I wish engineers could manufacture items for sale and make profit

I have to really disagree. The economy in the original xcom was what was broken, because after a month or two neither resources nor money was ever a concern. Crash sites gave so much money you never had to worry about it. Yeah, you could manufacture for profit, but it's not like you really needed to.

In Xenonauts, on the other hand, you have to think about what you're doing with your money. You didn't, and that's why you got into trouble financially. You actually have to consider whether its worth hiring extra scientists to get new techs faster, or whether you're better off expanding air coverage or building more advanced weapons. That's exactly the sort of decision you should have to make.

If manufacturing for a profit were an option, they would have reduced the money from other sources (like crash sites) so you'd simply be forced to do it.

I agree 100%, but:

in OG you didnt lose funding this easy (on veteran at least), so between that and all other "exploits", not 2 months for sure NEVER, but halfway thru game yes, you could swim in money, and I didnt even have to manufacture for profit like you indeed.

You are right when you say that I should thought what to do with money, but the game punished me for playing like in xcom, when here the rules are different (Im kinda ok with it being different, but at least they could have put it somewhere!)

Basically I had to learn the hard way, and I REALLY DIDNT AND WILL NOT START THE GAME ALL OVER for this, because its frustrating at the least having played like 30 hours and see that everything in the big picture that I did was wrong.

Manufacture for profit is no the solution nor the problem, I also think is a cheap exploit, and Im against it, and you are right that the balance of having that option will force you to actually do it.

What I say is:

- give the player the ability to EARN somehow SOME money, and that of course shouldnt be "free" but an option to choose from: whether I profit, or I use it, just like in xcom (without the money breaking details that with discuss about)

examples: alenium and alien alloys. They just CANT worth what they worth. Its, for me, a very very very poor logical decision.

Make them be value, as money AND material (although they already are as material, you just have to do a LOT of ground missions to have enough to spare, but anyway, with vanilla values, its utterly impossible to make profit out of anything).

- preventing to lose founding in my game experience is the most diffcult part of the game, to not lose founding (THE ONLY funding source) in the vanilla game makes you play (in my opinion) in a very, very linear way. Its impossible to focus on ground mission and keep up with the tech, while aiming for air superiority and global coverage. its simple not possible money wise.

And I will simply copy paste myself, because even if I replayed knowing this, this is actually something that I think ADDS to the game:

"SO alenium for me now values x10 to make in-game money, and overall alien items almost x3 to make ground missions profitable. And you know how that turns out? that encourages me to recover crash sites instead of just click-bombing them (boring, 50k average against 200k otherwise)... which encourages research and making better weapons, tanks and armours, which encourages to try them in battle... see the circle there? JUST LIKE XCOM did, AND I cannot exploit selling alenium! because theres not that much, AND I need it".

cheers!

I agree 100%, but:

in OG you didnt lose funding this easy (on veteran at least)

Ok, two things. First, the dificulty settings in the OG were broken. So unless you used a third party patch of some kind, all difficulties were really beginer (This is why TFTD is so hard. people complained that even on superhuman the game was too easy, so begginer in TFTD is harder than Superhuman would have been in XCOM:EU)

Second, there's a ufo mission in the OG that if you didn't shoot down the apropriate UFO's before they reached their target's borders, you'd have a strong chance of automaticly losing that countries funding permanently. Source

So you could lose funding in an extreemly unfair way in it.

A lot of people seem to think that because it`s Earth against Aliens that money should be no option, or really easy to come by. I think this is a mistake. Unfortunately, it is the way of societies to be rather selfish and by the time it realises it shouldn`t be, it`s too late.

It comes as no surprise to me that some nations give little cash and others give more and some none. If they don`t get a return on what they spend, after a while they`ll give you nothing. Some societies will hope that they can ride on the cash of richer nations and richer nations often want to pay for their own internal selfish. Then you have corruption.

I would think any real life leader of a Xenonauts campaign would find he has more trouble getting money from Humans than getting blood out of the Aliens!

Ok, two things. First, the dificulty settings in the OG were broken. So unless you used a third party patch of some kind, all difficulties were really beginer (This is why TFTD is so hard. people complained that even on superhuman the game was too easy, so begginer in TFTD is harder than Superhuman would have been in XCOM:EU)

Second, there's a ufo mission in the OG that if you didn't shoot down the apropriate UFO's before they reached their target's borders, you'd have a strong chance of automaticly losing that countries funding permanently. Source

So you could lose funding in an extreemly unfair way in it.

I actually played TFTD first and yes, that game was super hard, cant remember how it went after I played OG though, in any case I dont have the less idea of that mission, but even in that case, yes, is naggin little... detail that could cause you great problems. I am talking about the big picture here, which I think is far more... mm... grave? than having an isolated unffair occurrence during OG.

Facts are facts my friend, and despite every little thing we can discuss, xeno's economy is very limited, and far more straightforward than in OG. You have NO choice, nor control given the game mechanics, and, if you roam the boards, you will see that this is in fact a problem to a lot of people. But never heard a complain about how enjoyable or permissive OG was (IMHO, its far better to be able to have money and decide by yourself whether to exploit it than not, and you DONT need profitable manufacture in xeno to fix that). TFTD with all of its diffculty, broken or not, WORKED (OG at least for me, also, and like a charm). And in TFTD it leveraged mid game, the rough difficulty, by allowing you to catch up technologically and swarm the battlefield with soldiers.

cheers

If you have never heard any negative comments about the OG economy then you haven't been looking very closely.

Every time this discussion starts up again there are people who feel that manufacturing for profit was great but also plenty who feel it detracted from the game and made a core mechanic (the funding nations) irrelevant.

Chris was one of those who felt the latter to be true and as it is his game that was reflected in the way it was designed.

It is one of those topics that is purely personal preference so always gets quite hotly debated.

Fortunately Xenonauts has enough modding options available to satisfy both camps nicely!

You have choices when it comes to economic management, and the OG's economy has been pretty soundly criticized on these boards. The original XCOM went too far with money being trivial and making the funding nations completely meaningless, Xenonauts leans a bit too far in the opposite direction.