Lets discuss the mantainment cost of your stuff n shizz

[Trance]

Hi everyone,

after quite a long break i decided to come back into playing this game and checkout the updates and changes, i will not spend much time to talking about this but i'm quite happy to see the devs are putting a lot of effort into this game, but now, back on topic:

Despite a few bugs and a lot of curses, i managed to get through a lot and i'm now sitting at March with a reasonable ammount of veterans (or should i say commanders?), a mix of Condors and Foxtrot, a single Corsair and a Marauder, in my main base i have 30 scientists and 30 engineers ... now heres the thing that doesnt break my game or anything but its crippling my expansion by a lot, my upkeep cost of everything in my main hub reaches 1.000.000 scheckels alone, with the other bases i have half of that ammount is added to the overall upkeep cost, which is 1.500.000 scheckels roughly, the majority of it is taken by scientists, engineers and soldiers.

Now, i do not remember how much the costs were in the original XCOM so i really can't do a comparison, fortunately i can still maintain myself by just razing every ship grounded by interceptors (thanks devs, this was one hell of a feature), but money i get from the countries is minimum, i have a few questions :

1) I understand if i improve my relation with a country, this one give me a raise, but no matter how many ship i put down, no matter how many Cities i liberate, no matter how many bases i clear this country still doesnt care and in the end of the month the relationship deteriorates overtime (recently in my playthrough i cleared a huge base in Brazil and in the end of the same month, South america gave me the middle finger, god damn you guys) ... so, what i am doing wrong ?

2) Maybe airstriking is not the best course of action ? should i send the Xenonauts more than just Nuking the crashsite ?

3) Should i use less Engi and Scientists ? but considering the ammount of research i still have to complete, i feel like Scientists are always needed in large quantity, while engi maybe not, but with less engineers, especially in the early game, you will need them ... a lot.

Thats it for now, i will attach some screenshots in the next post.

Edited November 18, 2013 by Trance
Naughty words in the title! :O

[Chris]

Little less swearing, please. It's possible that (very clever) children may be reading the forums, so we try to keep it family friendly.

For maintenance costs, it does depends on the number of scientists / engineers you have. Scientists are intentionally quite expensive simply because they're so good at advancing you through the game. How many did you have?

Countries should indeed increase your funding if you do good stuff like shooting down UFOs and destroying bases. It's possible the damage those things cause is too high relative to the gains made from shooting them down, though. You'll get the relationship boost for shooting down the UFOs whether or not you airstrike them, though.

How does everyone else feel about the monthly income vs maintenance costs?

[Trance]

Here my geoscape :

http://oi40.tinypic.com/x3gv3p.jpg

and thats my main base :

http://oi43.tinypic.com/a32ec9.jpg

edit: i beg you pardon for the harsh language

[Dranak]

Wait... you're only getting 1.6M per month? That's less than the starting income. How often are you assaulting UFOs versus air striking?

Airstrikes are currently generally bad. You get much less initial cash and no standings increase, so they're a huge net loss over the course of a game and only worth using if you just don't want to play a mission and are willing to take the loss instead of just logging out.

Edit: I think maintenance costs aren't terrible, I mean even the OP is supporting a reasonable mid game operation on the starting income. If you intend for us to airstrike more than assault though, then maybe the values for UFO shootdowns might need to be buffed slightly, as you really need to grind a lot of ground missions to get significant funding increases.

Edited November 19, 2013 by Dranak

[Gorlom]

Airstrikes are currently generally bad. You get much less initial cash and no standings increase,

I thought Chris said you got standing increase from shooting down the UFOs, do you get extra for assulting the crashes on the ground after that? or do you only get standing increased after ground battles?

[Dranak]

There is a slight funding increase from shooting down a UFO (5K in a quick test I did), but the funding increase from a typical ground mission is several times that. I think even a light scout is worth close to 10k in funding increase.

[Trance]

The situation is kinda messy and ill explain why :

First of all, the number of UFO spawning in the map is massive, i get at least 2-3 ships x base, so thats roughly 10 ships x day, but i could only attend to assault 2 or 3 at maximum and considering from 10 ships 7 are large/massive and only 1 is a scout, i really have difficulties sending a proper strike team that could raze a Carrier or a Battleship (those are the ships i usually spawn, i haven't seen a Landing ship for example in a long time), here's the tough part ... as i'm playing e20v4 there's the bug that Aliens can shoot through walls and ceilings , so the chances to have my team survive an assult are very thin, i have to rely on the RNG Gods all the time and hope they can't shoot down my squad, and thats VERY unlikely, as i love and enjoy playing this game, the frustration that comes from the frequent freezes and this bug drains my will to do crash site mission, thats why i'm literally abusing the Airstrike option.

[Chris]

Do the ground missions still boost regional funding then? That was meant to have been moved to the initial reward for shooting down the UFO, as airstrikes are too weak otherwise. I'll discuss it with Aaron tomorrow.

[Trance]

So that means it is true that Airstrike are actually worthless in terms of improving the relationship with the other countries ?

[Dranak]

Do the ground missions still boost regional funding then? That was meant to have been moved to the initial reward for shooting down the UFO, as airstrikes are too weak otherwise. I'll discuss it with Aaron tomorrow.

Just confirmed that missions do boost funding. Without increases from ground missions, it's currently pretty much impossible to have any increase in your monthly funding levels.

Edit: Correct Trance, they only provide a small amount of cash.

Edited November 19, 2013 by Dranak

[StK]

Do the ground missions still boost regional funding then? That was meant to have been moved to the initial reward for shooting down the UFO, as airstrikes are too weak otherwise. I'll discuss it with Aaron tomorrow.

So what about the missions where the UFO actually landed and there was no Air-Battle?

[Commissar Pancakes]

A landed UFO would classify as a retrieval mission I believe.

[Markon]

Also note, I'm about 99 % sure you get about twice as much money from battling a combat mission, instead of just calling the airstrike. Not referring to long term funding changes, but the immediate pay out from the mission.

[Commissar Pancakes]

Isn't that supposed to be the point?

You get to preserve the life of your troopers as well as gain some monetary reward in lieu of the possibility of capturing tech and the larger monetary reward?

[mrsisk]

Early game in v19 stable I'm getting 30k to 45k per ground mission just from selling the weapons I pick up, which adds up to over 100k per day. That's a pretty substantial part of my income.