Production vs Buying/Selling

[dekaydence]

Hello,

 I've just recently started playing the game and I have to say I'm quite enjoying it. While playing I noticed that when you produce items it costs you the same amount of money as when buying them. What's the use for producing items then or am I missing something?

[H-Hour]

There is no production for profit in the game at this time. There are some items which you can only produce -- not purchase. Also, you will need to use your engineers to disassemble UFOs for parts.

[dekaydence]

Thanks again.
But aren't the developers trying to resolve this with version 2.4 already and all? Is using cheaper production not an essential part of the game?

[H-Hour]

In general we don't plan to make production for profit a major part of the game's economy. Funding will by and large come from nation happiness and the loot from shooting down and fighting aliens. In 2.5 we may make it viable to earn a small profit from disassembling a UFO and selling the spare parts. But it will be done in a way that (hopefully) does not provide a significant source of cash.

[CriticalFumble]

Workshops are useful for producing things you cannot buy or buy enough of, which is a relatively short list.  In my 2.4 campaign the only earth tech things I could not buy were the stun gas grenades, the elctro laser, and the ammo for the electro laser.  Most of the weapons you research are available to buy after some period of time but if you need a lot you'll likely have to manufacture them.  For instance the nano composite body armor becomes purchasable reasonably quickly but I only ever saw three on the market at one time; meaning if I needed them to protect another squad I'd either have to either buy three months in advance or manufacture them yourself. 

For me most of the time my workers were scavenging UFOs for alien materials, which is something you cannot buy and which you need a lot of to make the powerful human/alien tech interceptors.  If the UFO is intact you'll also be able to scavenge antimatter, which you need to fuel the aforementioned interceptors, supposing you have antimatter storage in the base.  You can also manufacture alien weapons and some of their ammo using alien materials, but you'll likely find enough loot that that's not helpful. 

One other note, producing an item actually cost more than buying it, the production cost it lists does not include the wages you need to pay the workers every month or any building upkeep for the workshop. 

[Triaxx2]

I've come to see the point of view of the devs on this issue. I still think there should be some small profit from building your own, but it's actually useless at the point you need it, early on, where you're blowing through ammo, because the time taken to build your own is sufficiently long that it's not worth the effort to build it instead of buying it.

Once you're over the hump, though, it's no longer any kind of issue. Except of course it takes a while if you don't have enough workshops.

[Anarch Cassius]

If the profit after workshop costs and employee costs is peanuts, that's fine. I'm more interested in getting a slight discount by doing major projects in house then trying to resell the stuff for a profit.

[AaronLS]

If the profit after workshop costs and employee costs is peanuts, that's fine. I'm more interested in getting a slight discount by doing major projects in house then trying to resell the stuff for a profit.

I agree strongly!  It really surprised me that building in house essentially is meaningless.  I feel like there should be a warning that says "Building this item is meaningless and pointless since it is currently available for sell at the same price.  Don't waste your precious workshop time building it."  I mean after having played a little bit, and realizing this, I felt like I wasted a bunch of money on workers and workshops(and valuable base space).  There is maintenance costs for these things after all, and in the beginning of the game there isn't much of anything they are useful for.  So if you can't at least save a little bit of money in house, then it feels like I'm being cheated.

This is how you ensure that workshops are not abused for huge profits:

Sell prices 90% of Buy prices.
Workshop prices 80% of Buy prices.

This means something that costs 100c to buy, can be produced for 80c and sold for a 10c profit.  However it is unlikely, or at least poor strategy, to use workshop time for profit.  Say you need some equipment item X that has a buy cost of 100c.  In the same amount of time you could make some other item of the same value for profit.

Either:
1) You spend your workshop time building that equipment X for a cost of 80c.
OR
2) You could spend your workshop time building equipment Y for profit of 10c, and then buy equipment X for 100c. 

In scenario 1, your net cost was 85c, in scenario 2 your net cost was 90c.  So it is a pointless hassle to spend your time building for profit unless you have absolutely no other equipment needs at the time.  With these mechanics in place, you should use your workshop for building items you need, not items for profit.  Even when you have no items you currently need, and just build items for profit, the margin will be quite small.

This should at least be a gameplay option IMO.

Even with these mechanics in place, the value of making larger workshops and hiring workers for the in house discount or profit, would be diminished by the maintenance costs.  So it would be unlikely that profit from workshops would be a major source of income.

Given some of the equipment like the dropships is pretty specialized to your organization, I would think it would be something you'd build in house for a significant discount.  This part of the game adds to the overall immersion of the game, making you feel like you are part of an elite self sustaining organization.

[kurja]

+1 for nominal profit from production, not so much for budget-problem reasons but campaign game balance reasons: when it costs the same (or less?) to just buy the things I need my workers have nothing to do for long periods of time which sucks. ATM there is in my opinion a penalty for building workshops and employing workers in early game when money is scarce anyway, and if you haven't built them due to high mission frequency you'll have to wait a long time in mid/late game for those workshops to be built when you'd need them.

[H-Hour]

The campaign balance issues have been resolved in 2.5-dev. You can earn a very small profit from UFO disassembly that will keep your workers actively engaged without draining your resources.

[kurja]

thanks, I didn't know that.

[laiqua]

Does not seem to be the case. especially if i don't know how many materials I'll need for my own use (aka if I'm a new player) I'm not going to sell. thus the situation becomes a bit sketchy and quite illogical. I'd say a 5% cost to build reduction is reasonable and it doesn't require the new code for different buy/sell prices. the 5% is definitely not much but it does give some incentive and helps marginalize the cost of otherwise moderately useless large installation and its 10 man crew (especially since it takes a while to build a ufo storage facility). On a side note would it kill to give a destroy selected ufo button to the facility? Also whats with the login screen in dev2.6? i thought this game didn't need a copy protection... where can i get a login and password? will it have to be always online? Sorry that i went offtopic towards the end.