Opinions on the sell cost decline?

[Kamehamehayes]

I've played a couple of campaigns, though not very far into them. I'm planning on starting a third campaign soon to push pretty far into the game, but I think I should lay out my thoughts on the sell cost decline given my experience with it and what I've seen other testers deal with it. I'm playing on veteran difficulty. 

I am one of those players that goes out of my way not to hoard. If I need some cash for whatever reason, I will sell enough of my spoils in order to produce enough money to do whatever. I think hoarding is a massive pitfall in general (as I've made other strategy games much harder on my stuff when I save valuable items until endgame) as I feel the short term benefits of producing better equipment or base structures earlier will eventually be converted into long term benefits when missions go smoother and operations on the geoscape become easier, which overshadows the benefits of hoarding items so have a lot more money in the future. However, I feel that the majority reaction to such a mechanic is just to hoard as much stuff as humanly possible because they are too scared of selling stuff now and paying for it in the future. I don't think this really leans into the decision making that is intended by this mechanic. At face value, this only encourages the player to hoard more and make the early-midgame harder on themselves due to them not having the funds from selling alien artifacts. 

I think there are some ways to address this. I know that in the kickstarter random geoscape events were promised, and I assume that they will be tested and included once the game is properly balanced enough. Potentially, one of the things that could happen is that they sell price of certain items go up in certain months, which encourages the player to sell their items now as the increased prices on those items will disappear once the month concludes. Thus, the player will be much less likely to hoard items when one of these events occurs. 

The presence of this mechanic does not change the amount of missions I go on in any way. I generally tackle 1 crash site/landed ship mission per ufo wave and always attempt any terror missions, abduction missions, and other kinds of missions that come up. I don't think I take on as many missions as a lot of other people do and might be in the minority, but the mechanic does not change how many missions I would attempt. 

[Alienkiller]

Hi Cormrade,

you can play like you would. But don´t forgett, the Game is still in WIP and we Main-Beta-Testers had many Things tested already. Like you said correctly, many of them will come again when the Game is more stable etc.

In the Testing were f. e. dismantling Alien Parts to get more ressources (Weapons, robotic Aliens etc.). That´s atm not integrated in the Game for whatever Reasons.

If the big Game-Changes for the remaining Beta-Versions and Early Access will come, then you need the more Ressources again. Atm. you can sell them for Money.

I personaly like it when you have to choose between Economy (here Upgrading your Equipment, Buildings etc.) and Money (Standard-Ressoruce).

[Chris]

On 12/22/2022 at 8:13 AM, Kamehamehayes said:

I've played a couple of campaigns, though not very far into them. I'm planning on starting a third campaign soon to push pretty far into the game, but I think I should lay out my thoughts on the sell cost decline given my experience with it and what I've seen other testers deal with it. I'm playing on veteran difficulty. 

I am one of those players that goes out of my way not to hoard. If I need some cash for whatever reason, I will sell enough of my spoils in order to produce enough money to do whatever. I think hoarding is a massive pitfall in general (as I've made other strategy games much harder on my stuff when I save valuable items until endgame) as I feel the short term benefits of producing better equipment or base structures earlier will eventually be converted into long term benefits when missions go smoother and operations on the geoscape become easier, which overshadows the benefits of hoarding items so have a lot more money in the future. However, I feel that the majority reaction to such a mechanic is just to hoard as much stuff as humanly possible because they are too scared of selling stuff now and paying for it in the future. I don't think this really leans into the decision making that is intended by this mechanic. At face value, this only encourages the player to hoard more and make the early-midgame harder on themselves due to them not having the funds from selling alien artifacts. 

I think there are some ways to address this. I know that in the kickstarter random geoscape events were promised, and I assume that they will be tested and included once the game is properly balanced enough. Potentially, one of the things that could happen is that they sell price of certain items go up in certain months, which encourages the player to sell their items now as the increased prices on those items will disappear once the month concludes. Thus, the player will be much less likely to hoard items when one of these events occurs. 

The presence of this mechanic does not change the amount of missions I go on in any way. I generally tackle 1 crash site/landed ship mission per ufo wave and always attempt any terror missions, abduction missions, and other kinds of missions that come up. I don't think I take on as many missions as a lot of other people do and might be in the minority, but the mechanic does not change how many missions I would attempt. 

The mechanic isn't necessarily intended to stop people from doing more crash sites than other people, it's just to reduce the benefits they gain from doing more than average. So I'd say in that respect it's being fairly successful - I don't want it to feel like the game is blocking you from doing something you want to do.

You may be right that there's a tendency to hoard among certain players even when sub-optimal, but I think to some extent that can be part of the challenge of a strategy game. You need to spend resources at the appropriate time, and there are benefits both to receiving a lower price for items so you can sell them immediately and put that money to use immediately vs getting more money in the future. I imagine with the numbers as is there is probably definitely an optimal way to play, but with a bit of balancing we can hopefully find a sweet spot.

However, one thing that might help with the issue is to reintroduce the concept of storage space at the base. This mechanic is fully functional within Xenonauts 2 but currently I've set Storerooms to have such high storage capacity that you only ever need one (i.e. the Xenonauts 1 setup). Adding storage space back in would add more depth to the game and make it potentially useful to build additional Storerooms if you want to stockpile goods to maximise sale prices, or would force players to periodically sell things when they max out their storage space.

The reason I disabled the system was because it makes the UI confusing, as you need to have two numbers on the Stores panel for each item - one for the quantity, and one for how much stoage space it fills. This ends up being really visually confusing. But I'm going to experiment with just making every item fill 1 storage space, except Alenium and Alloys that each fill 0.1 space, which means we won't need that extra number. Hopefully that'll give us the best of both worlds.

[Kamehamehayes]

5 hours ago, Chris said:

The mechanic isn't necessarily intended to stop people from doing more crash sites than other people, it's just to reduce the benefits they gain from doing more than average. So I'd say in that respect it's being fairly successful - I don't want it to feel like the game is blocking you from doing something you want to do.

You may be right that there's a tendency to hoard among certain players even when sub-optimal, but I think to some extent that can be part of the challenge of a strategy game. You need to spend resources at the appropriate time, and there are benefits both to receiving a lower price for items so you can sell them immediately and put that money to use immediately vs getting more money in the future. I imagine with the numbers as is there is probably definitely an optimal way to play, but with a bit of balancing we can hopefully find a sweet spot.

However, one thing that might help with the issue is to reintroduce the concept of storage space at the base. This mechanic is fully functional within Xenonauts 2 but currently I've set Storerooms to have such high storage capacity that you only ever need one (i.e. the Xenonauts 1 setup). Adding storage space back in would add more depth to the game and make it potentially useful to build additional Storerooms if you want to stockpile goods to maximise sale prices, or would force players to periodically sell things when they max out their storage space.

The reason I disabled the system was because it makes the UI confusing, as you need to have two numbers on the Stores panel for each item - one for the quantity, and one for how much stoage space it fills. This ends up being really visually confusing. But I'm going to experiment with just making every item fill 1 storage space, except Alenium and Alloys that each fill 0.1 space, which means we won't need that extra number. Hopefully that'll give us the best of both worlds.

Yeah, I found it odd that I could not find the storage capacities during my campaigns. I agree that there should be more restriction to add some more depth to the system. It should definitely be something worth experimenting with in coming updates.

Although something I’m wondering about now is profit from manufacturing items. In X1, such a strategy was nerfed to be completely useless because each item only sold for half its creation cost. I’m wondering if engineering profit from selling items can be reimplemented with these new systems. This would no longer be a continual source of funds like it was in the original xcom because selling them continuously would reduce its price, so either the player will have to make items in bulk and then sell them (which can hamper earlygame performance if the player is spending a lot of time producing one item), or they have to continuously switch the items that they sell over time (meaning that they will eventually have to spend time producing items that cost more valuable materials like alloys and alienium instead, slightly nerfing the process as the player progresses towards the lategame). The profit from selling manufactured goods does not have to be particularly huge, something small like x1.1 - 1.2 its creation cost would be enough to encourage players to engage with the system while not making it broken and abusable imo. 

[Chris]

44 minutes ago, Kamehamehayes said:

Yeah, I found it odd that I could not find the storage capacities during my campaigns. I agree that there should be more restriction to add some more depth to the system. It should definitely be something worth experimenting with in coming updates.

Although something I’m wondering about now is profit from manufacturing items. In X1, such a strategy was nerfed to be completely useless because each item only sold for half its creation cost. I’m wondering if engineering profit from selling items can be reimplemented with these new systems. This would no longer be a continual source of funds like it was in the original xcom because selling them continuously would reduce its price, so either the player will have to make items in bulk and then sell them (which can hamper earlygame performance if the player is spending a lot of time producing one item), or they have to continuously switch the items that they sell over time (meaning that they will eventually have to spend time producing items that cost more valuable materials like alloys and alienium instead, slightly nerfing the process as the player progresses towards the lategame). The profit from selling manufactured goods does not have to be particularly huge, something small like x1.1 - 1.2 its creation cost would be enough to encourage players to engage with the system while not making it broken and abusable imo. 

Yes, it's an interesting possibility. It's sort of weird though because it'd mean the player would essentially be obliged to build X of each type of new item as soon as it becomes available (as well as all new weapons essentially becoming a source of money rather than a money sink), and I'm not sure how much I like that idea. Kinda feels like the player wouldn't end up having that many things to actually spend their money on.

[Komandos]

On 12/22/2022 at 11:13 AM, Kamehamehayes said:

I've played a couple of campaigns, though not very far into them. I'm planning on starting a third campaign soon to push pretty far into the game, but I think I should lay out my thoughts on the sell cost decline given my experience with it and what I've seen other testers deal with it. I'm playing on veteran difficulty. 

I am one of those players that goes out of my way not to hoard. If I need some cash for whatever reason, I will sell enough of my spoils in order to produce enough money to do whatever. Я думаю, что накопительство - это огромная ловушка в целом (поскольку я значительно усложнял другие стратегические игры с моими вещами, когда я сохранял ценные предметы до конца игры), поскольку я чувствую, что краткосрочные выгоды от создания лучшего оборудования или базовых структур раньше в конечном итоге будут преобразованы в долгосрочные выгоды, когда миссии пройдут более гладко, а операции продолжатся. географический ландшафт становится проще, что затмевает преимущества накопления предметов, так что в будущем у вас будет намного больше денег. However, I feel that the majority reaction to such a mechanic is just to hoard as much stuff as humanly possible because they are too scared of selling stuff now and paying for it in the future. I don't think this really leans into the decision making that is intended by this mechanic. At face value, this only encourages the player to hoard more and make the early-midgame harder on themselves due to them not having the funds from selling alien artifacts. 

I think there are some ways to address this. I know that in the kickstarter random geoscape events were promised, and I assume that they will be tested and included once the game is properly balanced enough. Potentially, one of the things that could happen is that they sell price of certain items go up in certain months, which encourages the player to sell their items now as the increased prices on those items will disappear once the month concludes. Thus, the player will be much less likely to hoard items when one of these events occurs. 

The presence of this mechanic does not change the amount of missions I go on in any way. I generally tackle 1 crash site/landed ship mission per ufo wave and always attempt any terror missions, abduction missions, and other kinds of missions that come up. I don't think I take on as many missions as a lot of other people do and might be in the minority, but the mechanic does not change how many missions I would attempt. 

You can "sell by contract". For example: in a business center, you sign a contract for the sale of 10 pieces of exhibits at a certain price. All artifacts from this batch are sold at the specified price. Next, it is necessary to conclude a new contract. Bottom line: you can sell the first 10 units of the product at one fixed price. The next 10 units are already at a different price. (And, perhaps, this price will be influenced by the results of various tactical missions. When performing some tasks, the price will increase. When performing other tasks, the price will decrease)