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A case for making manufacturing marginally profitable


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While I am aware that Chris has firmly stated that he does not want manufacturing to be profitable, I believe that, at least for some items, players should be able to turn at least a marginal profit. Far from being a case of "I want it to happen", I have thought through the matter and have come up with three reasons why I believe profitable manufacturing would fit in the game: it aligns with the "realistic" nature of the game, it mitigates the newer limiting factors and it will allow players who have bad starts to continue playing an otherwise "hopeless" game.

To begin, we'll look at the realism factor. Consider the following: "local forces" present in many maps eventually start to use higher-tier weaponry (lasers, plasma, etc.). Now, where did the local forces get these weapons? Issued by their governments, no doubt. Where did the governments get the weapons, though? One could argue that they simply devised the weapons through their own tireless research. This seems valid, because all alien weaponry is sold after a mission for a small profit. The argument cannot apply, however, based on the research tree: two important pieces of research-namely Alien Alloys and Alenium-are kept exclusively by the Xenonauts team. Without these research items, it is safe to assume that world governments could not replicate Xenonaut technology, and must therefore receive the technology from them. It stands to reason that an organization which requires financial backing would seek alternate streams of revenue, as well. These two ideas put together-exclusive access and manufacturing capability of a technology and a need for further funding-create a situation where the Xenonauts organization would be in a prime position to manufacture the technology and then sell it off for a small profit, supplementing their operations budget just enough to make saving the planet a little bit easier.

Second under consideration are the new limiting factors that have been introduced to the game. The first factor is extremely limited space: laboratories and workshops accommodate at most 15 workers and living quarters support only 35 personnel each. Each of these modules requires two spaces in a base, and each base can accommodate up to 32 spaces of modules. A manufacturing base, assuming it has a garage, hangar and general stores, can provide accommodations and working space for up to 140 technicians. Also add in the costs of hiring personnel and constructing a base and base upkeep. Such a base would cost $1.65 million to construct, an additional $1.4 million to staff, and $127,500 monthly just in upkeep, and would still take nearly a month to produce the top-end craft in the game at its current build time. The other limiting factor is the resources required; for almost every project a workshop can produce, there is some material cost in Alien Alloys and Alenium, which are both very finite resources. With these considerations, it is easy to see that manufacturing almost anything for monetary profit would result in a net loss of resources, which mitigates the potential imbalance of a player being able to produce, for example, Jackal armour for profit and thus granting access to "unlimited" funding.

Finally, consider that some players in the very early game have very bad luck: whether alien spawn patterns are outside radar detection range or players are simply unable to catch and down UFOs over land or any other of a number of problems, the early game can be very discouraging for a player. Add to this the fact that without being able to raid UFOs players have no access to funding, and that overall funding from nations tends to drop off rapidly and it can be easily seen that one bad month early on-perhaps the second or third month-and the player is in a bad spot. One or two missions where many soldiers are lost later and the player is forced to restart his or her game, not due to playing poorly, but due to a number of factors outside his or her control making the game unplayable. This is a frustrating situation and is not at all fun, and for what reason do we play games other than to have fun? Allowing players who are behind in such a way to turn a profit by manufacturing items and selling them off means that no game becomes completely lost before the alien invasion even begins to ramp up. This is doubly important in Ironman mode, where a player cannot simply reload a bad situation and limit the loss of soldier life. In one small scout mission, a player has only to lose six soldiers for the mission to be unprofitable and seven for there to be a loss of funds.

First and foremost, games are about having fun, and a large factor of fun is the playability of the game. By considering the realistic nature of the game, its current limiting factors and how large an impact too-limited funds can have on a player, we can see that marginally profitable manufacturing poses many benefits to the player and can simultaneously increase the "fun level" and decrease the "frustration level", making the game overall more enjoyable.

Edited by Assoonasitis
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Yeah, no. I've done that, and each holds workspace for 15 workers. It makes no sense for it to have */15 initially, because you start with 10 workers for each location. That's why you have 10/15 space used at the beginning of the game for Alien Invasion. Try it! And don't correct me unless you're sure you're right, because that's a sure-fire way to piss me off,

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Sorry if you think I'm being a jerk or defensive, but I really hate being "corrected" by people who are actually wrong. Just sets me off.

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While that could work, I think that manufacturing them into stuff that's actually useful (like a laser rifle) and selling that should give you more profit, because you put more time, effort, and money into it. So, the people aren't just getting some broken crystalline structure and some melted ceramics, they're getting something functional and much more valuable.

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The funding in the game should be the main thing.

Manufacturing for profit detracts from the importance of the funding nations to me.

If you can make your own money then defending the Earth becomes less important and defending your own factories is the only thing that matters.

How would you balance the manufacturing profits so that they didn't impact on the funding received from the nations you are protecting?

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Covered in the second body paragraph: there are now a bunch of factors that far more effectively limit what you're able to do. Having seven bases isn't going to do you any good if you can't equip your soldiers well enough to survive anything. With how limited Alien Alloys and Alenium are (at least right now) and the fact that they're required to build, really, anything a pattern emerges. Combine that with making items that require these resources the most profitable and you make it so that it's impossible to fully equip seven bases, or even four. I have a feeling that a bunch of guys in Jackal armour with ballistic weapons won't be that scary for Praetors and the like.

Also, in the third body paragraph I note that funding from nations drops off rapidly in the game, which is another good limiting factor. Even as the funding drops off, you can make it the main source of income, which makes it so that even if you're churning out profit, it's only just enough to keep you afloat for two or three more months.

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I disagree that it covers my concern.

The focus of the game is on keeping the funding nations on your side to keep the money coming in and allowing you to keep fighting.

If you have a base churning out cash then that focus is gone.

You mention that a single manufacturing base would cost $3.5 million to set up and $127, 500 a month in upkeep but don't really give any numbers that show how much income that would generate.

If that base could pump out £2 million a month then it pays for itself quickly and gives an income around eight times greater than North America funds at the start of the game.

I just want to avoid manufacturing overwhelming the game in the way it did in the OG.

I understand that alloys and Alenium materials can be used to make it less desirable to manufacture and I agree that this helps to alleviate the problem but those materials can be easily gained by performing ground missions which can be made significantly more numerous and easier when you have a cash boost.

My worry is that manufacturing would become self funding by making your teams stronger and able to get more materials and making the funding nations steadily less important.

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The funding in the game should be the main thing.

Manufacturing for profit detracts from the importance of the funding nations to me.

If you can make your own money then defending the Earth becomes less important and defending your own factories is the only thing that matters.

Why woudl that be the only thing? For one, the bulk of hte cash would still come from the nations.

Also recruits come from there.

Defending Earth always remains important, since money or no, you can loose the game is the aliens gain too much ground.

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I don't know how much a manufacturing base could produce, because the numbers aren't in yet, but I would say that the word "marginal" covers that concern nicely. Perhaps it could produce 25 to 50% of its overall upkeep in profit if focusing on the most profitable items, perhaps 5 to 10% over upkeep for the least profitable? That would be fair, and keep the game balanced. Not to mention the almost two months it would likely take to set up such a base.

I'm curious, though, as to how you would deal with a poor starting location, as that is what I feel is the strongest case for doing this (why it's the last paragraph). If you can't down UFOs, you can't make money; if you can't make money, you can't expand; if you can't expand, you have no global coverage; if you don't have global coverage, funding nations become upset with you quickly; if that happens, funding drops like a rock; if that happens, you can't expand and the cycle compounds on itself and makes the game frustrating and unfun.

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I don't really understand what you mean by poor starting location.

Do you mean the player picked a spot where they would struggle to have any missions, like an island in the pacific?

If that was the case then surely that is their choice to limit themselves in that way.

Adding and balancing manufacturing profits to give them an additional income is not something I would spend time on.

The challenge of choosing a location like that is the reason to choose it after all.

If you mean a place where, by luck or bugs, the aliens just didn't come nearby then I would deal with that by ensuring that the aliens don't have large areas they avoid going.

Then no matter where you place your base you will always have some missions available.

Manufacturing doesn't really come into that as it appears to be a balance issue for the alien AI.

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In this case I am talking about the second situation. Anecdote: I always place my first base in North Africa, where I can cover the largest amount of landmass with my initial radar. Generally, there are plentiful aliens in that area, because it's the largest land-mass. Occasionally, though, almost all alien activity is centred on North America or Asia for the first month to month and a half, and what aliens do come within range are right at the outer edge of detection and love to fly over the water. I have to make the decision to shoot them down (increase country relations) but I don't get any crash sites because of it. Overall, this makes the first few months a huge struggle because I'm working with greatly diminished funds and no recourse for increasing them, and because of the attrition factor, I quickly run out of money and have to restart the game, which is frustrating. Sometimes the game just doesn't cooperate with players.

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Well... I might be fine with manufacturing being able to cover maintenance costs of a base, so if you get unlucky you can at least stave off financial ruin. I thought the abundance of cash from sources other than funding nations was a flaw in the OG, though, and I don't really enjoy manufacturing stuff to sell. I'm pretty indifferent to the idea one way or the other.

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Both sides of the discussion have very valid points, however we cannot allow manufacturing to become nearly as important as funding, for reasons stated earlier. If we are able to strike the proper balance, which I don't know, then it will work fine, allowing manufacturing for small profit and for catching up if you make a mistake, have a really bad month, or simply herp when you should have derped.

But I emphasize, it has to be a small profit, not something you can rely on to pay your bills. Only something that'll allow you to make a few more sets of armor, or a few more laser rifles, or whatever it is you are in dire need of. It should also come with a decent raw materials cost, but be more profitable then selling the materials raw due to the extra effort and money poured into the product. Perhaps a set rule, X amount of dollars for every man-hour spent working on the item, whatever it maybe, would work well?

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I'm a bit torn on this issue. I understand where its coming from, but I did like the idea of having the only income in the game coming from ground missions and the CoFN.

Hmmm, if we can have the new base running faster (by increasing funding or something) it would help with the low income with the extra ground missions, at least for me. But I have very low losses so if...hmmm. More funding would be nice actually.

Are we talking like making laser rifles in the OG for sale? The profit margin was only 5k if i remember correctly? That wouldn't be too bad since they use alien materials now.

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I was thinking maybe making, for example, laser cells (assuming they don't cost Alenium, which would be nice) sell for $1100 maybe. Cheap, quick to produce, but not going to make you any money, really. And then things with high materials costs and long build times be worth significantly more to represent the high cost in time and resources that go into making them.

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