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Id really like a subpage on the Geoscape dedicated to managing your economy. Id could just be a budget to help the player get a sense of their economic situation: ................................Previous Month: Current Month: ___________________________________________________ INCOME: - Funding ............................................(predicted value) - Missions - Sales ___________________________________________________ FIXED EXPENSES: - Building Upkeep - Salaries - Aircraft - Vehicles ___________________________________________________ VARIABLE EXPENSES: - Constructions - Manufactoring ___________________________________________________ BALANCE: FUNDS:

There have been lots of threads where we talk about how things feel, or how we're investing "a lot" in X, but not many threads featuring actual numbers. In the interest of having actual numbers for balance discussion, I started a new game and logged every event/expense/income on a month by month basis. These numbers were from 19.2, hence me not posting them in the current Geoscape thread. I will be doing this again for all my future playthroughs. Summary: Build 2 bases, each with 3 foxtrots then start investing in ground upgrades. I deliberately made some sub-optimal choices (first base in northern China, second in USA). The only aircraft I built were 6 Foxtrots, with three at each base. I never lost an aircraft, and generally spent money as fast as I got it on the way to getting up 6 Foxes, then started investing in ground combat until I unlocked Marauders (which I didn't quite get to before 19.3 came out). Explanations: "Air" includes hangars, aircraft, and air weapons. "Ground" includes soldiers, gear, transports. "Infrastructure" is everything else. September: Expenses: Air 350K (66%) | Ground 0 (0%) | Infrastructure 175K (33%) Income: Recovered from missions 326K (39%) | Starting income 500k (61%) UFO Contacts: 7 Light Scouts UFO Killed: 6 Light Scouts Ground Missions: 7 Light Scouts October Expenses: Air 500K (42%) | Ground 0 (0%) | Infrastructure 700K (58%) Income: Recovered 332K (26%) | Monthly 921K (74%) UFO Contacts: 4 Fighters, 5 Scouts, 7 Fighterx3, 1 Bomber UFO Killed: 3 Fighters, 3 Scouts, 2 Fighterx3, 1 Bomber Ground Missions: 3 Scouts, 1 Terror November Expenses: Air 750K (66%) | Ground 160k (14%) | Infrastructure 225k (20%) Income: Recovered 676k (41%) | Monthly 964k (59%) UFO Contacts: 5 Fighter, 4 Fighterx3, 3 Corvette/escorts, 2 Corvettes, 1 Bomber, 3 Heavy Fighter UFO Killed: 4 Fighters, 4 Fightersx3, 1 Corvette/escorts, 1 Corvette, 1 Bomber, 3 Heavy Fighter Missions: 3 Terror, 1 Corvette, 1 Base assault Comments: I missed a lot of UFOs while my second wing of Foxtrots was finishing production. December Expenses: Air 0k (0%) | Ground 840k (62%) | Infrastructure 525k (38%) Income: Recovered 1054k (54%) | Monthly 899k (46%) UFO Contacts: 3 Bomber, 8 Heavy Fighter, 4 Landing Ship, 1 Landing Ship/escorts, 2 H Fighterx3, 1 Cruiser UFO Kills: 2 Bomber, 6 Heavy Fighter, 2 Landing Ship, 1 Landing Ship/escorts, 2 H Fighterx3, 1 Cruiser Missions: 3 Terror, 1 Landing Ship, 1 Base Assault Comment: Skipped a terror mission because it was late Dec and I still hadn't unlocked plasma explosives for lack of appropriate ships. In related news, terror missions are now penalized for skipping but not for aborting.

hi guys,i play with the V18 and after some hs of playing and in memory of the old EC i have found some guess to expose.. 1)possibility to recover and sell alien weapons/dead aliens?it might help the founding.. 2)balance the founding..the my main problem is that..with the current money i barely build and keep a 2nd base..not to say the equipment for my soldiers..i fight the alien elite forces armed with plasma cannons and hvy plasma with a pair of lasers and a courple of jackals armour because all my moneys go in keep expenses,impossible to build veichles and some other things that make the game more deep and less frustrating.. 3)in alien bases the enemy see me through walls and gates and fires dozens of hits everywhere..destroying everything even other aliens!!the alins never go down of ammo?i think is a bug.. 4)absolutely needs missions to retake lost countries!i feel strange seeing a superpower like USSR or USA leave me alone only after 2 months..and the drop of founding is too fast.. 5)make the reapers a little faster?it would be interesting and a bit scaring 6)more maps and randomness of them?and possible soviet weapons without modding the game?i have try a mod for soviet weapons and maps and the game crashes..i have to reinstalling a back up.. for the rest the game is good a bit of balance and is perfect..thanks the developers!

I think the balance might be a bit off there eh? First month in, I had my base in israel (perfect place, beautiful country ) covering europe, africa and the mid-east.. After a month of very intensive ground missions, both russia and indeo-china or whatever it is quit the xeno project, the USA reduced funding by about 60% and south america as well. I don't think this should happen after just one month.. Also, I figure now, if I had devoted all my resources to getting up another base in the USA on the first month, I'd have been hella rich when it got operational, because almost all of your money comes from ground missions, and I'd have been able to do more of those EDIT: I think I might have understood wrongly, russia didn't quit, it just didn't change its funding. Maybe. I'm still totally unclear about it from the interface. it shows as white and has 0$ written under it in the screen, while other countries such as the USA show red and two numbers- the ammount reduced and the total new monthly founding pay I don't understand from the interface. I think it quit tho

How can I prevent alien pacts with founding members? I mean, in geoscape I can see that funding is slowly decreasing each time I mouse over the continent. But it is not clear to me which are the factors that increase or decrease the possibility of an alien pact. In the last 2 game playthroughs, I went on for a couple of months without problems, then I lost a continent on the beginning of the third month. The strange thing is that in both cases I was building a base on those continents; but the bases were still not operational. I was building hangars for the chinhook and the interceptors; while there was living room space, no soldiers were yet in the base. Also no operational radars, but 2 were being built. If I'm building a base on a continent, shouldn't be that continent more eager to increase its funding? Instead they left the alliance. I think that either 1)there there is something that is not working quite right, 2) or something that I have not fully understood. Moreover, how can I find alien bases? I've patrolled a lot on these continents (using dropships and/or interceptors), but I could not find alien bases. Am I doing something wrong?

There should be a chance (albeit small one) to regain lost regions. Down enough sausers, kill enough aliens, clear out enough alien bases, add some spesific missions for this purpose, but some possibility to win a region back would be cool...

Over on the "How to post bugs" thread, Chris posted as an example... "ie, "[V7.5 - Ground Combat] Aliens have infinite health!"" Combining that with the new test map that was billed as more of a search mission... and you have... Sebillian Predator! 1 alien on the map. larger than normal health/APs Sebillians are already aggressive, close combat creatures so that's OK Tactics to be determined by the AI that's being worked on... A little back story flourish of these guys being genetically modified/ chemically enhanced experimental critters. ...and there you are. A Predator style mission designed to sow fear into a funding nation. Added dev points for making them available in the hot summer seasons of funding nations. Obvious really...

Ok. Here's my problem: Random events take away cash I earn a month in advance from shooting down ufos leaving me with very little extra profit. Terror missions appear where I can't reach them so I'm ...d. Even though I am now much better at air combat and nearly always win, a couple of times with no damage to my planes I still lose the odd plane because fighter pilots are stupid and especially because they just fire missiles and won't release them one by one or on my command - yes, I've read the wiki. The aliens are very good at sending fighters in currently against my forces which they know I can't fight i.e. MIG either in support of the scouts i.e. running interference or just to tie up my F17s./dropship Often the scouts end up over water so while I shoot them down because leaving them alone is bad, I only do so reluctantly because the bloody planes don't have enough fuel. If you cancel a combat due to lack of fuel, you end up in a loop of running from the fighters/ufos, if you stay and fight you just lose the planes. You simply can't afford to lose anything because money's so tight. Staff costs are horrendous, base rents are horrendous and I assume there is a condition that means you can't just run in the red for a short while. You can't manufacture for cash and ... you've guessed it, the costs are horrendous and the benefits...well, I can't afford to find out if there are any. So...apart from going backwards, how do people make the cash to stay afloat and perhaps build other bases? I got 2 because I knew that would give me an extra level of control and I do need 3 at least just to be able to try to respond to terror alerts, because the idea of someone dropping a nuke on New York (for 6 aliens?!) makes me think that perhaps...surprise, surprise, I'll end up with no money - again. After a while it gets very boring and irritating and it's not as though I'm even trying the hard levels, I'm trying the easiest one so I can get a lot of exposure to events to see how they stand up (invisible NPCs appearing, etc) but it's now got to the stage where I look at the geoscape and enjoy the music (which is good, incidentally). So, back to the title. How do I make cash so I can do something?

Caveat: I realize we're in alpha, and this is a balance issue, so I don't expect things to be perfect, yet. That said, I just want to see what your thoughts are on the subject. So. Taking some other players' advice from another thread, I started a new game (prev build...10.2?) and immediately started creating my 2nd base right off the bat. It worked great! By the end of the first month I have two operational bases. Only one Chinook team, but 2 F17s and 1 MiG in one base, and an F17 and a MiG in the other. Not too shabby! I have Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East pretty well covered in the east, and much of North America and South America protected, as well. So! Fancy shmancy, at the end of the first month, I get a slight budget increase! Lots of happy countries! (Oddly, North America went down, but several countries in Asia boosted their contributions.) So things keep going pretty smoothly. I get a Chinook team in my 2nd base, build a couple of more hangars, and I'm pretty comfortable. Through personnel hiring and construction I burn through my non-maintenance budget pretty quickly, but so far I've managed to keep a small buffer in case of emergencies. (I did just lose a couple of jets, so we'll see if I manage to find a way to replace them.) However, now I've researched everything through Heavy Laser weapons, and have managed to work up a few alien grenades and a couple of sets of wolf armor. I can't really afford to do much more. On my next play-through I think I'll cut back on hiring scientists, since clearly my research outstripping my ability to pay to build equipment is a sign that I'm getting ahead of myself. Obviously the budget itself is designed to be a sort of soft guideline as to how much stuff the player should be trying to accomplish. But it's tricky, because if you don't spend a lot of money fast to build a new base, you find yourself in a downward spiral that it's hard to get out of; and the game is so effective of generating a stressful environment that the player always feels the need to be pushing forward and getting new stuff to try and combat the escalating alien threat. I guess my biggest worry is that any kind of relatively minor setback (losing a chinook full of troops; losing half of your jets, being unable to respond to a significant portion of UFO sightings due to a lack of resources) may just force the player into an endless series of re-loads of previous saves. As the game has an iron-man mode, that's clearly not how the game is intended to be played. We're supposed to cut our losses and keep trucking. So far I've been able to do that in this play-through, but if I lost even a one more jet than I currently have, I think I'd have to just re-load and try again. Should the player have access to more money? I see pros and cons there. Should the player's ability to rush into research be limited? I could see this working. (For instance, don't let the player have more than X scientists initially, therefore the fastest the player could get to certain technologies would by Y-time, and by Y-time player should have enough of a budget surplus that he'll be able to afford to build equipment without breaking his bank.) See what I mean? I don't know the best way to go about this. I do expect that veterans have simply played the game enough to know what works and what doesn't. Maybe limiting the option to shoot yourself in the foot as much might ease entry into the game for newer players?

In this build I seem be given the maximum allowable number of soldiers/ scientists or technicians when pressing the button next to them on the personnel screen. My resolution has always run the text a little on this screen so that I can only see the tens figure, howwever it ahs alwasy incremented 1 at a time. Image my surprise when I bought half a million worth of rookies by mistake.