Some small tweaks

[Mandrache]

Better trade interface. No more selling equipped gear. Ammo and other consumables should refill automatically and be purchased if not in base.

Better squad management. Allow cloning of gear setups between soldiers. Allow for easier tooltip of what skills are needed.

Better starting base. No workshop  since it's useless at first. Also there should be an insta-build an UFO storage. You should be able to sell existing ufos and do so whenever there's no more room.


Make trading equipment instant. Now you can simply sell it in one base and rebuy it in another. Keep it for personell and crafts.

[ShipIt]

... Also there should be an insta-build an UFO storage. ...

The project leader is from Germany. Nothing is insta-build in Germany, you know?

Beside that, I agree with most of your observations, but not with your conclusions.

[MonkeyHead]

I do agree that it would be nice if using the lock button in the market screen meant some kind of autobuy would maintain stock levels. Saving soldier layout has been discussed before - I have no idea how feasible it would be, but I am in favour of it as an option as I use a lot of standard layouts with minor tweaks where required.

As for the base layout... this is easily moddable in the .ufo files. I for one am constantly changing my initial layout for reasons of efficiency, base defence ideas, or just for aiming for "realism". A little play around can lead you to end up with whatever you want.

I would prefer transit to remain delayed, and to avoid the exploit you mention a delay in requisition orders in to bases be applied, like the original OldCom.

[Mandrache]

Radar should be required in addition to advanced radar. Or if not, it should always be destructible no matter how it is attached. Just a little less anguish for new players.

Base defenses are useless in preventing base attacks, even if I have 4 lasers and 2 dragons, they still manage to land.

The workshop used to be a big income gathering business. I think only dismantling generates income in this game. Something that generates slightly more than their salary would be appreciated so that there's no need to fire and rehire workers.

[geever]

Hmm, this seems to be a list of wishes. Would you mind going through them one-by-one?

1. Better trade interface
     Could you describe this in more details? Is it just this two points?

1.1. No more selling equipped gear
     Please explain. We don't sell soldiers' equipped items when fired. The only way you can get some items of a soldier auto-sold is if (s)he is killed in the battle and that's because every item collected from the battle get to the same bucket, soldiers take their gear (live ones only) then the (user configured) auto-sell is applied to the rest. Would you like this behaviour to change? As in keeping the gear of a dead soldier too? I should also mention that dead soldiers are buried in their armor, we consider those to be seriously damaged.

1.2. Ammo and other consumables should refill automatically and be purchased if not in base
     Ammo and other consumables do refill in soldiers inventory. Auto-buy is not yet implemented but planned as an opt-in feature for items you enable it for.


2. Better squad management
     Assuming the following two points:

2.1. Allow cloning of gear setups between soldiers
     We plan to make it possible to save equipment layouts and equip soldiers from existing layouts.

2.2. Allow for easier tooltip of what skills are needed
     Any suggestion how should it work? Should we look for the first primary weapon and highlight it's main class?


3. Better starting base
     As a Commander you take over the control of PHALANX, which have an existing base already. You cannot decide how should it look like, you get as it was. Of course then you can decide to destroy or build some facilities but that will take money and time.

     For variety I do plan to create more base layouts and make the game choose one randomly for every game. For higher difficulty levels some crucial buildings could be even missing or seriously damaged, but that's another story.

3.1. No workshop  since it's useless at first
     I have to say no, because things I described above.

3.2. Also there should be an insta-build an UFO storage
     No insta-build ever. I think the (non-existing) tutorial should suggest to build a UFO storage site early. We have a "memo" notification, but I can agree that it is not enough. Probably the advisors should spam you as the new Commander with their suggestions including the need of capturing UFOs.

3.3. You should be able to sell existing ufos and do so whenever there's no more room
     It is in the plans.


4. Make trading equipment instant
Now you can simply sell it in one base and rebuy it in another
     Nope, we're going to the other direction, we will delay buying, hiring. Also who you fired will be gone forever.


5. Radar should be required in addition to advanced radar
Or if not, it should always be destructible no matter how it is attached
     If we made radar required for advanced radar we would get complains from other players. I don't feel it to be necessary.
     PHALANX bases built underground if you destruct a building, some others get in-accessible, without power, air-conditioning and water. What I can imagine is an Upgrade option, but only if it takes the radar offline during the process. I should also note that this "upgrade" option would be quite some effort with the current codebase, probably would cost more than it worths.


6. Base defenses are useless in preventing base attacks
     It depends on many things. First of all the type of the UFO, the stronger ones may take more hits; second: the game speed - yes it is a BUG, which time-lapse setting you play affects dogfights. I suggest rather slower than faster. The GeoScape event Framework needs a rewrite, quite big task.


7. The workshop used to be a big income gathering business
     When? Where? You know that you're not playing X-COM, right?
     We decided early on that we don't wanna make the game heavily focused on producing and selling things, this is not an economy/trading game.

     Also the workshops are not factories. This is important! These are specialized engineering labs which can produce some brand new, high-tech stuff, but not cheap. They are'nt designed for mass-production. Probably we should rename them to make it clear.

7.1. Something that generates slightly more than their salary would be appreciated
     The possibility is there. Since I made it possible to define a different production cost for the items noone came up with an XLS or CSV with suggestions (item, buy price, production cost, sell price, gain, reason). Complaining is easy, but only contributions make progress. I must emphasize that the gain should be minimal and you should be able to reason why an item can be produced with profit by the engineering labs.

     My personal view is that only a dymanic market model - where the more you sell the lower the sell price get - could balance the profit somehow - -but it  is way to much work. It is way too easy to abuse the produce & sell mechanics to eliminate one of the key game elements: funding.

-geever

[Rodmar]

7. The workshop used to be a big income gathering business    Producing an item already on the market actually cost you the workers' engineers' salary, as production cost and market price are the same. Or producing this item saves the loss of the salary for nothing. It depends on whether there's something else to produce. Better firing engineers than letting them idle too long a time.

The two revenue sources in this game are:

• Winning missions: the largest the crew, and the less robotic aliens, the better. When all your bases are equipped, any extra alien items may be automatically sold on the market.
• Dismantling UFOs: you only have to know under which health status this is not worth anymore. I let the players do the math, knowing that the required man-hour is the same whatever the health status. Let's assume that above 50%-70%, it's worth the engineers' salary, as compared as to selling the UFO.

As with the original XCOM, the second (and third) month may be difficult because of base expansion (higher costs) and no intensive enough dismantling activity (few income).


3.1  No workshop in the starting base
It's not as if the Base Commander could afford 100 kc and a 12-days delay before starting tier-2 body armor, dismantling first scout or fighter and producing first laser weapons, as soon as corresponding pre-required researches are completed.
Also the first build workshop (in main base) would delay the next base creation by the same number of days. Who can afford to postpone the first or second base expansion by half a month? This sure would lower your monthly income even more.

1.1 No more selling equipped gear
I believe I can explain, as I'd wish the same.
Currently in the Trading interface, if I'm not wrong, if you sell too much items, you actually take the gear from your equipped soldiers. Although it's okay that any item in the base is counted as regard to the storage space, it's rather confusing and not handy that the Trading interface displays all the items in your base (and assigned transports).

For example, if the interface says "8 body armors", this doesn't mean that you have 8 armors to sell or to transfer, only that you have 8 armors in your base and most probably already worn by your soldiers.
Likewise, the new player doesn't understand why having 24 smoke grenades in the base inventory doesn't allow his freshly returned team to auto-refill its soldiers' inventories. Then, he learns that he should rather have 40 grenades...

Interesting enough, craft equipment doesn't follow this rule, and the Trading interface correctly displays the non mounted/installed craft equipment only.