Let Us Make A "Little" Money with Manufacturing, It's actually easy to balance.

[RavenX]

I've started game after game and the economics are kind of screwed if you start in America. I never have enough cash to have a second base up and going by the time I need, unless I don't build any gear for my troops or only build one or two more aircraft and save/scum so I never lose one and have to replace it.

Now, we all completely understand that in OG X-Com being able to manufacture alien gear and then sell it for high dollar value made the mid and end game of X-Com very abusable. Money became a non-issue which it shouldn't have because the system was unbalanced. It's actually easy to balance multipele different ways and being implemented right could be a very easy way to balance most of Xenonauts economic issues.

The main thing being able to sell off manufactured items for a profit does for you is give you a monetary return for manufacture time invested. In OG X-Com, all they would have needed to do was cut the profit margin down on the sale of made items. Make it so you could still *help support* your economy, but definitely not make it so high it could replace your economy all together, which is the mistake the original made.

That should be totally avoidable with Xenonauts especially as balancing these values is where we're at in development right now with the beta. With the right values inserted here now you can balance out a lot of issues with the rest of the economy much easier. The key is to provide a *decent*, but not overly great, profit on the time put in to make that item. As it stands right now I think Xenonauts values are a little low. Low is still the right idea here, but a little more is necessary in the early game particularly if you Don't start in the Middle East every game. With my base in America near the American/Mexican boarder I can cover almost all of North and South America. That's 1/3 of the land mass of the planet. I shouldn't lose the game because I put my first base here.

The other way to balance the manufacturing/profit system is to make much of the manufacturing need rare items to make. Of course if you balance it this way there's a lot more involved deciding what items it takes to make things and judging how fast you retrieve those items during the coarse of a game, which can again lead to abuse if either the wrong items are chosen or given a wrong value. I'd say the easier way to balance it would simply be from the profit margin of sold items as deciding what makes what has mostly been decided already and it would take much more effort to change.

Also, I'm playing on easy. I either need the countries in Europe and Asia not to go to the aliens by month 2 or I need the money to get something up and running over there to provide protection, which I can't afford.

[WalrusJones]

I think adding this as a component of a mod would be an interesting idea, it would be a good way to balance a mod that requires a larger operational staff throughout to the entire game.

It may be difficult to balance with vanilla, and could easily be modded in.

[thothkins]

As the devs were fairly keen on not having a manufacturing exploit to any degree, I'd like to see how everything looks when the values/ sale price/ purcahse price and mission escalation look before adding manufacturing in there.

[Goetikmagus]

Well, with the addition of having to pay engineering wages, the game economy (<--- Minor in Economics/Anthropology.. yeah, weird, right?) , the numbers aren't all that easy to calculate, my dear Thothkins. I could probably go on forever, talking about economies of scale and the law of diminishing returns, but I wouldn't want to bore anyone (or be more of a nit-picker than I am now!). I'd also point out that an "exploit" is an unbalancing of game mechanics in a fashion that the developers ~do not intend~. If the Devs change their mind, and allow this kind of action, then it is, by definition, intended.

[WalrusJones]

If I personally did it (And it is on my drawing board,) I would make it an item explicitly for sale, and I would only make it so it would help lower the costs of having the engineering department during times of low supply demands... But not really make too much money, or justify hiring 20 new engineers.

Sure, it would be something that would be very useful for those first week prior to any serious need to manufacture much, but it wouldn't be a game changer.

Once again, I really feel it isn't something worth development time, but would be an interesting feature for a mod.

[Kurruk]

I can cover almost all of North and South America. That's 1/3 of the land mass of the planet.

Think you're exaggerating on that one, it would be 28% max and you're not covering Alaska, Grenland and Arctic so that would be more like 20%. No worries tho, it's still way better than starting at Australia ;-)

As for the idea, I'm sure that there are going to be some players that will build a base with only production in mind and with quantities increase the profit beyond safe limit thous creating an exploit.

[WalrusJones]

Think you're exaggerating on that one, it would be 28% max and you're not covering Alaska, Grenland and Arctic so that would be more like 20%. No worries tho, it's still way better than starting at Australia ;-)

As for the idea, I'm sure that there are going to be some players that will build a base with only production in mind and with quantities increase the profit beyond safe limit thous creating an exploit.

Your engineers have wages.

You just need to balance the income per month with the cost of the materials, and the wages of the engineers:

You make a profit over the material cost, but not over the engineers wages, this means that, yeah, idling engineers can reduce the expense that they bring with them, but you would be screwed if you tried to build a base for nothing but manufacturing goods: Facility maintenance, and the fact that engineer wages bring it down to a loss would seriously cripple you.

[StellarRat]

You're jumping the gun on this, IMO. The Geoscape (strategic) layer is not balanced yet. The devs know that cash is short right now and are working on the balance of the economic system. I'd wait until they think they are finished and see if you still have a valid issue. I'm sure things will be much better in a couple more releases.

[RavenX]

Think you're exaggerating on that one, it would be 28% max and you're not covering Alaska, Grenland and Arctic so that would be more like 20%. No worries tho, it's still way better than starting at Australia ;-)

As for the idea, I'm sure that there are going to be some players that will build a base with only production in mind and with quantities increase the profit beyond safe limit thous creating an exploit.

I was counting my outward radar range in the coverage, if I had to narrow it down I'd say yes, about 28% or so, but I didn't count Greenland as part of the North American continent though I guess it is, and yeah Alaska is out of my reach. What the game calculates though is evry UFO that flies over that you don't see or intercept counts to the score against you. There's a lot of traffic over Europe and Asia and if you can't see or shoot down those UFO's the aliens get a base over there by the end of the second month and loosing a funding block that size makes for a very hard early game in any difficulty.

On the economy through manufacture, at current costs even scaling up production to a dedicated base wouldn't be feasible. You would use too many alien resources that you need to use to make equipment and vehicles to use or you would loose the game very early on as well. There is a small profit margin on a few vanilla items as it is but it's not enough to do anything with and if scaled up would just eat into other valuable resources. Play a little with current builds manufacturing and start your game in America and you'll see what I mean, I'm sure.

You're jumping the gun on this, IMO. The Geoscape (strategic) layer is not balanced yet. The devs know that cash is short right now and are working on the balance of the economic system. I'd wait until they think they are finished and see if you still have a valid issue. I'm sure things will be much better in a couple more releases.

I do indeed hope I'm jumping the gun. The best time for the devs to have feedback on it is before they do it and nail it down. I'm not complaining or anything just throwing this out there for them to see and think about (which I'm sure they are). To make manufacturing a fuller part of the integrated Xenonauts experience we should also make sure we point out the flaws it had in the OG X-Com too because it's concept was sound and worked, but because of high sale values became abusable fairly quickly. Also with this system consuming the materials you bring back from missions not only does it effect the economy but also the pacing of the game as a whole so it needs a lot of testing and balancing, which is where we come in .

[RavenX]

As the devs were fairly keen on not having a manufacturing exploit to any degree, I'd like to see how everything looks when the values/ sale price/ purcahse price and mission escalation look before adding manufacturing in there.

Exactly. I think the main word in that sentence is "exploit". I don't want to see it abusable either by any means nor should it invalidate the real economy of making sure you have funding by actually doing your job as Xenonauts. I just want to see a "little" bit of money come from it. That way if you do loose a country or two you can still attempt a come back or "edge of your seat win".

Also with all the UFO's you miss by putting your starting base in America currently, it makes getting through those first few months almost impossible. I've never put a base anywhere but America and I haven't made it far enough to even see the inside of a alien base yet for some reason. I've lost because of terror sites spawning where I couldn't get to them and having Russia and/or Asia siding with the aliens by the end of the second month killing my economy in the process when I'm still trying to get up enough money to start a second base to cover them.

I do excellent in just about every combat encounter so that's not where I'm making my mistakes that are costing me the game. I'm not making too much gear, just trying to equip my troops with lasers and jackal armor, and having 30 scientists and 20 technicians. Just doing that much and putting my base in America is enough to cost me the game pretty much every time.

[DNK]

In V18, you can, but it's limited by resources. Precision Lasers sell for 75K but cost 60K+6K of alloys. It's just 9K per, but it basically pays off the workers' salaries over the month (assuming they build other things between lasers). I think that's a really good balance, something that just pays for the workers needed to make it in their off hours. It's hard-capped by how many alloys you have, and so doesn't expand into infinite production cash like in XCOM.

Basically, just don't change that.

[RavenX]

In V18, you can, but it's limited by resources. Precision Lasers sell for 75K but cost 60K+6K of alloys. It's just 9K per, but it basically pays off the workers' salaries over the month (assuming they build other things between lasers). I think that's a really good balance, something that just pays for the workers needed to make it in their off hours. It's hard-capped by how many alloys you have, and so doesn't expand into infinite production cash like in XCOM.

Basically, just don't change that.

I like that too, but I still feel that needs to be a *little* higher because as you mention that just covers the techs salaries and still doesn't give any profit at all. It's almost worth it to hire on techs to do your construction/equipment building and then fire them to try to avoid paying them. If you have too few techs then you can't keep your troops equipped enough to stay alive and effectively fight back.

It would be nice perhaps as well if profit margin was tweaked on per-difficulty setting. Meaning maybe you'd get a little higher profit on easy but not quite as much on medium and even less on hard. That might be a little too much to hope for though considering you might need to re-balance the game 3 different times to accomplish that correctly which would be a waste of dev time and money at this stage.

[DNK]

My biggest issue isn't the amount of profit (it's reasonable if not very generous), but the severe alloy limitations. That's where the balance needs to be struck, because even on the slimmest profit margins, a dedicated player can ramp up to infinite wealth soon enough. Currently, you have 12% profit margins, compounding every 32 hours with 15 workers and half a workshop. After 6 production runs (8 days), you have an extra $75K to double you staff and production rate. After that it takes 11 rounds (about 8 days again) to pay off a new workshop and 30 more workers. So, in just half a month you've managed to quadruple your production base... and for $650K in profits per month if expansion stops after that. Of course, you'd need 1,100 alloys per month to maintain that.

So, yeah, compound interest is quite something. The fact that this game sets a limit on how much compounding can happen AND makes it a tradeoff between profit-production and gear-production (through scarce resources) is a perfect way to fix the original XCOM's runaway economics and add an extra dimension to production decision-making.

Ultimately, balancing something (with no resource restrictions) that can ramp up to infinity within 2 months is impossible, so keeping it alloy-capped is the only real solution, other than making it unprofitable altogether. I believe the amount of alloys coming in regularly increases over the months, so you do get increasing profits from a strong manufacturing base, but you need to manage and plan it out properly if you intend to make good money. How much of your alloys can you divert from gear towards profits, and how many ships do you need to sack to get them?

[RavenX]

My biggest issue isn't the amount of profit (it's reasonable if not very generous), but the severe alloy limitations. That's where the balance needs to be struck, because even on the slimmest profit margins, a dedicated player can ramp up to infinite wealth soon enough. Currently, you have 12% profit margins, compounding every 32 hours with 15 workers and half a workshop. After 6 production runs (8 days), you have an extra $75K to double you staff and production rate. After that it takes 11 rounds (about 8 days again) to pay off a new workshop and 30 more workers. So, in just half a month you've managed to quadruple your production base... and for $650K in profits per month if expansion stops after that. Of course, you'd need 1,100 alloys per month to maintain that.

So, yeah, compound interest is quite something. The fact that this game sets a limit on how much compounding can happen AND makes it a tradeoff between profit-production and gear-production (through scarce resources) is a perfect way to fix the original XCOM's runaway economics and add an extra dimension to production decision-making.

Ultimately, balancing something (with no resource restrictions) that can ramp up to infinity within 2 months is impossible, so keeping it alloy-capped is the only real solution, other than making it unprofitable altogether. I believe the amount of alloys coming in regularly increases over the months, so you do get increasing profits from a strong manufacturing base, but you need to manage and plan it out properly if you intend to make good money. How much of your alloys can you divert from gear towards profits, and how many ships do you need to sack to get them?

What item has that kind of profit margin on it? I haven't seen that many of the mid to late game items nor many that use alloy so I don't know what kinds of profits they give. I know using lasers and the first few months of items you research you can't reach those kinds of profits. Starting in America I can't even manage to get a second base up by the end of the second month and that's with a full workshop and a full lab running research.

I don't know maybe I'm doing something wrong?

[thothkins]

With a base in the US, does the funding plummet everywhere else. I've always started in the Med, and have a 2nd base at the end of month 2. Mostly it's month 3 before it has Condors in it, but it is there.

Another thread on financing is here for anyone's interest.

[DNK]

I was referring to precision lasers, as per my previous post. You can't make that much profit because you're limited by alloys on precision lasers at 6 per. Note that my math was off - I think it's just 550 alloys per month needed for that $650K figure.

[RavenX]

With a base in the US, does the funding plummet everywhere else. I've always started in the Med, and have a 2nd base at the end of month 2. Mostly it's month 3 before it has Condors in it, but it is there.

Another thread on financing is here for anyone's interest.

I don't think funding plummets or changes value. I'm pretty sure that when you make a base in the US you end up missing too many UFO's everywhere else to make enough money to be able to win or even really get a second base up and running. Try starting a new game in the US and tell me if it works for you. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, and if so I'd very much like to know so I can adjust my strategy.

[thothkins]

I've a gut feeling that's exactly what would happen whenever a starting base is placed anywhere that doesn't cover multiple funding nations. Although the US could get Central America and the top of South America.

[RavenX]

I've a gut feeling that's exactly what would happen whenever a starting base is placed anywhere that doesn't cover multiple funding nations. Although the US could get Central America and the top of South America.

That's exactly where I place my base. I cover all of North and South America (as in I don't loose any nations there). I always end up loosing Russia and Asia and can't survive long enough to get a second base up so I can cover Europe or Asia. I can either equip a squad decently enough to survive the missions or I can try and build a second base early enough to get coverage across the pond, but if I do that my men get slaughtered because of not having adequate armor or munitions.

[200down]

That's exactly where I place my base. I cover all of North and South America (as in I don't loose any nations there). I always end up loosing Russia and Asia and can't survive long enough to get a second base up so I can cover Europe or Asia. I can either equip a squad decently enough to survive the missions or I can try and build a second base early enough to get coverage across the pond, but if I do that my men get slaughtered because of not having adequate armor or munitions.

Completely agree with the manufacturing actually paying something worth selling items for. Right now it's almost pointless to sell anything. They should at the very least pay half of the money, time, and alien resources spend to make them in the first place. As of now all my starting jackal and old used armors just collect dust sense it's not even worth the time to sell them.

And yes, also agree with the very unbalanced country payments. Needs help. Large countries need to pay much much more than they do so you aren't stuck plopping your first base in the same damn spot.

Good post. Thumbs Up

[Jorboc]

... and so doesn't expand into infinite production cash like in XCOM.

You know, I always thought that was intentional... I mean, if you think about it, obviously that sort of thing would come to a point where money shouldn't be any object at all. You are defending THE ENTIRE PLANET, after all. (except them Australian bastards who joined the aliens in April, ahem) Plus at that point most of your expenditure is either in manufacturing hours, or limited stockpiles of Elerium.

In its weird little way, it was kind of 'realistic.'

[Mytheos]

You know, I always thought that was intentional... I mean, if you think about it, obviously that sort of thing would come to a point where money shouldn't be any object at all. You are defending THE ENTIRE PLANET, after all. (except them Australian bastards who joined the aliens in April, ahem) Plus at that point most of your expenditure is either in manufacturing hours, or limited stockpiles of Elerium.

In its weird little way, it was kind of 'realistic.'

Well you were strapping Laser Guns on your dime a dozen interceptors and simply staying at their max range = They cant even shoot you, but you can shoot them (Until you saw UFO that required you to have Plasma Guns but end up in the same situation)

But you ended up manufacturing Air Craft Laser Weapons for cash (Best profit without using Alloys/Elerium) so...who is buying them and why?

Obviously Military's from different Nations...and if you are spitting out hundreds of them...why dont they shoot down UFOs?

That part broke the realism for me.

I can take down UFOs perfectly with this weapon, I sent 300 out over the globe, yet you buy them (feel they have value) and yet get no use out of them?

The Alien Invasion doesnt change if you manufacture Laser Aircraft weapons or Laser Pistols, so you cant say well they are using them, and I just assume they are shooting down a lot of UFO on their own, you'd notice a reduction of sightings if that were the case.

[RavenX]

Completely agree with the manufacturing actually paying something worth selling items for. Right now it's almost pointless to sell anything. They should at the very least pay half of the money, time, and alien resources spend to make them in the first place. As of now all my starting jackal and old used armors just collect dust sense it's not even worth the time to sell them.

And yes, also agree with the very unbalanced country payments. Needs help. Large countries need to pay much much more than they do so you aren't stuck plopping your first base in the same damn spot.

Good post. Thumbs Up

Thanks. I did sell some of my old armor as a made new armor, for a while I kept it because I planned on using it with another squad because you'll have to have one at your second base. If I put my starting base in America though I can't survive the loss of the nations in Europe and Asia long enough to get that second base up and running.

I thought we'd be able to build bases where the drop-ship could land on the way to a mission on the other side of the globe but it doesn't work that way. The only way to get to a mission like that without having two squads currently is to transfer your troops and drop-ship to the other base and then launch from there, which by the time things transfer over the mission is gone anyway.

One way to fix that might be to give the drop-ship unlimited range. That might be a little unrealistic as far as fuel and stuff goes but without the ability to land a drop-ship at another base along the way without transferring them there first I don't see another way to do it aside from having two squads of Xenonauts with their own drop-ship at a second base (which you can't afford if you start in the Americas).

You know, I always thought that was intentional... I mean, if you think about it, obviously that sort of thing would come to a point where money shouldn't be any object at all. You are defending THE ENTIRE PLANET, after all. (except them Australian bastards who joined the aliens in April, ahem) Plus at that point most of your expenditure is either in manufacturing hours, or limited stockpiles of Elerium.

In its weird little way, it was kind of 'realistic.'

I thought about that way back in the day when the OG X-Com came out. One would think that if your entire planet, civilization and way of life were at risk, money would be the last thing people would care about. No-one would care about costs of things because if those things don't get done (building bases and weapons etc etc) then there wouldn't be a planet to defend and everyone would either be dead or slaves to the aliens. Every nation would put their all into defending a situation like that. I'd like to think that even as greedy as the human race is we wouldn't let the planet get taken over because we "couldn't afford" to pay the bill to save it. Global enslavement and destruction would probably be the only thing that would make us not care about money.

[Mytheos]

I think the game works best when you have to rely on the Funding Nations + Auto Sold items from ground combat missions like it is now.

Manufacturing in the original game was just a huge pain in the pass, and I used the mod that would set the process to Auto Make / Auto Sell...

So I didnt have to wait till I didnt have the money to make them anymore and have my production stop...sell the ones I made, and restart production.

I'm all for micro management here and there, but that was just a horrible system.

And honestly if they balance the economy correctly, then we wouldnt feel the need to make "A little extra Money" with manufacturing.

Assume the whole Immortal Plane debate isnt a part of this conversation (The biggest problem with needing extra money if you dont know how to do Air Combat correctly)

Edited July 8, 2013 by Mytheos

[Mytheos]

And really if you are stuck on "My Engineers arent doing anything but I am still paying them $$$...

It'd be easier to remove their Salaries or make them insignificant and assume their contract is based on production and that the production costs are Materials + Engineer Commission Payments.

That is a far better thing than opening a massive can of worms while trying to balance the Economy.