PyRoT Posted May 23, 2012 Share Posted May 23, 2012 This should be easy to implement. The price of a scientist, engineer or soldier could be based on their skill. Apocalypse had skill ranks but salaries were the same. Either their accumulated skill, or initial level. It would not be linear so you would have to pay a premium to get really good employees. But if you could afford it, then you would benefit from faster research, manufacturing and better soldiers. It should be very expensive to get top of the line people but worth it if you can afford it. If you can't afford it and get the top people, you'd obviously cripple your overall efforts. Thoughts? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gorlom Posted May 23, 2012 Share Posted May 23, 2012 scientists and engineers doesn't have varying skill and doesnt look like they ever will. (assuming me recalling Chris expressing he is not vry fond of the idea is correct) My initial reaction is "wont this be hard to blance?" But considering the planned implemention of the soldier hireing system should alreay limit supersoldier hireing. It would cost you a bundle to get the good ones (since you would be needing to hire all the ba ones to find the good ones) so it already does what you want to acomplish with your suggestion without the varying salaries. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PyRoT Posted May 23, 2012 Author Share Posted May 23, 2012 scientists and engineers doesn't have varying skill and doesnt look like they ever will. (assuming me recalling Chris expressing he is not vry fond of the idea is correct)My initial reaction is "wont this be hard to blance?" But considering the planned implemention of the soldier hireing system should alreay limit supersoldier hireing. It would cost you a bundle to get the good ones (since you would be needing to hire all the ba ones to find the good ones) so it already does what you want to acomplish with your suggestion without the varying salaries. Interesting, although my hope was to revamp the research / manufacturing part of the game more so than the combat. I wonder why Chris would be against it, I thought it was quite awesome. Made it feel more like a real base / system. Although I guess since this X-COM is world based, you would be getting the best of the best scientists anyway. Still, would be fun. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arturius Posted May 23, 2012 Share Posted May 23, 2012 Will their salary increase along with skill increase? If yes that would give us very high personel cost in the late game when every person is a specialist in their field. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PyRoT Posted May 23, 2012 Author Share Posted May 23, 2012 Will their salary increase along with skill increase?If yes that would give us very high personel cost in the late game when every person is a specialist in their field. I mentioned in my first post that this could be either way. However, I think that since these scientist are top in their field, they probably wouldn't need increasing skill over time. If skill did have to increase then I think it would be ok to keep the initial price, or at most, only increase their salaries but less than hiring someone of equal skill (this is not unusual for any company). It would add the dynamic that you need to let people go and/or replace them with cheaper lower quality recruits to keep costs down. But I'd prefer skill not increasing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thothkins Posted May 23, 2012 Share Posted May 23, 2012 Scientist skills were something I enjoyed in Apocalypse and would really like to see here too, Howeverm putting my li'l devil's putfit on...I suppose at the end of the world, you're not only getting the top scientists anyway (so there's little variation in their skills at that level) and the money simply isn;t that pressing an issue for them (considering the cost of failure). I think there was a much larger corporate feel to the Apocalypse game that meant you had to prise researchers away from other places. At least until the big waves of craft appeared anyway. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashman Posted May 23, 2012 Share Posted May 23, 2012 All.i.remember is having to hoard engineers from day 1 else I never had enough. It was a cool idea but made stuff fiddly and added a tonne of micro hiring firing transferring to get the balance right Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thothkins Posted May 24, 2012 Share Posted May 24, 2012 I suppose it's personal taste. It's something I enjoyed at the time, as I felt it added a realistic component to the resource management. You could just pick any old scientist and you would still have got to your goals. But you had an option to do better than that if you wanted. normally I'd agree that there should be a decent sized pool to choose from. However, thinking about a cold war world facing invasion, with funding nations naturally torn between hoarding their own resources and funding Xenonauts, perhaps good help is genuinely hard to find. It assumes that even the worst scientist or engineer in the game is still towards the top of their field, capable of dealing with reverse engineered technology. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gauddlike Posted May 24, 2012 Share Posted May 24, 2012 It assumes that even the worst scientist or engineer in the game is still towards the top of their field, capable of dealing with reverse engineered technology. Or it shows that every 70's scientist is equally out of their depth looking at anti gravity drives and weaponised plasma. All the apoc system did for me was made me check the available roster each time it updated, hire anyone with better skills than my lowest and fire my lowest. Repeat next time, and the time after. There was no real tactical or strategic choice there. Eventually you ended up with everyone over 98 (or whatever your personal threshold was) anyway. Rather than worrying about individual skill levels you are only concerned with living space, research space, and numbers of scientists at the moment. For me there is no real gain in adding to that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thothkins Posted May 24, 2012 Share Posted May 24, 2012 Or it shows that every 70's scientist is equally out of their depth looking at anti gravity drives and weaponised plasma. I'm a glass is half full kind of brainiac recruiter All the apoc system did for me was made me check the available roster each time it updated, hire anyone with better skills than my lowest and fire my lowest.Repeat next time, and the time after. yeah, that was what I liked about .......it. Hey the 'it' got caught between the widening gulf of our viewpoints on this one There was no real tactical or strategic choice there. It fitted in with recruiting only the better soldiers and allowed you to research and manufacture more easily. So, there's an argument that it enabled you to enhance your game strategies by having more knowledge & better equipment. Additionally, it made your base a living thing* and focused you a little more on just pushing a few buttons to learn or build things. * I also really enjoyed the differing base sizes throughout the city. A feature I would love to see back in the game. ' I am sorry Commander Gauddlike. With property prices this high in Manhattan you'll just have to launch the Chinook from the Window Box.' Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gauddlike Posted May 24, 2012 Share Posted May 24, 2012 It fitted in with recruiting only the better soldiers and allowed you to research and manufacture more easily. So, there's an argument that it enabled you to enhance your game strategies by having more knowledge & better equipment. Compared to a system where you only hired the number you wanted and the skills were even? You only had more or better stuff compared to not doing the research and manufacture. If apoc had not had skill levels it would have removed the fiddly little hire cycle and not have made any difference to your research. The number of people you hire and house would be the deciding factor, not the skill levels. Some other games had skill level or bonuses to some types of research/manufacture. Those made it more interesting and gave you choices to make. Just hiring the person with the higher skill isn't much of a choice. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thothkins Posted May 24, 2012 Share Posted May 24, 2012 Compared to a system where you only hired the number you wanted and the skills were even? Well, I didn't say it was perfect I know I don't have a strong argument when I have to press the previous page button to see what I was babbling on about I agree that it's a concept that you could take a lot further. Hooking it into geographical specialities for example that provide research and manufacture bonuses dependant on funding nation for example. But it was a start. If the choice was between scientists who are identical, or scientists with some differentiation then I'd take the latter. removed the fiddly little hire cycle and not have made any difference to your research surely having the skill levels affected the time taken to complete projects, so presumably it had some impact. It did add some variation depending on how much you were willing to pursue it to get the perfect research teams. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gauddlike Posted May 25, 2012 Share Posted May 25, 2012 You need to look at the whole sentence to get the sense of your second quote. You missed quite an important section from the beginning of it. The point is it made no difference over a system where everyone had the same skill level apart from some extra brainless management. Skill levels are one of those things that could be nice if it is done well. Having individual skills in (rough examples) xenobiology, physics, or weapons research rather than a set skill level for everything means you have to make a choice on who to hire or which project to assign them to. Having a research skill of 98 is always better than a skill of 88. That isn't much of a choice at all if you have to pick one. Different wages may make some difference of course but they would have to be very different to make the decision mean anything. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thothkins Posted May 25, 2012 Share Posted May 25, 2012 I think it's one of those things we're not going to quite agree with each other over, although i think we both agree that there's plenty of room for improvement. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gauddlike Posted May 25, 2012 Share Posted May 25, 2012 Yeah you can always improve a system, I do feel that the basic one IS an improvement over apoc though Either give the player a reason to have to decide between two scientists or keep it simple and let the money and time be the deciding factor. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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