 2M which took most of the funding. That left me with about 1M of income. Right now I have $1,25M, of which 2 precision lasers are taking a slice. I'm thinking about making 4 laser carbines for my assault troops (2 per dropship).

Have I done something terribly wrong here? Have I developed bases too much and too quickly? Should I have made do with 1 lab and lesser # of hangars? Is it safe to make a 3rd base or would that bankrupt me? Don't know if I could afford any fighters there. Or am I doing all right after all and money is supposed to be tight?

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I'd setup the second base as soon as possible, so that we can shot down more UFO as soon as possible.
Aircrafts has expensive maintenance. Ask yourself whether the extra craft is worth the extra downed UFO, or whether less crafts will improve your balance sheet overall.

For example I have only one dropship for many months, because the extra team can't assault enough ufo to earn its upkeep.
The only reason we need at least one team is because we need to recover something for the labs and workshops.

I'd also not build defence this early.  Three in each base is not enough anyway...
But otherwise, your situation is not unusual. Money is tight and you need to balance your needs.
 

Edited by Sheepy
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I'd be kind of interested to know which of the guides have advices something like you told us @Matti.
Or at least I wasn't able to find resembling from the Steam-section, for example.
(( Pasting the link down here too just in case, since the hyperlinking on these forums is a bit tricky:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/223830/guides/ ))


((Oh, obviously some spoilers ahead.))

Semi-disclaimer: I've yet to beat this game yet. But I do have previous experiences from the original "UFO Enemy Unknown / Xcom UFO Defence" & "Terror From The Deep".

 

Here's at least my take on the Base+Community-Edition (/X:CE) of "Xenonauts"-economy-tips which I consider quite the "safe"-ways to gets through the first (in-game) year:

1. Each base should have at least (optimally) four (4) hangars: 3 for interceptors (2-agile roll-capable machine-gunners + 1-torpedo-carrier) and one landing-ship.
Only build more hangars if you dedicate the base for the future aircraft constructions.
A single Dropship in each case should be enough to eventually cover the whole earth, since the crash-sites won't disappear (within the 24-hours) once you have a dropship on their way to the spot (yes, even if the dropship take +24-hours to reach there).

2. Whenever you have have enough money (~Mega / 1-million-dollars) build a new base to the most extraterrestrial active-areas; unfortunately since this game doesn't feature graphs like the "Original UFO / Xcom"-had, you 'll simply have to pay attention and maybe write down the reported alien-activity.
The earlier you get the (re-)build the relations with the funding-countries the better chances you have to keep that country founding (well, Australasia can be tricky, but having a base there eventually helps a lot too; it's a very good place to set up a factory-base there at least).

A rule of thumb of to build a base once per a month. But of course if you happen to have extra money, two is also okay too. Try to always have enough money to build at least 1-radar-dish and 2-hangars to the base in order to setup the interceptors to cover that area.


3. Try to aim for the goal of completing all the ground combat.
A lot of times, especially once the bigger UFOs arrive, you can easily get double the amount of the cash-reward you'd get with by just airstiking the crash-sites, and later at least triple the amount (even if the game if bugged and won't auto-sell the Alien-Grenades which are fortunately only worth 200$/alien that carriers then in first place /that is, they only carry a singular grenade to begin with).
Yes, this means you you are going to running hours amount of ground-combat. Yes, you are also going to have a lot of newbie-soldiers who you might have trouble keeping alive.

But I do have a somewhat "cookie-cutter" solution for this:
At least half of the team should be "Shield"-carriers. In fact all my solider with "Strength"-attribute being higher than 60 are automatically on the Shield-role. Rest the soldiers are Riflemen. If a base lacks shield-carriers, practice some "internship" between the bases via solider transfer (provided you have followed the min. eight (8) solider per base rule, that is).
Sure, shield-men cannot vault or are not able to fly with jump-jets (at least in case of Buzzard-armour). But when you are both able withstand 80/160-damage into face but also be able to throw grenades with decent distance, I'd say that is an okay drawback (I mean, you can simply blow up the fences and such with the C4 you hopefully carry around as I advice soon below).

Default outfittings also include but not limited to:
- A First-aid / Med-kit-pack
- Stun / Gas-grenades (primarily to gas campers behinds doors and generally other campers too (especially the Sebilians))
- Shock-grenades (or stun-batons before you get EMP-grenades)
- A C4-explosive 
- One or more Flashbangs (primarily against both door-corner-campers and mind-controlled team-mates)
Always make sure your soldiers have the fully loaded inventory to ensure the Strength-training; this is probably the most vital-attribute in this game, mainly because in this game there is no "cargo"-space; all the items in combat must be carried by the soldiers).

You don't need to worry too much about armours or guns for the first year. Although laser-pistols for the shield units are a nice and rather inexpensive convenience.


4. Radar-coverage-wise start only with a singular radar-dish and increase the range only when you have extra-extra-extra-money. Aim of course to have all three (3) dishes installed at some point to maximize the effectiveness of "decoders" too.

5. "AA-guns" aren't all that important if you are dropping every UFO to begin with.
5.1 Don't worry too much about dropping some of the UFOs into sea / water: Sometimes it simply just ain't worth tailing them until they are on dry-land and should simply just drown for the sake of keeping the funding-country happy (especially when they are bombing cruiser and passenger-ships, or generally polluting the seas in a away or another...)
 

And that is pretty much how I got through the first-year in Xenonauts.
Of course depending on how much money I have and other opportunities allow (E.G. having already radar-covered the whole Earth), extra facilities are welcome and such (optimally the first-base should have 30-scientists and Engineers working 24/7 to provide good progress)), you can simply adjust the advices to your more liking.
These tips of mine just simply suit me the best at the moment for "safe"-style.

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Edited by Pave
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3 hours ago, Pave said:

I'd be kind of interested to know which of the guides have advices something like you told us @Matti

This guide. In geoscape strategy is said setting up second base on first month is risky, so I waited to second month. What comes to # of hangars & aircraft, even with 5 interceptors I could not bring down every UFO that appears on radar: they're either damaged or refueling, and corvettes need at least 2 aircraft to bring down even with alienium ordnance. I take 1 F-17 only against small scout, all other UFO I use at least 2 of them. And there can be 3 UFOs going around Eurasia & Africa at a time.

Real military doesn't use shields, so why should I? My squad composition is 4 riflemen, 2 assault (shotguns, stun batons), machine gun, and sniper. I chose shotguns because of modifier for reaction fire, and those are really useful indoors and storming UFOs. Sniper has reach (if he can get LOS) and I use machine gun to cover the flank (and UFO's door) as rest of the squad explores the map. I don't use grenades in every deployment: frags destroy salvage and gas grenade is useless against androids.

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Research and build better fighters should be your highest priority.  They are both the main expense and main income (ground combat gives some nice boost, but shooting down UFO increase funding forever), so if you can increase their effectiveness (by upgrading and manual air combat), you spend less to earn more.

The guide warns of less surplus, but it is because of increased maintenance.  I don't see how the guide say delay setting up air net.

I find shields useful in this game to absorb damage and provide cover for other soldiers, esp. in early game.  I would only bring one or two, however, because I like machine guns better like you. :) This is why I like the ground balance of this game.  It supports very diverse play style.

Edited by Sheepy
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5 hours ago, Sheepy said:

The guide warns of less surplus, but it is because of increased maintenance.  I don't see how the guide say delay setting up air net.

Let's see...

Quote

Of course this is a risky endevour. At bare minimum you should look at establishing a second base at the start of the second month.

I think about setting up my third base in Korea or Japan. With 3 radars it would cover most of the Soviet Union (parts of the Siberia get left out), all of Indochina, and most of the Oceania. Could kick it off with 2 radars and 3 interceptors. Ground deployments over there would be left to dropper from North Africa. North America has had only little activity, so I could reduce its interceptor capacity down to 3 as well: by moving already bought/built planes to new base in Indochina eliminates cost of acquiring new ones. After that I just need 2 base more in Australia and South America with 1 radar and maybe 2 interceptors each and I'm all set.

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Oh I found the sentence now. I didn't click into the subpages before.
I would read it as an extension of the paragraph above, and thus the opposite of what I think you are thinking:

Establishing 2nd base immediately is risky, because you'd be dependent on income from successful ground combat, but you should try establishing a second base no later than the start of the second month.

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