Suspension of belief

[Nutter]

I think getting that finished is one of the major points of .5, though.
Not sure.
And it's not like you're dumping the stuff into Africa or wherever the hotspots are in 2084 for them to care what you're selling.
I'm sure any military would love to get their hands on some alien-resistant tech.

[Triaxx2]

Good to hear. If I could figure it out, I'd change it myself.

[homunculus]

Frankly, I'm sorry, but the inability to sell things we've manufactured is really a killer in 2.4.

Good to hear. If I could figure it out, I'd change it myself.

i hope that will never ever happen.
i hope your iq is declining ; )
nothing personal against you, just the idea, i hope it will never be implemented.

you get low on cash when you make the nations angry in the start, and you will never recover, until you loose, right?
at least the easiest difficulty should let the player recover from such situation, but from my experience, it doesn't (not that i have played 100+ games and done statistics, though).

tried some experiments with starting locations on easiest, and had the most difficult game i ever had because of low cash.
also, nations never gave me one single pilot (luckily that was not a problem for me, just observation).
and loosing the game took until august or september (a long time, not "fail-fast" at all).
from all that i derived that the player needs at least partial radar coverage of china asap, or else nations will get angry and will not give credits for increasing radar coverage, and the easier the difficulty the longer the difficult game will last (because nations must get really psycho angry).

[Triaxx2]

I have to say, I'm sorry, but if I can't win because of aliens, that's perfectly acceptable. I expect the aliens to be my biggest threat. But if I can't win because I can't make enough money to build enough radar or bases to cover every single one of the whiners, that's just not fun.

So either there needs to be some ability to produce cash, even in small amounts, or some serious early-game rebalancing needs to be done. Because the nations expecting perfection immediately from a group that's just started is not enjoyable at all.

[Unisol]

Well, it seems that money at the beginning of the game is really a problem. Too bad there are no banks left by 2084 that could give you a loan, maybe with some of xenotech as a collateral... or are there?

[homunculus]

if I can't win because I can't make enough money to build enough radar or bases to cover every single one of the whiners, that's just not fun.

So either there needs to be some ability to produce cash, even in small amounts

so, instead of increasing radar coverage, you would make an effort to build workshops that don't increase radar coverage, for miniscule profit (as you wished for) later when you don't need it anymore, because you needed the cash in the beginning.
and in addition to that, instead of protecting earth, your phalanx is trying to become an arms producer, and is not fulfilling its intended purpose.

or some serious early-game rebalancing needs to be done. Because the nations expecting perfection immediately from a group that's just started is not enjoyable at all.

well, at easier difficulty there could be some cash and soldiers etc that is independent of nation happiness.
like free term in an equation.

[Triaxx2]

No, I'm building up the resources to be able to build radar coverage so I catch more aliens. It ends up being a choice, build a radar station? Or replace the interceptor that just got shot down? And with out one the other is useless, and because the happiness instantly starts dropping, I don't have the cash to do both. And the only way to make money is in small increments if the UFO is salvagable, which it tends not to be unless I let them land, which causes the happiness to fall faster.

If nothing else, I should at least be able to produce my own weapons and ammo cheaper than buying it, otherwise there's no reason to even have workshops at all.

I'd be satisfied if the happiness rating only changed at the end of the month like it did in X-Com. It gave breathing room so you could improve it. As it is, they seem to be able to change at anytime, meaning you'll see them drop several times before the end of the first month, which is all but impossible to counter-act.

[homunculus]

i very much doubt this tactics discussion belongs here.
so i posted reply in tactics forum: http://ufoai.org/forum/index.php/topic,6324.msg55783.html

[Telok]

If nothing else, I should at least be able to produce my own weapons and ammo cheaper than buying it, otherwise there's no reason to even have workshops at all.

I'd be satisfied if the happiness rating only changed at the end of the month like it did in X-Com. It gave breathing room so you could improve it. As it is, they seem to be able to change at anytime, meaning you'll see them drop several times before the end of the first month, which is all but impossible to counter-act.

Workshops produce the things that you can't buy. These are not sophisticated factories with assembly lines. They are general machining shops producing prototype hand crafted weapons, armor, and aircraft. The gear from your workshops is actually more expensive because you end up paying (ideally) your engineers wages and the opportunity cost of the spaces and living quarters in the base.

The nation happiness may need tweaking. I've never noticed a major problem in standard difficulty camapigns, is it an issue on the other difficulties?

Personally I tend to put my first base in Italy, radar posts in the middle of the region names on the map, and don't risk the interceptors on alien fighters until I have a strong financial situation (and lasers). The second base usually goes in Australia or North America, depending on which gets more activity.

[Triaxx2]

It's not tactics, it's the fact that I can't believe the fact that producing something on my base, at the point of use, should cost the exact same as what's produced elsewhere and then shipped to me.

I also find it hard to believe that the various nations have so little faith in Phalanx that they start cutting off funding we need.

[homunculus]

you mean, producing things in non-specialized workshops in a secret underground base is somehow so cheap that it can compete with ordinary (above ground) specialized factories?
i would find that unbelievable.
so why don't people build such underground factories all over the world right now if they are so competitive?

the 'research complete' state is also unbelievable, in real life the research will go on for ever and never be complete, and when the research is complete then the scientist dies.
or something like that, this wording was sarcastic but i hope you get the point.
you get, say, a live alien and in a week you know everything about it, while after a hundred years research we don't even know everything about the most simple earthly bacteria.
research should not have an upper limit.

on the other hand, kerrblade should be obvious and straightforward enough so that a soldier should be able to use it right away without research (at the same time the kerrblade research would not have an upper limit, of course).

[Triaxx2]

By which I mean isn't it cheaper to manufacture ammo where it's being loaded and given to the soldiers than produce it, and then fly it half-way around the globe?

Not necessarily. Consider that it's been that entire hundred years, but we hadn't actually discovered them until then. We first had to stop and develop Microscopes that could see them, and the development didn't stop, we just didn't have to keep researching them to do something with them. Usually you can only get so far before you need another breakthrough to move to the next step.

Of course, the Kerrblade is essentially useless, but that's beside the point. It should be fairly obvious.

[homunculus]

ok, we don't even know what exactly triggers dna replication in bacteria, we don't know exactly how linear growth (of mass of bacteria) differs from exponential growth and why, etc, we don't know how much we don't know.
and microscopes (and many more things) have been around for more than a week.

[Triaxx2]

What I'm driving at is that yes, research is endless, but once you hit a certain point, it's not really being developed for the military application any more.

[Anarch Cassius]

I think the deal with PHALANX funding is politics. Despite relative peace you can imagine the wariness the alliances may feel about turning over their defense to a 3rd party. Where you put you base is a big deal and that country gets good protection. It's hard not to imagine this having political ramifications.

So they all start willing to play ball but they aren't going to stop funding their own individual defense and this is all very expensive. PHALANX may be Earth's best hope to some people but others may argue that they'd be better off fighting on their own instead of subsidizing other nations' defenses. If one or two alien incidents go unresponded to you can see how their attitude could quickly go from helping PHALANX to suspecting it's a power play by the other nations to weaken them. Their citizens are being mutilated in the street while an organization they've put tons of money in to is attending to the needs of other regions.