Jump to content

Financing the operation


Recommended Posts

Is it just me or do finances feel a little on the rough side in the demo? I feel extremely dependent on - really, trapped by - the council of funding nations and their monthly check. The rewards pulled in from completed missions seem to be almost too light to be worth it (strictly financially speaking - of course you can't risk losing reputation to the council).

Rewards were probably too lucrative in X-Com - just a handful of missions worth of alien tech sales could put financial issues far from the forefront of your worries - but the way it is now I'm having a hard time seeing how I could feasibly expand the operation beyond two bases. A serious lack of rewards from the completion of individual missions is keeping me quite stuck. It's not the kind of restriction that makes me feel like I have a lot of options and not enough resources to pursue them all - it feels more like I have all these options and I can't pursue any of them because there's nothing I can do to make headway financially.

In short, it feels a lot like X-Com did when I was eight years old and didn't know I could sell stuff after missions. I feel that the financial rewards for successfully completing individual missions - regardless of the impact on reputation with the council - need to be higher. The risk of taking on these missions is not entirely offset by the new technology they provide for research, because those incur further costs in hiring scientists, conducting research, hiring engineers, and spending money on building that new tech. Monthly payments always seem to just do their part in maintenance upkeep and don't leave much or any room for expanding your coverage or upgrading your equipment, and that's what X-Com was always about: starting small, taking risks, reaping rewards, pulling ahead, and turning the tables.

tl;dr version: I strongly recommend adding substantial financial incentives and rewards for completing individual missions.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A version or two ago you got so much from recovering enemy craft (selling alloys etc) that you could usually build a new base after the first few completed missions.

It may have gone the other way slightly but the balance is by no means final.

Xenonauts intentionally focuses more on the funding you get.

That is the main reason you won't be able to sell things you manufacture for profit.

In the original it took the player away from the world you were supposed to be saving and focused on your manufacturing facilities.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think of it as the difference between hourly pay and commission. Having financial rewards for taking on risks and succeeding incentivizes your doing the job on a mission-by-mission basis with positive reinforcement, rather than just the negative reinforcement of losing funding where you aren't active, especially since you can't even help not being everywhere in the beginning anyway.

Even with the regular funding and not profiting through sales, you'd think individual regions would offer some kind of bonus for making confirmed kills against aliens and their spacecraft in their territory. And with the Cold War still raging, you'd think nations would be particularly interested in some of that recovered alien technology for reverse engineering purposes of their own.

I never liked the old manufacture-for-profit thing but that wasn't even really the optimal way to get funding anyway - monthly funding was always a cushion for your regular upkeep and extra loot from missions, your reward for successfully completing them, paid for expansions to your operation. I liked that dynamic. It rewarded you for taking on risks and achieving success. If you wanted more bases, more personnel, and better equipment, it meant you had to get out there and earn it, and you felt those earnings with every mission.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Even with the regular funding and not profiting through sales, you'd think individual regions would offer some kind of bonus for making confirmed kills against aliens and their spacecraft in their territory. And with the Cold War still raging, you'd think nations would be particularly interested in some of that recovered alien technology for reverse engineering purposes of their own.

They are impressed when you get kills so they increase their funding.

Increasing funding AND bonuses seems a bit too much.

They are also interested in the alien tech, that is why you sell them it after a mission and use that money as well.

You get the same sort of reward from completing missions as you did in the original.

If you go out on missions you increase your standing with the funding nations and get to sell the alien artifacts you acquire.

If you want to build a new base you go and complete missions.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I quite like the current mechanism, where you get funding from regions if you do a good job protecting them. However, the initial lack of expansion makes this hard to do: you don't have enough money to cover wide swathes of the globe, and soon enough your funding from those areas starts to tank, meaning you can't expand there, either. It's a downward spiral. The dilemma of being strong in a few areas or weak in many is a part of the strategic choice, but you never really get to choose the latter option.

It will probably work better once missions start counting "local forces survived" properly, so missions add more to your reputation, and once there are financial gains for shooting down craft over water. If you ask me, the funding model is fine, it just needs to reap the benefits from currently inactive features and perhaps some rebalancing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1k?! You got 1K for Elenium? We used to dream of getting 1k back when I were a lad. 1k. Bloody riches mate.

Sorry. Monty Python got mention over on the other thread and...

back on track. It is going to be interesting to see just how much squealing there is when the game is balanced. Particularly as there's no golden manufacturing path any more.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Xenonauts intentionally focuses more on the funding you get.

That is the main reason you won't be able to sell things you manufacture for profit.

In the original it took the player away from the world you were supposed to be saving and focused on your manufacturing facilities.

I don't agree with this!

I've played the original many, many times and none of the other (cheap in my opinion) clone attempts got this right. They took the same approach as what Gauddlike (and others?) suggests and it only caused the game to fail in my (arguably seasoned) personal opinion. The fact that you can supplement your funding from other countries, by manufacturing and selling weapons and equipment only helped keep you afloat a bit longer so that when the game got more hectic you were able to afford enough decent equipment and weapons you needed for your squads to function properly.

This extra money to fully equip your squad to have a higher chance of victory in all these missions that if you had not the money to buy them, you'd probably just get by with the shirt on your backs if even that. It made a huge difference to be able to do this in smart fashion. Otherwise I found that it was just a steady linear spiral down trying to win missions with less and less equipment until eventually you got overwhelmed.

Honestly removing the ability to make money off researched equipment and weapons (considering you do need to gather the materials from missions) would only lessen the spirit of the original game as this was still a huge part of the original if you want to admit it or not. Manufacturing researched tech for profit would never allow you to fully fund your forces, but it helped take the edge off. Ignoring this aspect would make the game far too linear focusing only on squad-based combat. And this is where X-COM was always different because it was not just about squad-based combat, but also the economic aspect as well. Ignore that and you end up with a cheap wannabe clone that misses the mark.

Further to this I personally feel that the player should have the option of being able to choose their balance of these two mainstay aspects of the X-COM DNA. Something that past attempts have foolishly focused only on the squad-based combat and missed the point of the genre completely.

I'd like to hear from one of the actual developers on this rather than just the fans and other backers. Is this something about the gameplay that is being considered by Goldhawk?

Edited by jkamcmillen
Link to comment
Share on other sites

That isn't a suggestion, it is a statement of how the game currently works, and Chris has said he plans it to continue working.

Also this point is completely wrong:

Manufacturing researched tech for profit would never allow you to fully fund your forces, but it helped take the edge off.

It is perfectly possible to fund your entire operation by manufacture alone.

It does involve dedicated manufacturing but it can be done easily enough.

As for the rest of it you are assuming that the game will be unbalanced without the profits from manufacturing?

Your post assumes that income from funding nations, plus income from selling the alien weapons that you can't use will be insufficient to equip your squad.

That is not based on anything to do with Xenonauts, it is based on the original x-com.

Xenonauts will not have profits from manufactured goods, therefore finances will be balanced with this in mind.

X-com did have profits from manufacturing so it was balanced (although not very well) with those potential profits in mind.

Further to this I personally feel that the player should have the option of being able to choose their balance of these two mainstay aspects of the X-COM DNA. Something that past attempts have foolishly focused only on the squad-based combat and missed the point of the genre completely.

I disagree with this section.

Mainly on the classification of manufacturing for profit as a 'mainstay' of the original game and it being 'the point of the genre'.

Manufacturing is a big part of the game yes, setting up factories to churn out profit was not.

It was possible to do but should not be the focus.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Further to this I personally feel that the player should have the option of being able to choose their balance of these two mainstay aspects of the X-COM DNA. Something that past attempts have foolishly focused only on the squad-based combat and missed the point of the genre completely.

While its not going to be possible to choose your balance as a player through an options menu it is likely that it will be easy enough to mod in profits for manufactured items and balance the game economics however you want. Just don't expect it in the release version.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

jkamcmillen, I take issue with your assertion that manufacturing "supplements" funding nations. If that was true, why, according to this study into manufacturing profitability in X-Com does the laser cannon - one of the first weapons you research, two research topics off one of the first research topics you get, net a profit per fully staffed workshop of $1,968,000 a month. Two workshops and you have more than the funding nations provide you! That's not a supplement, that's a revenue stream that surpasses funding nations and loot taken from ufos in an order of magnitude that balloons very quickly.

Profiting heavily from manufacturing in Xcom disconnects the player from the funding nations (they become a "maintenance" paycheck to cover the bills for the month) and the missions (downed ufos are still important as sources of Elerium, but the loot is a drop in the sea). If anything, in this game, I want to see moar lootz. If the loot is good, that engages players far more than crunching a spreadsheet to work out what the most effective goods are to sell!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

And I think that manufactured goods should provide a minor profit.

Just tiny, tiny one. :)

If it's just a tiny, just build tons of workshops and hire tons of engineers. If it's profitable, the tiny profit quickly grows up.

Added bonus is getting things you need built insanely fast. When you don't have things you need for yourself, you can start churning out even that tiny profit stuff since it'd pay for the engineers and workshop maintenance and some more on top.

When you can't manufacture stuff for profit, you need to balance your finances other ways. Currently it's pretty much not overspending your monthly allowance. :P

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, perhaps a compromise would be to make each tier of weapons and equipment a little more profitable than the last. Then you have consider the cost in materials (only retrievable from alien ships - risky in of itself) and time taken to produce vendor trash verses the profit gained.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

And thinking about it, I'd like to see a bounty paid for fightercraft downed. As it stands, there are two ways to make money from non-fightercraft. The first is a funding boost if you did reasonably well in a mission. The second is the sale of goods as your vulture-class salvage teams cart off the ufo and strip the dead aliens. Fightercraft, you can only make money from little boosts to funding nation goodwill. If I have to risk my interceptors to take down fightercraft, I can haz a bounty?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If it's just a tiny, just build tons of workshops and hire tons of engineers. If it's profitable, the tiny profit quickly grows up.

Added bonus is getting things you need built insanely fast. When you don't have things you need for yourself, you can start churning out even that tiny profit stuff since it'd pay for the engineers and workshop maintenance and some more on top.

When you can't manufacture stuff for profit, you need to balance your finances other ways. Currently it's pretty much not overspending your monthly allowance. :P

Kagua, what you are proposing is an exploit.

I would never build tons of workshops just to produce things for sale, because it is not fun.

By tiny profit I mean a system where you could sell unneeded equipment (outdated weapons for example) with small profit, but so small that it wouldn't be smart to produce things strictly for sale.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Unfortunately Arturius, if there's a way to make money without having to battle like hell for it, a) people will find it and b) people will exploit the HELL out of it.

Edited by Max_Caine
Deleted last part of sentence - rude.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Plus even with selling at a loss you can still sell your old gear and make most of the money back you spent on building it.

If you have got plenty of use out of it and it has helped you to win fights you may otherwise have lost or saved you from losing (and having to hire) troops then that is technically a profit ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If any manufacturing in this game ends up with a net profit, I will end up with a at least one base solely devoted to manufacturing in order to:

1) Up my cash amount

2) Remove myself from the mercy of the funding nations.

That is an unequivocal fact and personally one I feel was a *massive* cock-up with the design of Enemy Unknown.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Looks like I stirred the pot a little. :)

You guys make some valid points and I do agree with many of you that the main focus should of course be the combat missions, that's the goal of the game to defend the planet from the alien threat. However, I do believe that there is still an "economic factor" that should not be ignored in this specific game sub-genre. Selling all tech at a loss just doesn't make practical sense. (to me) Perhaps some tech at a loss due to extra costs to manufacture early technologies, but later tech should at least have some (and I agree with Arturius on this) sort of minor profit. Not to cut out the need for funding from nations, as this is important, but to help take the edge off a bit. Or at least let the player go down the more corrupt road a little for the extra bit of freedom to experience the game world a bit more. Further balancing from the development team is probably the key to this I think.

Actually if you lose all funding from all nations there should be some kind of contingent that you loose at some point since the planet in theory should likely be completely invaded and all hope lost.

The original X-COM had it's own balancing issues, fair enough, but I liked the concept that you could do a little more economically than just making an overly complex weapons and equipment shop system. The original X-COM was obviously made to be deeper than that and no other attempt to recreate what they did has met this one aspect of the original since then.

No matter what individual feelings on the each of us are on the ability to turn some kind of profit (big, small or next to nothing) on manufactured tech Xenonauts has the chance to be something a little bit grander than just another X-COM clone attempt and I'd like to see that happen. Completely trimming down the economic aspect to a way to produce more alien goods in my honest opinion misses out on a great opportunity to capture the same spirit of the original in all aspects rather than just the combat aspect which has already been done and done and done many times before.

Some may not see this from there experiences with X-COM, but I loved the way that X-COM allowed you to manage your forces with that added bit of flexibility and allow you to generate your own "style" of military management. This must appeal to many others, no?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Funding from the nations will be more important here.

In x-com as long as you kept at least one nation on your side to avoid game over you could fund by building laser cannon.

Here you will be in trouble if you start losing funders.

That is one reason Chris is talking about having missions to allow you to bring them back on board after the aliens have taken them away from you.

You still seem to assume that you will be unable to play the game properly without profits from selling your own manufactured gear.

As long as you get enough funding and profit from selling the alien tech then that shouldn't be an issue at all.

If you need more cash in the old game you just had to build another factory, or set one of your existing ones to laser cannon, and start churning out more goods.

That isn't really military management for me, it is more factory management.

In Xeno if you are short of funds then you need to perform better in order to get the spoils from the ground missions.

You may even need to make do with the lower tech equipment while you build up your stock of better stuff rather than adding another factory and being able to buy whatever you want after a month or so.

Completely trimming down the economic aspect to a way to produce more alien goods

I am not really sure what you mean by this.

In x-com you could produce alien weapons etc, in Xeno you can only produce the human derived versions that your troops will use.

That will be the only way to get any advanced equipment as you can't use the alien tech effectively.

I don't personally see how making profit on manufactured goods, as opposed to not making profit, makes the game 'something grander'.

Something slightly different maybe.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...