UFO:Alien Invasion
General => Discussion => Topic started by: talon on May 29, 2010, 02:12:23 pm
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while most of us may know the x-com tactic of producing lots of lazer weapons for a vast profit= cheat
Is there anything in ufo Ai particually at the start and early stages that actually gives you a decent profit
I'd rather not have my engineers doing nothing, sitting around watching mythbusters
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No, you can't produce anything and sell it for a profit.
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while most of us may know the x-com tactic of producing lots of lazer weapons for a vast profit= cheat
Is there anything in ufo Ai particually at the start and early stages that actually gives you a decent profit
I'd rather not have my engineers doing nothing, sitting around watching mythbusters
What I did first thing was fire all of my workers despite having two workshops. That saves a bundle of money on the first end of month when you don't have to pay their salaries. I only hired workers after I had researched nanocomposite armor, which was two months later (was doing alien armor, then nanocomposites, with a few scientists stuck on continuous wave laser). If you research electromagnetic rifle first, you can set them building those, or if you go laser weapon route, DF cartridges before you have anything more useful to build.
Most reliable source of income is selling ufos to the highest bidder who has the lowest happiness score (since selling ufos increases that). If you play very hard campaign, you will have no shortage of ufos to sell, but you do need to keep an eye on what you spend money on and how much.
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And Why is producing for profit cheating? ??? How else are to make money?
Sell off UFO stuff, yes, but why not stuff you make your self.
I think of it like the MIB they held a paten of velcro.
You are a global force that in almost completely independent.
Many armies of the world sell off surplus equipment to the public.
If it is put in that you can't make some kind of profit from selling surplus equipment
then I think there need to be something additional to help make money.
Like bonus money for civilians saved or aliens killed.
You have to keep some money some specially if countries are not happy with you.
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[...]You have to keep some money some specially if countries are not happy with you.
i guess that is why.
perhaps i should go tell my employer that i should be able to make some money on my own so that i would not care if he is happy with me.
lol.
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Homunculus good point. The way I was looking at it is that you are not really employed
because they gave you free rein on things. Where and how you build, buying/selling/making equipment, etc.
But if you look at it that you are employed then it would make sense you are restrictive on what you can do.
Then make me think that you can be fired too. So it all depends on how you look at it.
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[...]Then make me think that you can be fired too.[...]
afaik the player can be fired in any ufo games i have played (not sure about xcom:apoc, maybe that would be an exception).
anyway, i guess it should be difficult to compete with ordinary above-ground production plants unless phalanx had some high-tech monopoly.
there would need to be some explicit statement about this kind of monopoly in the story (i do not remember any).
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No, you can't produce anything and sell it for a profit.
Alright, what can you produce and sell for more than the cost of the materials, to cover the most of your fixed expenses?
Are the engineers you need to hire, and the workspaces you use, really so expensive that the items produced are just not wanted at that price by anyone? I mean, it's literally technology that's out of this world. No one on this planet has weapons like yours. Gotta be some would-be dictator elected president that wants it, right?
As the seller, you should be able to say "this is what I'll sell for". Maybe the purchase rate won't be very high at that price. I know the normal view is "An infinite number can be sold at this price", but maybe a more complex model would allow a few per month at a higher rate (kinda like how you can recruit a few soldiers per month, etc.).
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The price system seems to be set so that whenever you sell something, you get 90% or 80% of the full cost of the item, but it always requires full cost of the item to make, so there is NOTHING you can produce for profit.
You should however be able to sell alien weapons that you capture on the battlefield and get enough out of those to cover expenses, since you don't expend any money to acquire them (aside from the missiles to bring the UFOs down).
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This is where the economics of the game are lacking in realism. The market price for any of the items is going to be considerably higher than the cost to produce, so it makes absolutely no sense that you don't make any profit. Especially with technology that your own R&D creates, you would patent it and set a hefty price for such advanced and in-demand itmes. As far as "being employed", no, get a clue. It's a mercenary group called Phalanx, not a fist full of Burger King employees. Phalanx is funded by ALL world governments, and not very well considering the services they are providing... to the entire human race. Do research on mercenary groups and private contractors employed by governments. Hell, even pharmaceutical companies... you think the creators of Viagra who were (funded by god knows who & how many) don't reap the fruits of their labor? Most everything is funded by some one, some group, some government, or all of the above, but are still able to benefit from what they are funded to do. Being prior military myself, I have seen the government pay some outrageous prices for items and services that would run you or I a fraction of what they paid for; like a $600 socket set that could have been purchased right off base at Lowes for much less, or $130,000 to have a new sink put in the dorm bathroom by a Redneck and two illegal immigrants. F-16s and B-2 stealth bombers fetch a hefty price, so does the latest and greatest weapons fresh on the market at preasent date. Wtf is Phalanx selling this crap at stock prices for? Is Phalanx offering their services as charity? Yes, and they even feed the homeless on the weekends LMAO. At least give us a tax write-off lol.
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I don't really see PHALANX or XCOM as being mercenaries, there special forces funded by the UN not a group of guns for hire.
I do agree that you should earn a profit on what you produce but on the flip side i dont think its realistic that a government armed force would get its funding by producing and selling weapons so i see why the developers try to make that a non option. I realize armies of the world sell of there surplus equipment sometimes but its is certainly not there primary income. Some system of negotiating deals with governments to supply there armies with certain weapons could be nice but im not sure how it would be implemented.
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Phalanx is primarily a combat operation, secondarily research and the manufacturing set is tertiary at best. In a real situation, they would not be running manufacturing operations themselves except in a supervisory role. This would leave any possible profit from sales to the outfit that actually does the manufacturing.
Don't believe me? Go take a look at a factory sometime. Doesn't matter what type it is, computer chips, cars, cable reels, weapons or whatever, retooling a production line is not a trivial undertaking. In order to generate profit, most manufacturing is done in bulk, where the production costs per unit are low.
If you have a highly customizable, easily retooled facility that you can configure to produce whatever, there is a downside: It's absolutely going to only be able to produce small unit volume, which is going to drive the manufacturing cost per unit through the roof, because the facility itself and the workers there represent significant fixed costs.
The Phalanx manufacturing facilities are precisely of this type.
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If you have a highly customizable, easily retooled facility that you can configure to produce whatever, there is a downside: It's absolutely going to only be able to produce small unit volume, which is going to drive the manufacturing cost per unit through the roof, because the facility itself and the workers there represent significant fixed costs.
The Phalanx manufacturing facilities are precisely of this type.
OK, fine. Very high costs.
Still, since we are the only supplier of these things, we can set the price. Might not get a buyer, but there's no reason to set the price low.
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If we are unable to sell at a higher price, because someone else is making stuff and selling at that price, why can't we buy from them?
If we can't buy at that price, no one else can buy at that price. So, raise the price we sell at.
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I can't speak for the devs, but I suspect this has to do with game design rather than "realism". They probably don't want it to be a build-the-greatest-manufacturing-base kind of game, as X-Com always ends up being.
This is probably something you could easily create a mod for if you wanted. I don't know how the whole market system works, but it looks like weapons have prices specified in the /ufos/weapons_*.ufo files.
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Is the cost of producing something different than the cost of buying and the cost of selling something? I understand that somethings you just can't buy. But what is the benefit of producing something that you can buy. I my mind the cost to make something yourself should be lower than just buying it and the price that you sell it at should be at or above the cost that you produce it at. From a game play perspective I don't see the harm of being able to supplement your income by producing goods, but not to the point where it is your main source of income. You could use something along the supply and demand idea where the more you sell of something the lower the price goes.
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it might be tempting to be able to produce things for profit and thus have more money, but in my opinion such kind of thinking (assuming the purpose is to have more money, not to enjoy an economy game) is either extremely short-sighted or even masochistic.
well, suppose you can now produce for profit.
guess what, the game is now balanced in such way that you still have the same amount of money.
except that now you have to produce for profit.
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well, suppose you can now produce for profit.
guess what, the game is now balanced in such way that you still have the same amount of money.
except that now you have to produce for profit.
;D
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Well in my "thinking of the game's background story" way, "You" (as in, the commander, the soldiers, and the whole PHALANX operation as a whole) are a set of "the best that mankind could gather" and, is supported in logistics by the UN, BUT in supplies and credits by the nations of such UNs. So, From the point of view of those nations, "Im Paying so we can live. Im NOT paying so the commander of the PHALANX unit gets rich".
So, in an economical point of view, you (the commander) are NOT the CEO of that "company". you are just a middle manager. You are not allowed to set the price of the products you make WITH the funding of others.
Also, You are a unit created to Help Mankind. So its expected you pretty much give away all the technologies and products you achieve. Im surprised you are even allowed to sell back stuff. Anim even more surprised that the nations dont set some production/research quotas to fulfill by the end of moth :D (nudge to designers)
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Also, You are a unit created to Help Mankind. So its expected you pretty much give away all the technologies and products you achieve. Im surprised you are even allowed to sell back stuff. Anim even more surprised that the nations dont set some production/research quotas to fulfill by the end of moth :D (nudge to designers)
Please no quota's. It is hard enough to keep all the countries happy as it is without making them mad that we didn't discover a new alien technology. Talking about realism here.... Terrorist attack in Mumbai, you killed 10 aliens, lost 3 good men, 1 civilian dies, saved 7 others from annihilation and India gets pissed because you didn't figure out why all the aliens have implants in their throats.
I played X-Com for years, I had to get a torrent for it to work on my newer computers. I liked the ability to sell products for a profit, however the cost didn't pay off until late in the game. It would be nice to be able to sell the items produced for a marginal profit, or make the cost of producing just a little less then buying it off the market. If I can research a new gas grenade and voila it appears in the market for me to buy, why would I even invest in workers? As it is now I only have one base with workers and that is solely to tear apart UFO's that I capture. I would suggest a marginal mark down of say 5%. Not enough to mass produce for profit, but just enough to cover the overhead costs of hiring workers and building the workshop. At least make it worth having a workshop in my base.
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Terrorist attack in Mumbai, you killed 10 aliens, lost 3 good men, 1 civilian dies, saved 7 others from annihilation and India gets pissed because you didn't figure out why all the aliens have implants in their throats.
Yes, I know what you mean. One thing that does bug me and that's when a whole bloc of nations go from borderline ecstacy to apathy in the space of three months despite you shooting down every alien ship that invades their airspace... while another bloc puts you on the Christmas card list despite you ignoring them completely.
I've yet to see anything in the UI to explain what it was you did to piss them off!
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Yes, I know what you mean. One thing that does bug me and that's when a whole bloc of nations go from borderline ecstacy to apathy in the space of three months despite you shooting down every alien ship that invades their airspace... while another bloc puts you on the Christmas card list despite you ignoring them completely.
I've yet to see anything in the UI to explain what it was you did to piss them off!
While I'm not sure about this and there is nothing in the UI that would say this but I think the "on favourites list despite ignoring" is because those UFOs you shot down were heading towards those places and their leaders automagically know it. Conversely, the former issue might be caused by a too rapid "erosion" of the relations and the lack of intercepted UFOs (heading there).
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@Hertzila:
Compliment, that's a brilliant theory :)
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@Hertzila:
Compliment, that's a brilliant theory :)
Thanks :)
But is that how it actually goes? I haven't checked any scripts or the code to see if that's how it works.
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I didn't look it up either. geever probably knows how it works.
I was more referring to your ability to "think of things you don't see". Are you sure you're not a coder ?
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I didn't look it up either. geever probably knows how it works.
I was more referring to your ability to "think of things you don't see". Are you sure you're not a coder ?
Nope. Not a one using a "real" programming language (C,C++,Java,etc.) yet, at the very least. I've tested some of the game making software like Game Maker before and I sometimes mess with game files to do small-scale mods, though I don't know if either of those count. [/offtopic]
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Being able to *guess* how the program works/should work is the important part of coding.
Learning how to write that down in C/C++/whatever is the easy part.
So watch yourself if this was just a one-day-strike-by-genius or if it happens more often...
And Yes, we're rather offtopic. Bear with me...
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Entirely aside from fluff reasons, from a gameplay standpoint I think that manufacturing items should at least be a competitive alternative to buying items off the market. As it is, manufacturing facilities are really only good for disassembling UFOs and producing new equipment that hasn't made it to the market yet. There is -never- any reason or incentive to manufacture anything else with them. You don't need to make them become cash cows or alternative income sources- just lower the production costs to be equal to the price you can sell an item for. That way you make a net zero from selling manufactured goods, yet also have an incentive to actually produce them in the first place.
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"Don't buy chinese weapons, they'll break easily!!!" :D
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....just lower the production costs to be equal to the price you can sell an item for. That way you make a net zero from selling manufactured goods, yet also have an incentive to actually produce them in the first place.
That concept sounds *very* good to me.
BTAxis ??
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At the begining of the game i missed this facility of quick profit like the Laserguns in X-Com wth 150% benefit. But after a few months (in the game) i'm rich enough to buy or build anything i want to do. And now i like this "Same-Price-for-all"-Market. It make it very quick to send ammunition, weapons and other useful hardware from one base to another over the buy/sell function.