Financing the operation

[Gorlom]

No matter what individual feelings on the each of us are on the ability to turn some kind of profit (big, small or next to nothing) on manufactured tech Xenonauts has the chance to be something a little bit grander than just another X-COM clone attempt and I'd like to see that happen.

It also has the chance to completly break the game.

You have the possibility to mod the game after release to do exactly what you want with the exact balance you want. I'd rather not have it in the game at release.

[Chris]

Hmmm - I see what you mean, jkamcmillen, but I think the likelihood of it being exploited is too high.

[jkamcmillen]

I can appreciate you not wanting to have your players "cheat" all the time, however...

I don't see how having a way to tilt the financial scales a little bit would break the game myself. I never went completely nuts with this in X-COM, however I did actually make a base for primarily producing new tech for sale, but I never let that get in the way of trying to succeed at every mission I could.

Actually I found that I couldn't actually properly win each combat scenario over time as the funding from the governments was never good enough and I couldn't stay ahead, equipment-wise of the invasion curve unless I tilted the scales a bit with some kind of extra funding. (How many of you have actually played at anything higher than beginner in the original??? It was tough!)

And I was playing by the rules of combat, much like I was taught myself in the infantry. Most with riffles, a couple with heavy weapons(2 heavy guns + 1 rocket launcher dude) and each had 2-3 grenades to throw to clear out buildings, plus a couple of guys with med-kits when I learned them. Glow sticks, etc for night missions. I always tried to get every man home. As a former soldier myself, I am not overly comfortable with not having at least a chance of doing so. You get a tiny bit attached to these guys. lol

However I guess sort of see it like this; In the original you were a corporation so the economic setup worked, like it or hate it that's what it was. I'm not 100% aware it seems of what this organization is all about. Government agency? Independent company/organization? International agency/coalition ala NATO, etc?

I can rationalize to myself that the reason the game doesn't behave like X-COM and remains in the same "spirit" simply because it's not a corporation you are running, it's an agency of some sort that runs ONLY off the funding from the nations. That would work, however I do miss the original's concept and love the fact that that game was obviously WAY ahead of it's time.

I personally want to be able to make only a minor profit (not for the sake of cheating or focusing only on the economics of the game), but and I won't mod the game to do it. That would unbalance the whole game and would defeat all the work being done by the whole development team. So lets not waste our time suggesting that as I have no interest in hacking the game, just playing it.

An idea; you could have a toggle to allow or disallow making a profit from sold manufactured goods. Call it "Profitable Manufacturing" in the game options menu... Then you can have it off by default and both sides of this can be satisfied. As you don't want to have it as the norm, you could just turn it off by default. Plausible compromise?

[Gorlom]

I can appreciate you not wanting to have your players "cheat" all the time, however...

I don't see how having a way to tilt the financial scales a little bit would break the game myself. I never went completely nuts with this in X-COM, however I did actually make a base for primarily producing new tech for sale, but I never let that get in the way of trying to succeed at every mission I could.

Just because you never did something doesnt really say anything about the rest of the player base. Quite frankly I imagine that to be a rather unique aproach. Either you play without it completly or you exploit it a fair deal more then you did.

Actually I found that I couldn't actually properly win each combat scenario over time as the funding from the governments was never good enough and I couldn't stay ahead, equipment-wise of the invasion curve unless I tilted the scales a bit with some kind of extra funding. (How many of you have actually played at anything higher than beginner in the original??? It was tough!)

That's just poor balanceing in the original then. I don't think you can make assumptions about the balance of Xenonauts from your experiences with X-com. Xenonauts has yet to enter it's balanceing phase.

And I was playing by the rules of combat, much like I was taught myself in the infantry. Most with riffles, a couple with heavy weapons(2 heavy guns + 1 rocket launcher dude) and each had 2-3 grenades to throw to clear out buildings, plus a couple of guys with med-kits when I learned them. Glow sticks, etc for night missions. I always tried to get every man home. As a former soldier myself, I am not overly comfortable with not having at least a chance of doing so. You get a tiny bit attached to these guys. lol

However I guess sort of see it like this; In the original you were a corporation so the economic setup worked, like it or hate it that's what it was. I'm not 100% aware it seems of what this organization is all about. Government agency? Independent company/organization? International agency/coalition ala NATO, etc?

I have gotten the feeling that the organization has it's root in the private sector and caught everyone by surprise when it started to consistantly down UFOs with minimal losses? But I'm not really sure. Whichever the case Rule of Fun (see signature) thrumps realism/explanation

I can rationalize to myself that the reason the game doesn't behave like X-COM and remains in the same "spirit" simply because it's not a corporation you are running, it's an agency of some sort that runs ONLY off the funding from the nations. That would work, however I do miss the original's concept and love the fact that that game was obviously WAY ahead of it's time.

You can edit the sell value in some of the xml files to suit your tastes. It doesnt need to be unbalanced for the rest at release just to fit your rather unusual gamestyle? Another option is to wait for someone else to mod it.

I personally want to be able to make only a minor profit (not for the sake of cheating or focusing only on the economics of the game), but and I won't mod the game to do it. That would unbalance the whole game and would defeat all the work being done by the whole development team. So lets not waste our time suggesting that as I have no interest in hacking the game, just playing it.

So instead of makeing the game fit your unusual playstyle yourself (through editing a text file, which can hardly be considered hacking) you want the game designers to introduce a highly exploitable flaw into the game? Because it is highly exploitable. Unless the game has a living market your profits is only going to be bigger the more you invest in in workshops and engineers. There is no way to counter that by adjusting how small the profit per unit is.. It just changes the ammount of asembly line you need to buy to get the same profits out of it.

An idea; you could have a toggle to allow or disallow making a profit from sold manufactured goods. Call it "Profitable Manufacturing" in the game options menu... Then you can have it off by default and both sides of this can be satisfied. As you don't want to have it as the norm, you could just turn it off by default. Plausible compromise?

Feasable idea by itself. It's just that so many things are suggested to have a toggle option that if you included it all the game menue would be very cluttered with such toggles.

I would suggest that you acctually wait untill atleast the balance phase of the beta before you decide that manufacture profits has to be in the game. Besides I'm sure someone will release it as a mod if you do not yourself.

[Gauddlike]

The main problem with all of the ideas that have "add it as a toggle" on the end is that to do that the devs would need to balance it both ways.

That isn't a dig at this particular one, it comes up a lot because we all play differently and can rarely agree on what makes the game 'better'.

Two options like that means a lot of play testing using both methods to come up either with a system that works for both or two separate systems that switch when you click on that toggle.

If you don't then you have unhappy customers who feel forced to play a certain way because the option they want to use doesn't work properly.

Imagine if the profits were unbalanced towards the end game and you still couldn't make any money, or worse you could get a months worth of funding from a couple of top tier weapons that were built in a day.

The opposite applies as well, if you decide to play without those profits and can't build up your base or do anything because the game was balanced with extra profit as an essential.

I am not saying you are wrong about any of this, just that it is a bit too early in the alpha to tell if any of the negative feelings you have about how the funding may work are valid.

In x-com it was always good to have a few factories churning out laser cannon whenever possible, in Xeno the funding and ground combat sales should be balanced to not need this.

As I said previously, if feedback from testers when balancing the finances is in favour of adding profitable manufacturing then it will probably be done, if it isn't needed then it won't.

We all will just have to wait and see how it goes

[Leonatus]

Quite frankly, I don't see why so many people call this an exploit. Manufacturing for profit isn't that much different from selling for profit which everybody did in the old XCom.

It's not like it was a big 'I-Win' button and it's not actually very cheap. To really start and making money you need extra bases, extra workshops and then additional technicians. All this costs lots of money and time.

So this kind money making 'scheme' is more of a long term project.

In the old XCom selling Laser Cannons turned in too big a profit but I think that's because nobody considered this option back then. With Xenonauts it should be easy enough to figure out a maximum selling price for each item so it won't fuel the Xenonauts all by itself.

Just factor in the hours to produce the item and then figure out the money the production would cost at minimum.

Let's take a hypothetical item, that could be produced without special alien resources.

Name ---------- Time to build

Doohicky -------- 10 hours

Minimum price of ten hours of technicians time:

15000$ a month /(31 days a month * 24 hours) = 15000$/month / 744 h/month = 53,76 $/hour

So the running cost of a technician building the Doohicky would be about 540$ IF the technician would be working the whole month and the month had 31 days. Otherwise production cost goes up.

Additionally the workshop costs money: 300000$ to build and another 7500/month in upkeep and an additional living quarters (150000/5000). Ignoring the building price and assuming 50 units of space per workshop this would be:

12500 upkeep a month / (744 workhours * 50 units)

So the per hour price of one unit of workspace is about 0.34$. If the built unit doesn't use up any workspace of its own this leaves the technicians. 3.4$ per technician. Doesn't sound like much but once again this assumes full around the clock production and all 50 units of workspace and living quarters used.

Last are the cost the rest of the base that one has to build to get those workshops. Command center, storage, base defence etc to make it all happen. Let's ignore those for a minute assuming that it's included in existing bases.

That's a minimum of 543.4$ per built item in an ideal situation. So all the developers have to do is to make sure that the price of any buildable item doesn't exceed those 54.2$ per hour of production time if you absolutely don't want any profit. The formula applies to every item, that can be built in the workshop.

However it shouldn't be any problem to include 'building for profit' without doing damage to the game balance.

If you tune the price of items so that a fully decked out and used workshop would net you say 200000$ per month after producton cost that would be 2M$ if you could built 10 of those. Sounds like a lot of money but it really isn't when you think about the money and time you have to sink in those structures first. That's no exploit, you just put in a lot of work and get a reward.

Leo

[Davoren]

I never even knew this was possible. Dagnabit, now I gotta go back play the original again just to do this.

Anyway it sounds like if it was balanced right, it would be good to keep the possibility to sell stuff at a profit.

At least for me it would make it more fun, so I second this.

regards

Davoren

[IceVamp]

Well, the game still needs to be balanced financially. As the beta nears it's final phase it will be apparent if such solutions are needed.

[Safe-Keeper]

Quite frankly, I don't see why so many people call this an exploit.

We call it an exploit because, well, it is an exploit. You're taking a game mechanic (manufacturing and selling items) and upping the scale tremendously in a way the devs never considered, and you break the game as a result as you're not meant to have the ungodly amounts of money this strategy awards you. Even if it takes work and planning, and even if "everyone" did it back in the day, it's still an exploit. Sure, it can be mitigated somewhat by reducing the profit for each sold item, but I prefer Xenonaut's approach where you have building ordnance is like buying units -- it's an investment that you have to carefully consider. If you train 12 scientists and then realize the money would be better spent on a new radar array, tough luck. If you spend your last funds for the month on more laser rifles than you need and then lose a Chinook and a platoon of x-nauts to an alien fighter, you shouldn't be able to just sell off the newly built rifles for a quick refund. The X-nauts approach, where you're chronically short on funds and have to carefully manage them, helps create a "dire" atmosphere and should also work well gameplay-wise, as it adds a whole new kind of challenge to the game.

[Gorlom]

However it shouldn't be any problem to include 'building for profit' without doing damage to the game balance.

If you tune the price of items so that a fully decked out and used workshop would net you say 200000$ per month after producton cost that would be 2M$ if you could built 10 of those. Sounds like a lot of money but it really isn't when you think about the money and time you have to sink in those structures first. That's no exploit, you just put in a lot of work and get a reward.

You and me are going to have to disagree on that. Just because it takes time to exploit something doesn't make it any less of an exploit imo. It still escalates the more you put into it, and at some point it starts to circumvent the intended mechanics.

The only way to not make it an exploit is to introduce some mechanic that decides that at some point the market is saturated and prevents selling any more of an item from being profitable.

Edited May 31, 2012 by Gorlom

[Leonatus]

I still wouldn't call it an exploit. It gave you lots of money but so did selling off the alien stuff. It was often neccessary to counterbalance the erratic behaviour and the 'gone-is-gone' mechanic of the old games funding coucil.

And with widely powerful psychic soldiers and Blaster Bombs that let you autowin certain missions who can really say what was a good intended mechanic and what was an evil exploit?

If Goldhawk truly sets the foot down and says that 'production for profit' is out and with selling alien stuff being what it is now, I can't see how the money that is available could possibly finance more than one base with any reliability.

The council in old XCom in no way gave enough money to win the games without resorting to other exploits either.

Then again it's probably too soon to talk balancing.

Leo

[Chris]

Leo - yes, the funding and selling of alien equipment in Xeno will have to be carefully balanced to make it work propely, and it basically hasn't been balanced at all yet.

I still think the manufacturing stuff is an exploit though - things like blaster bombs and psionic powers were imbalanced because they were far too effective at what they did, whereas I'd argue manufacturing was almost certainly not designed to be the main source of income for your organisation in X-Com. The fact it may have been neccessary on the harder settings just means that the game had balance issues at a macro level too.

Fundamentally, it's not immediately obvious to a new player that they should be manufacturing for profit in X-Com and it's certainly something I never did until the internet came along and I read it in the tips guide (while by contrast it was immediately obvious what blaster bombs did; they were just overpowered).

However, we are aware that removing it means we need to take the financial balancing very seriously!

[jkamcmillen]

It's funny how the term exploit is used in such a negative way here. If your squad has a tactical advantage in either throwing or shooting accuracy would you not want to "exploit" that?

I don't think that the sell price of good produced through manufacturing in the original X-COM was an oversight. I think that the developers knew well that you were playing the game as the CEO of a corporation/agency and that it's within the nature of corporations to turn some kind of profit and in this (well "that") case to sustain operation capability.

I think the more important issue is more the balancing and how Chris and the rest of the development team wants to guide the gameplay. If they don't want people to make alien gun farms then they'll have to balance accordingly. Frankly the players are going to play however they choose as long as you give them options. The more options given of how they will enjoy playing, the happier they'll be in general. However after testing, if you are able to gather enough data, you can see what everyone will inevitably do with the game as given. From here they will decide what they like or not like about it and adjust the next revision accordingly.

I'm hoping to have some real gameplay value in the economic side of things. Other X-COM clones/remake attempts have failed in my eyes because they tried to simply copy only what they understood from the original and didn't fully understand it beyond the squad-based combat. There was much more to it than that. A game that had so much going for it, well before it's time. Game mechanics-wise.

Something that rings in my brain throughout this debate though is for the cost of sale for newly developed tech that only exists in your people's hands, would that not be worth much more than the development value? And also what about the economic value of goods that you sell? Surely other nations would love to get their hands on your tech and would pay top dollar. And to that end, would they not also want to develop their own tech?

IDEA WARNING: That last point also makes me think of my time playing a game called Master of Magic... why? Well, even if you don't know it this should makes sense; It was a turn-based game and while playing at the start of later turns you'd get these periodic events that came up with an offer to buy special items for a decent price.

What if, in a way to make the world interaction a little more in-depth, from the rare time to rare time you had some of the nation's government agents "find" some alien tech (for sale?) or clues and are able to share that with you and your organization? The price could be money, goods, personnel to work with these agencies... This could be a way to make the other non-combat aspect a little deeper and create a whole other layer to the non-combat ecosystem in the game.

Success could help improve funding from specific nations (that you make deals with) and help them individually hold back alien influence keeping that nation "in the game" for longer periods of time.

Also... did you guys ever think about WHO is buying these things you sell? Mysterious Buyer #42? The Alien Junk Depot Inc.?

When you sell goods, they go somewhere. When you sell anything it's because someone has a need for it. And in the case of alien tech, I'm more than sure that other nations are using whatever comes out of Xenonauts Fine Interplanetary Antiques Ltd. to develop their own stuff which would change the "supply & demand" skew over time.

So... how does this sound as a solution to the profiteering of alien riffles problem? The more you sell, the less they sell for? Simple solution? You can make a teeny tiny profit at the start, (which allows them to circulate amoung the world nations) but then after you've done that a few times, you'll notice that the cost of them has gone down as each one you sell has altered the supply/demand scales and tech that was once very rare, every school kid in Liberia has one at home to play with. You can even mark when the first distribution of a specific tech has been sold and decrease over time as well. It'll be simple math equation from there.

Factors:

- base cost

- date of first distribution

- total number distributed from you

- number of "stable" countries remaining

I dunno this seems like something that's easier to balance than a clean cut static price on each.

[Gorlom]

It's funny how the term exploit is used in such a negative way here. If your squad has a tactical advantage in either throwing or shooting accuracy would you not want to "exploit" that?

Because in game termenology an exploit is an action by the player to circumvent the by developer intended mechanics. We are not talking about exploiting natural resources, we are talking about exploiting game mechanics. To the extent that it is possible to break the game.

I don't think that the sell price of good produced through manufacturing in the original X-COM was an oversight. I think that the developers knew well that you were playing the game as the CEO of a corporation/agency and that it's within the nature of corporations to turn some kind of profit and in this (well "that") case to sustain operation capability.

If it was not an oversight why is the most lucrative item to manufactor for profit the laser cannon? Why doesn't it scale with tech levels so that a later item is more profitable? WHY isn't the blaster launcher the best selling item ingame, compared to cost and time spent produceing it??

I think the more important issue is more the balancing and how Chris and the rest of the development team wants to guide the gameplay. If they don't want people to make alien gun farms then they'll have to balance accordingly. Frankly the players are going to play however they choose as long as you give them options. The more options given of how they will enjoy playing, the happier they'll be in general. However after testing, if you are able to gather enough data, you can see what everyone will inevitably do with the game as given. From here they will decide what they like or not like about it and adjust the next revision accordingly

Chess is not as fun to play when pawns move the same way the queens do. A gross generalisation is present in both our arguments. More so mine then yours, but I hope you get my point.

Something that rings in my brain throughout this debate though is for the cost of sale for newly developed tech that only exists in your people's hands, would that not be worth much more than the development value? And also what about the economic value of goods that you sell? Surely other nations would love to get their hands on your tech and would pay top dollar. And to that end, would they not also want to develop their own tech?

Development of new drugs are exceedingly expensive. This development cost is later baked into their price of the meds, so that it is arguable a produceing cost. Ofc there allways exists knockoffs that are baisically the same thing but didnt pay millions to develop the damn things that are going to sell at a lower price and still make a profit.

If you want Xenonauts to reflect a real corporation expect everything that they develop to instantly be stolen though industrial espionage and produced at reduced cost in china. So to be competative and sell anything on the market they need to sell at a loss. (assuming development costs is part of the production costs)

Or if you can't imagine corporate espionage to penetrate a multinational taskforce that is not intended to be a profit organisation: How about if the Xenonauts simply give the tech away to friendly nations?

I dunno this seems like something that's easier to balance than a clean cut static price on each.

Now we are getting somewhere. Now you are acctully suggesting additional mechanics over what you could alter yourself. I have no idea how much of a bother this would be to code though, so I'm not going to express anything but my apriciation over that you are expanding the suggestion.

Edited May 31, 2012 by Gorlom

[jkamcmillen]

Because in game termenology an exploit is an action by the player to circumvent the by developer intended mechanics. We are not talking about exploiting natural resources, we are talking about exploiting game mechanics. To the extent that it is possible to break the game.

If it was not an oversight why is the most lucrative item to manufactor for profit the laser cannon? Why doesn't it scale with tech levels so that a later item is more profitable? WHY isn't the blaster launcher the best selling item ingame, compared to cost and time spent produceing it??

Balancing may have been an issue when it came to the original X-COM, but making a bit of profit was obviously not, as the person plugging in the values would have set the cost to either equal, or as was the tradition at the time, to sell it at a loss instead as a deterrent.

As for my argument towards "exploit;" I was trying to explain that unless the developers of either X-COM or Xenonauts totally overlooked the values set for sale of manufactured items, you cannot exploit something that was put in intentionally for that purpose. If Chris and the others decide that "heck we're gonna let players sell at a small profit, but we're going to do this to balance it" then unless they overlooked something, there is nothing to exploit that was not intended to be exploitable in the first place.

Chess is not as fun to play when pawns move the same way the queens do. A gross generalisation is present in both our arguments. More so mine then yours, but I hope you get my point.

New features and alteration to tried and true game mechanics sort of require a bit of intention either way. Design choices made arbitrarily have a fairly high chance of failing to delight than something with a bit more thought out planning. I'm sure you'd agree.

I would never suggest that any game developer implements anything without themselves giving it a bit of thinking before hand. In your case there would have to be a reason or circumstance as to why those pawns act like queens for it to make sense.

If you want Xenonauts to reflect a real corporation expect everything that they develop to instantly be stolen though industrial espionage and produced at reduced cost in china. So to be competative and sell anything on the market they need to sell at a loss. (assuming development costs is part of the production costs)

Or if you can't imagine corporate espionage to penetrate a multinational taskforce that is not intended to be a profit organisation: How about if the Xenonauts simply give the tech away to friendly nations?

Sorry, but I wouldn't buy either one of those scenarios personally. Both are too far reaching. Large secretive militant organizations would not be so easily stolen from in regularity. Especially after just recently gathering such tech that would probably be under the most secure lockup in Earth's entire history and have all your people's attention attached to it. That would be like trying to steal the sidewalk on Manhattan Square at during rush hour. And a military power does not give up their technological edge to anyone even their own allies at the best of times. It would take years and they'd need at least a new technology to replace it and the current threat (in this case aliens trying to take over) long gone all as a prerequisite. It would be too protected, too important to simply just happen.

Having actual espionage attempt missions on your bases could be interesting though. Maybe failed nations trying to steal from you in a panic? UFO:Enemy Unknown had aliens actually attack your base and try to invade/take you out. It would be cool to encounter that again along with the concept of other 3rd parties who become equally hostile.

Now we are getting somewhere. Now you are acctully suggesting additional mechanics over what you could alter yourself. I have no idea how much of a bother this would be to code though, so I'm not going to express anything but my apriciation over that you are expanding the suggestion.

Oh I'm chalk full of ideas when it comes to the X-COM series. Been a fan since it was released on DOS. (Yeah, I'm gettin' older... ) I just wanted to get the unpopular (or unknown) point across that totally removing the trade/profit economics portion of the non-combat areas of the "X-COM genre" (I believe this game still stands on it's own as a concept for the sub-genre) is not completely 100% "in the spirit" of the original X-COM game(s).

I don't need other fans or even the developers of Xenonauts to agree with me completely, though I would be happy if there was a sort of compensation towards the loss of profiting as it was in the original. Something that makes sense of course, as we all like to have more believability our sci-fi these days. And more importantly something that is kinda fun.

Anyhow some of you might just see me as "some annoying guy" who is suggesting "dumb things" for this great project. I hope I can offer more than that as I do love the project and kudos to Chris and the rest of the team for sticking with it. I don't usually go into such detail, but I understand that I sort of have to prove my ideas and thought process as likely noone here knows me from Adam. So I apologize if I have been overly wordy. I just don't want you good folks to misunderstand my intentions.

Overall I just want to see the economic portion of the game be something more than a means to get cool stuff to take with you on combat missions. For me X-COM was just as much the management side of things as much as it was the turn based squad-based combat.

Edited June 1, 2012 by jkamcmillen

[Gorlom]

Sorry, but I wouldn't buy either one of those scenarios personally. Both are too far reaching. Large secretive militant organizations would not be so easily stolen from in regularity. Especially after just recently gathering such tech that would probably be under the most secure lockup in Earth's entire history and have all your people's attention attached to it. That would be like trying to steal the sidewalk on Manhattan Square at during rush hour. And a military power does not give up their technological edge to anyone even their own allies at the best of times. It would take years and they'd need at least a new technology to replace it and the current threat (in this case aliens trying to take over) long gone all as a prerequisite. It would be too protected, too important to simply just happen.

"Large secretive organisation" that accepts applicants from soldiers, scientists and engineers from any nation anywhere (come on you can't tell me that is secure in any way!), and the organisations only enemy vastly outclass them in terms of technology... Why would they be wasting resources on trying to keep any tech secret? To me it's like shooting yourself in the foot because someone bet you 10 bucks you wouldn't do it.

But all that is kind of moot anyway isn't it? After you sell your first manufactured item anyone with half a brain is going to (attempt to)reverse engineer it (probably refereing to national saftey and passing laws overriding patent aplications to that intention... if Xenonauts even bothered to get those in the first place.)

Furthermore it's not exactly a military power is it? They do not exert political power through military means/preassure. They are just a (nationless) military force trying to save the world. And it would be hell of a lot easier to give other militaries the means to protect themselves rather then hoarding all the goodies just so you can sell a bit more merch for higher price you greedy bastard.

Having actual espionage attempt missions on your bases could be interesting though. Maybe failed nations trying to steal from you in a panic? UFO:Enemy Unknown had aliens actually attack your base and try to invade/take you out. It would be cool to encounter that again along with the concept of other 3rd parties who become equally hostile.

I believe base attacks are already planned for the game. Both alien base attacks and Xenonauts base attacks.

[Gauddlike]

Generally I think of the contract between Xenonauts and the funding nations would probably have a clause about sharing tech developed as a result of that funding.

If you turned up in a Russian city with laser weapons after telling them you had nothing to share with them that could help defend themselves you would probably find at best less willingness to fund you and pressure to share, at worst you might find them trying to take weapons from your ground teams.

It could well be worse if you ended up in the middle of a ground mission with some third world warlord and his band of merry men watching you use those same powerful weapons.

Another clause would probably be responsible for you not selling to the funding nations at a profit or selling to anyone outside of those nations.

The justification doesn't matter, the game effect does.

At this time the effect of the devs decision to not have profits is unknown.

Balance without those profits should be no more difficult than balance with them, maybe slightly easier.

I don't mind either way as long as it works.

[thothkins]

I liked the ability to sell of manufactured items at a profit in X-Com, as it sometimes was a huge boost. But then, I didn't take it to extremes so it was only an additional source of funds. I wasn't constructing factory bases around the world churning the stuff out. But you could and quite a few did.

So, that would have to change as it can be taken advantage of (look! no E word!)

In a world desperate for defence, Xenonauts could charge a premium price for weapons and equipment. That's what usually happens. But as someone posted, it shouldn't be an endless market and once sold, they will start to be copied after a few months of being out in the labs of the funding nations.

Nice idea from James about attacks on Xenonaut bases by local forces. If you have a base in a funding nation that goes to the dark side, perhaps an attack from local forces is the result.

Perhaps a win allows you to either take the resources in it and run (assuming you have storage elsewhere) or stay as a fighting force in that nation to start a liberation mission.

A loss and well, your outta there and lose everything.

I understand that I sort of have to prove my ideas and thought process as likely noone here knows me from Adam

not at all. Do we even have an Adam?*

*sorry Adam, if you're on the forum:)

[Buzzles]

Don't forget when comparing Xcom to Xenonauts that you had to either buy or build *everything* in EU, in Xenonauts you get supplied the basic armours, weapons and ammo free of charge.

It's actually quite a radical shift in finance considerations, especially on the Ground Combat where you can spray the fairly heavily damaging machinegun all over the shop, as well as level the place with Rockets if you want and not have it be a drain on finances like using the later tier weapons might be.

On that note, there's also going to be *other* equipment planned to be added like ballistic shields etc which may be free (alongside the lovely flamethrower, which will be free ).

[Arturius]

And exactly because of what Buzzles said basic equipment should not be free.

I think it should be sold to the Xenonauts by funding nations for an output price = very low price, but not give free in infinite supply.

[Gorlom]

You can play around with that once the game hits beta and report back your findings Arturis.

Oh wait there is no buy option is there... and there's no way to charge the player by taking it out of the stores... DAMNIT.

Maybe if you made each weapon a workshop manufacture with instant production time you could make them cost money...

Edited June 3, 2012 by Gorlom

[TMP]

I think you are focussing too much on "profit" and not enough on "return of investment".

Let's say you have a manufacturing base that produces a net profit of 1000$ a day. Let's also assume a normal playthrough will take around 2 ingame years. So if you have to invest 700 000$ for your manufacturing base, you won't break even until the game is finished - if you invest that money from day 1, and don't use it for any of the other juicy stuff you would like to have.

That means being able to sell at a profit doesn't ruin the dependency on funding by itself, which I think is the greatest concern here. I think the existance of some stuff that allows you to at least finance the maintenance of the production facilities and technicians has one advantage:

Players who invested in a decent production infrastructure won't get punished when there momentarily isn't any stuff they need for the fight. You don't have any fair chance to know how much production is "too much" when playing the game for the first time, because it depends on result of research you have no knowledge of.

[reluxor]

Yes, I had the same feeling but I though it was good as it was. The problem is I played on normal and then though I would never made it on higher difficulties. I guess there is 4 difficulty level, so :

- on normal it should be a bit easier (speaking about money) than it is actually,

- on hard it can stay as it is, maybe with more emphasis on "it is impossible to down EVERY alien craft so YOU have to make choice"

- on easy difficulty you should have no money problem if you play normally (whereas you are not supposed to make 10 base the first month)

- on very hard difficulty, the difference with hard difficulty should not come from the income but from the spendings (meaning mainly casualties).

[reluxor]

And exactly because of what Buzzles said basic equipment should not be free.

I think it should be sold to the Xenonauts by funding nations for an output price = very low price, but not give free in infinite supply.

I am not sure, but indeed I was VERY SURPRISED to see that equipment was free of charge... But I do not know which way should be better...

[Gauddlike]

I think you are focussing too much on "profit" and not enough on "return of investment".

Let's say you have a manufacturing base that produces a net profit of 1000$ a day. Let's also assume a normal playthrough will take around 2 ingame years. So if you have to invest 700 000$ for your manufacturing base, you won't break even until the game is finished - if you invest that money from day 1, and don't use it for any of the other juicy stuff you would like to have.

That means being able to sell at a profit doesn't ruin the dependency on funding by itself, which I think is the greatest concern here. I think the existance of some stuff that allows you to at least finance the maintenance of the production facilities and technicians has one advantage:

Players who invested in a decent production infrastructure won't get punished when there momentarily isn't any stuff they need for the fight. You don't have any fair chance to know how much production is "too much" when playing the game for the first time, because it depends on result of research you have no knowledge of.

You are making quite a few assumptions there but not looking at them in a wider context.

How many engineers is the profit margin you mention based on?

Does it take into account living quarter upkeep for the engineers?

What specific product or are all to have the same profit margin?

How would that be affected if someone was to have 4 workshops in a base, or 4 bases full of workshops?

If you make a million a month from manufacturing laser cannon and spend it on building more factories would you make 1.1 million next month?

Return of investment is fine at a small scale but eventually you end up outrunning the problems by building more factories.

Financing the production facilities (along with all of the other facilities) is the whole point in the funding from nations.

You aren't penalised when you have nothing you need to build.

If you don't build anything then you are spending no money except for the upkeep, which you would be spending anyway.

If you start to lose funding you then have to decide if maybe you should cut back on engineers, focus only on things you definitely need to build, continue as you are and make cuts in other areas if you get more desperate, or get out and hunt down more aliens for things to sell.

Incidentally that also slows alien progress so gives a double benefit if you are struggling to compete.

That is much more interesting to me than building more factories to get more cash in.