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Author Topic: Managing Mundane vs. Cutting Edge Gear and Equipment  (Read 48242 times)

nemchenk

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Re: Managing Mundane vs. Cutting Edge Gear and Equipment
« Reply #45 on: February 17, 2008, 04:06:43 pm »
I've done a bit of work "from the ground up", as it were, on basic equipment and facilities. The results are here, if you want to have a look :)

The basic idea was first to assign each item a "tech level", to indicate how advanced it was. 1 - past, 2 - present, 3 - near future, 4 - sci-fi. I then looked for the most basic item, for me the Flashbang, and used it as the basis of the economy. Everything else stems from that one item, so all prices and manufacturing costs/times are in proportion. This prevents odd situations like an AA51 SAM taking the same time to produce as a Pistol clip, or TR-20 rockets costing nearly the same as an Assault Rifle.

This is not the same as the work that FrancoC has done, as his was to do more with the player budgets etc. I believe that the next step should be to impose the spirit of FrancoC's suggestions onto these "rationalised" prices.

But before we do that, I thought I would ask for comments from the forum.
* nemchenk ducks for cover  ;D
« Last Edit: February 17, 2008, 07:28:40 pm by nemchenk »

Serrax

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Re: Managing Mundane vs. Cutting Edge Gear and Equipment
« Reply #46 on: February 17, 2008, 06:32:30 pm »
That link doesn't work, sorry.

cu

nemchenk

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Re: Managing Mundane vs. Cutting Edge Gear and Equipment
« Reply #47 on: February 17, 2008, 07:29:29 pm »
I've corrected the link above -- sorry about that :( It seems the forum doesn't like HREF's in ""  ::) Ah well, learn something new every day :)

FrancoC

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Re: Managing Mundane vs. Cutting Edge Gear and Equipment
« Reply #48 on: February 17, 2008, 10:00:56 pm »
Nemchenk, I can't wait to give a look at your work, but since I'm a Win... I just can't open with Excel :)
Will OpenOffice open it?

Offline Psawhn

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Re: Managing Mundane vs. Cutting Edge Gear and Equipment
« Reply #49 on: February 17, 2008, 10:10:41 pm »
Yes, it's an openoffice document.

Some comments:

The Stiletto is the smaller, cheaper knife-fighter developed by Phalanx. The Saracen is a long distance, hypersonic interceptor developed by another country. Their prices should probably be switched about.
Similarly, the cost of a Firebird seems a bit cheap to me. Most bases will only have one, maybe two, Firebirds, with few replacements as they're not meant to come up against UFOs. I've always seen transport ships as a significant investment to bring a base up to mission-capable status.
Actually, squeeze the three aircraft's prices together so the most expensive is no more than $10,000,000 or so than the least expensive. The Saracen could be maybe 4 to 6 million more than a Stiletto, which is again 4 to 6 more than a Firebird.

The grenades seem too cheap by about an order of magnitude, compared with the gun prices. Maybe values like:
Flashbang: $175
IC Grenade: $275
Frag: $225
Smoke: $200


Maybe squeeze the ammo prices together a bit. $60 for a pistol round (old, but with super-high-velocity powder) vs. 450 for a SMG mag (which is a 50 year old design). Maybe reduce the spread a bit to $80 - $240, and drop the SMG to fit in the middle-lower end. Sniper and MG ammo should be good at the high end of $240. Flamethrower ammo might drop down around $260-$320, just to keep it competitive.
The combat knife could be halved or even quartered - it's a last-resort melee weapon, and forging a solid blade of steel/ceramic should be incredibly cheap for postmodern production.

Weapon prices themselves seem pretty good, along with base facility prices.

Maybe increase the cost of missiles a tad, and double the ECM and ECCM (Raven and Targetting Computer) Aircraft expansions - those are likely only bought once per each aircraft. Maybe also decrease the cost of Shiva rounds.


*I should note that I'm basing these modifications based on feel, not game balance, unlike FrancoC's work.

Aside from that, everything looks nice. I really like seeing those lots of zeroes at the tail end of aircraft and base facilities :D.

Something I noticed when seeing the big lists of numbers, was that it actually isn't hard to compare between the numbers. Numbers can be divided into their approximate magnitudes, and comparisons are only valid within a single bracket. For example, it's useless to compare something that costs $2,000 with something that costs $42,000, because unless you're doing work that'd need a calculator, you can just assume that $2,000 is as good as zero compared with the higher order number.


Some other things I was noticing about a number scale like this:

Aircraft costs, while realistic at the multi-million dollar range (and I love seeing those big zeroes), may make the cost of losing aircraft in interceptions so expensive as to discourage any interceptions at all - a single lost aircraft might be most of the monthly budget. Aircraft may need a Rent/Lease system (much like the original X-COM), so the loss of an aircraft you only spent $600,000 on for the past few months is easier to swallow than a lump sum of fifteen million dollars. This also provides an incentive to switch to researched aircraft - much lower monthly fees, at the cost of an up-front manufacturing cost and the requirement of antimatter to fuel your planes.

The costs are divided into 3 groups matching the three areas of gameplay: Tactical ground combat, Tactical air combat, and Strategic Base Management. The player will likely make no cost comparisons between any item in one group with an item in another group. Only Strategic Base management has single prices that exceed $1,000,000. Under that ceiling, it's easier to estimate the magnitude of a price by simply glancing at the number's length. Ie: 5200 vs 51000. There aren't too many zeroes to confuse the player.
Columns, and comma/decimal separators, make the price comparisons almost trivial.

Having the prices divided into three groups like this does make troop equipment practically free. Combined with unlimited stocks as suggested in the first post would mean the player hardly has to worry at all about making sure the equipment for the troops are there, with the exception of planning ahead for transfer times. Different people will probably see this as a good thing or a bad thing for gameplay.

Expensive tactical equipment is not listed. UGVs and alien weapons will likely cross the price group lines.

FrancoC

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Re: Managing Mundane vs. Cutting Edge Gear and Equipment
« Reply #50 on: February 17, 2008, 10:55:20 pm »
Yes, it's an openoffice document.

Ok so I have to remove the dust on my Linux partition  ;D

Offline Psawhn

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Re: Managing Mundane vs. Cutting Edge Gear and Equipment
« Reply #51 on: February 17, 2008, 11:11:15 pm »
Ok so I have to remove the dust on my Linux partition  ;D


Or just install OO for windows. :) Took me less than 5 minutes.

nemchenk

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Re: Managing Mundane vs. Cutting Edge Gear and Equipment
« Reply #52 on: February 18, 2008, 01:45:53 am »
Guys, I've put up an Excel version as well, in case you don't want to get OO.org installed (or don't have disk space or something :) )

Psawhn, thank you for your comments :) Allow me to respond:

* In general, I have done the bare minimum of game balance-motivated adjustments on these figures, mainly because I believe these should come last :) Not because they are unimportant, but because I think they can make for a cascade of "suspension of disbelief"-type issues if done too early on.

* Re the relative costs of the three aircraft, I sort of agree with you, but let me explain my logic. The Firebird is a sub-sonic converted cargo plane, which is why its cost is lowest in my 'sheet. The Stiletto is a Phalanx-only craft -- I don't even think it should be buyable! :P It is also described in the UFOPedia as being significantly more advanced than the jet fighters of the 2080s, hence its cost being higher than the Saracen. Would you agree?

* The fact that these craft are so expensive does make for a different game dynamic -- before, bases were by far the most expensive XCOM (and by extension, Phalanx) resources. With these numbers, aircraft may become maybe as important as bases (once you count losses from base loss through staff and items in storage), probably even more so. I would not mind it so much if I had a chance to break off interceptions -- at the moment, it seems very much instakill: you target a UFO, you fire and it does too, and you hope your missiles stay on course and its veer off. I very much preferred UFO1 and 2s way of popup windows and 3-4 shot battles :)

* I did dial-down grenade costs, mainly to reflect that they were one-shot, throw-away items.

* I forgot that the pistol ammo was relatively high-tech, and the SMG was low-tech :( The SMG is actually 375c, the MG (with it's vacuum sealing) is 450c. Given these, I agree that their prices should converge. How about 250c for the SMG (5c per round, as MP and Assault Rifle), and 90c for the pistol (7.5c per round)?

* I priced the flamer to be cheap, but the ammo expensive. The UFOPedia seems to imply the "magic" is in the fuel, not the delivery system :) Perhaps I should drop the price of the flamer some more, to something like 2.5-3k? The rocket launcher was also meant to be cheaper -- I think I messed up there a little :D

* Agreed on the Knife -- the "ceramics" bit was making me think it was more expensive than it should be ;) How about 225c, 30% of the pistol price?

* No problem increasing the price of aircraft electronics :) Shiva rounds could go maybe to 40k or something? 10,000 rounds for 4c a round is pretty cheap ;)

* I did try to keep the various types of items in separate price brackets -- three figure sum, five figure, etc :) Glad to see it has worked!

Keep those comments coming -- I will post an update spreadsheet tomorrow or the day after :)


nemchenk

FrancoC

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Re: Managing Mundane vs. Cutting Edge Gear and Equipment
« Reply #53 on: February 18, 2008, 11:41:06 am »
Or just install OO for windows. :) Took me less than 5 minutes.

That was something I did consider, sorry if I go a little OT, how OO behaves with Office already installed? I need that too.

nemchenk

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Re: Managing Mundane vs. Cutting Edge Gear and Equipment
« Reply #54 on: February 18, 2008, 01:52:44 pm »
Never had any problems with both of them. I guess issues would be disk space and opening MS Office documents in MS Office -- just ask OO not to set itself as the MS Office doc viewer.

FrancoC

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Re: Managing Mundane vs. Cutting Edge Gear and Equipment
« Reply #55 on: February 18, 2008, 04:07:36 pm »
Never had any problems with both of them. I guess issues would be disk space and opening MS Office documents in MS Office -- just ask OO not to set itself as the MS Office doc viewer.

That was my assumption too, but is better not to assume too much when you deal with software :)
BTW the excel version is welcome :)

So I can look those BIG numbers of yours, without going into details: good work, we could argue on some item price but I think that is not the point.
One thing that as a player I would say is: why should I bother buying/selling stuff that costs 100c ? It is a waste of time in micromanagement when I have to deal with stuff that costs 10Millions, I'm the chief of this organization not the employee that manages the finances.

That leads to two different solutions:
1. all basic equipment sould be free and unlimited to the player, or simply hidden in general maintainance costs.
2. you should consider to reduce the differences in terms of price between items.
While it make sense to compare ammo clips with weapons or buildings and aircrafts, 2813c for an assault rifle is irrelevant compared to just the entrance to the base that costs 1.000.000c.

IMHO the developers took the right way not having real-life prices on items thus giving each part of the game its own dignity, I'm not saying all the current prices are ok for me.
So Aircrafts MUST cost much more than a simple rifle, but it must have a relevant cost in the game or is better to have them for free.

I think you have done a great work but I think that will remain unusable if you don't scale them down to fit into the game.


Offline eleazar

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Re: Managing Mundane vs. Cutting Edge Gear and Equipment
« Reply #56 on: February 18, 2008, 10:57:55 pm »
That leads to two different solutions:
1. all basic equipment sould be free and unlimited to the player, or simply hidden in general maintainance costs.
2. you should consider to reduce the differences in terms of price between items.
While it make sense to compare ammo clips with weapons or buildings and aircrafts, 2813c for an assault rifle is irrelevant compared to just the entrance to the base that costs 1.000.000c.

Actually both solutions could be applied.

It makes sense to me that the pre-alien equipment (not including aircraft) should be unlimited and free, after all there's already enough of that stuff produced to equip hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of soldiers.  8 bases with 8 squads of 8 soldiers could never make a noticeable dent on the world supply of hand-grenades or combat armor.  And as mentioned in the opening thread it's not very fun to micro-manage mundane pistol clips.  If we must account for it, lets just assume that the cost of maintaining each soldier includes all the mundane equipment they could ever need.


But even if we take mundane personal equipment out of the equation, the difference in cost (and/or production time) between an alien tech pistol and an alien tech fighter craft would be absurdly massive.  We can't try too hard to be realistic here, or we'll break the game.

So we certainly need to do #2.
But i think #1 would also be a good idea, and it would allow #2 to be done a little less drastically.

nemchenk

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Re: Managing Mundane vs. Cutting Edge Gear and Equipment
« Reply #57 on: February 19, 2008, 04:56:03 pm »
Hi FrancoC, thanks for your feedback.

For me, some of the specific prices are a major issue that ruins suspension of disbelief :( I guess I am particular or something :P Thus, I think it is very important that prices of everything are in proportion to each other, because otherwise they seem just random!

SpaceWombat

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Re: Managing Mundane vs. Cutting Edge Gear and Equipment
« Reply #58 on: February 19, 2008, 05:30:36 pm »
What about the idea of restricting buy/sell to "normal" stuff and building to special equipment?
I can't think of a small workshop working on a nightvision or pistol as efficient as a professional weapon manufacturer. It would simply be to cost intensive in reality. On the other hand a world market for alien blasters would also sound a bit absurd although some military contractors might be willing to offer lasers and ufo fighters.

I oppose the ability to buy everything but standard weapons in large amounts and the only equipment that makes sense to produce on your own is new/experimental/alien tech. Here the cost diversion (measured in credits or time to produce) between a laser pistol and a complete ufo fighter should be immense.

The only question is would this hurt gameplay? It would not hurt gameplay to give standard equipment for free (military equipment stocks are available at any amount PHALANX might need) if the standard weapons are generally worse than the nasty alien guns imho.
What's the problem with comparatively low cost in production time for plasma guns in comparison to an ufo fighter? I think that is just balanced. You need to carefully watch your fighters with a technological edge while a laser rifle more or less should not make any difference.

FrancoC

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Re: Managing Mundane vs. Cutting Edge Gear and Equipment
« Reply #59 on: February 19, 2008, 05:31:34 pm »
Yes I agree they must be proportional to each other, you also have to consider this is just a game. When it becomes too real it looses its fun :)

So yes an aircraft cannot cost the same as 2 assault rifle (in 2.2 Stiletto = 20.000 Ass.Rifle ~8.400) and a base cannot cost 50-80 Mil because you will loose interest in manage any other item that costs "only" 3000c.

I suggest you to round down the big numbers, start from the higher and go down, reduce the difference between them.
If you want big prices, an idea could be to have a lower initial price and pay more for them in monthly maintainance cost (there is already a maintainance cost for buildings and aircrafts, but you could develope a new model). Phalanx could have some special offer a sort of leasing for expensive items.
You will still pay cash (no rental or leasing) the less expensive items.