I've been thinking along the same lines as Joe. Currently the Buy/Sell and Production screens repeat information while omitting sections that would actually be useful. Take a look at the two shots below, the sections in red are common to both where as those in yellow are unique.
Buy/Sell
Production
As you can see, there isn't much unique content. It's pretty stodgy, taken up with repeat info and empty space.
I've mocked up some shots of a combined Buy/Sell/Production screen, which could simply be named Equipment in the base view. It conveys all the info of both screens and more.
Allow me to talk you through this first shot. Using the Buy/Sell screen as a base, the Disassembly tab has been brought across. Starting from the list of equipment you have:
- Autosell
- Item name
- Current quantity in base
- 1x Incrementation *
- 10x Incrementation *
- Incremented value vs Items on the market
*Only shown when a piece of equipment is selected otherwise we get unsightly repetition of x1 and x10 all over the place.
Currently the assault rifle has been selected and incremented to a value of 12. This value is contextualised later.
Moving left we have workers available, production lines and storage. I've removed workshop capacity as it is simply a reiteration of the maximum number of workers available. I've renamed production limit to production lines as this made more sense to me. The word "limit" implied that I couldn't produce more equipment than the limit, it actually is the number of jobs you can queue, therefore production lines made more sense. I've set this to an arbitrary value of 5, based on nothing other than I liked the shape of the number
Below that is the item overview which contextualises the selections made in the item menu. Below the item name, picture and UFOpedia link, we see the purchase, sale and production values. The first two are greyed out as there are no rifles to buy and there are less than 12 to sell, only produce is available. Below is a summary of the item.
Clicking produce would add the job to the production queue below the item list, adding all available workers to the job and immediately debiting the cost of the entire job. This is further expanded in the shot below.
This job has now been running for 16 hours, you can see the total production time as well as the next items completion time. The contextual area to the left has also changed when selecting the job, allowing you to alter the number of workers and items in the job and reporting how this will affect production time and costs.
Regarding using production as a means to generating revenue independently of the supporting nations, whether it's intended or not it's very possible using the current build. This can be counteracted in a few ways, firstly by requiring production costs to be paid upfront for a job, therefore reducing the likelyhood of mass production queues. This however will only inhibit those with little cash, in the event the player already has a decent balance you can bring market forces into play. With a hidden supply and demand value for each item, when the player starts flooding the market with high margin items, sale price will start to fall as supply is met. Eventually the item will be worth little more than production costs.
Please let me know what you think. I'm pretty keen to try and implement this, I'm no programmer but I'm a quick learner.
