Cost of Aircraft and other balancing

[Belmakor]

I realise that balancing has not been completed yet but I thought I might give a few suggestions regarding the cost of aircraft.

At the moment both aircraft are $100k. This amount is I feel slightly too cheap, reflecting the cost of only about 3 soldiers. This could of course be intentional reflecting that these aircraft are of less quality than future tech aircraft which the Xenonaughts can develop. However, in squadrons they are pretty damn effective on everything I have come up against including Medium size corvettes.

I am not suggesting that aircraft should cost $1,000,000 or more (as this would obviously be crippling).

I would suggest that the cost of the F-17 be raised to around $175k and the Mig to about $200k or similar. This would make the loss of an aircraft that little bit more damaging and make you think twice about attacking a UFO with only a single aircraft, or a Corvette with less than 3 aircraft.

To balance this increase in capital cost, some of the maintenance costs for the base could be reduced. A 5-10% reduction in these costs would allow you some room to build a reasonably sized 2nd base within the first couple of months (which is really quite essential if you dont want to go on a downward spiral from the start). Of course it would mean that you couldn't equip this 2nd base with 3 brand new jets, but maybe only a single interceptor for Tailing and taking out smaller UFOs.

I think the cost of soldiers and staff is fairly spot on as is the initial capital costs of most of the base components.

Suggestions?

[Chris]

Wow, the maintenance costs for the aircraft are waay outta whack. Only just had a look at them. I've halved them in the dev build to $40k pm for the F17 and $50k pm for the Mig, with the Chinook left at $60k.

Purchase cost remains 100k for the Chinook, but up to $200k for the F-17 and $250k for the MiG. I think it's much better to have a more expensive upfront cost then reduced maintenance costs than vice versa.

If you want to make these updates yourself, the maintenance costs are in the aircrafts.xml and purchase costs are in items.xml.

[Sathra]

It sounds about right. Average auto-income from a Early UFO Assault is $180k or something isn't it?

[Belmakor]

Enjoying the change already, thanks! =)

[Straker]

I'd rather they remain cheaper until some of the air combat bugs are worked out like retreating into a UFO's zone of fire. There's no saving the fighter if they head off in the same direction.

[Chris]

You can press 'Retreat' again to stop it retreating, unless it's out of fuel in which case it's pretty much the idea that the plane can't be controlled any more and is vulnerable...

[Straker]

Most of the time I'm retreating due to low fuel. It would be great if I can tell it which way to retreat so it doesn't retreat in front of an attacking or retreating UFO. I'm getting nailed fairly frequently with no way to control or prevent it from happening.

[GrumpySage]

Maybe Chris could include a couple of 'cheats' for testing purposes? Like you gain $1.000.000 if you press up, up, down, L2, up, up.

[Chris]

Maybe Chris could include a couple of 'cheats' for testing purposes? Like you gain $1.000.000 if you press up, up, down, L2, up, up.

Press 'M' on the Geoscape.

[anotherdevil]

wow that was easy =p

[Straker]

I'd rather fix the problem than cheat my way around it. (Was it M you say? )

[Straker]

I should've asked this before: Are there any other keyboard cheats?

[Chris]

Not in the normal game. If you load up debug mode there's a bunch of shortcuts in the ground combat - various editor screens and the like. Intended for dev use mostly though.