Consequences for selling items?

[cj]

One thing that I always thought was silly about XCOM was how you could sell advanced alien weaponry and materials on what appears to be some kind of black market without consequence. What if say, selling items had a chance to trigger random events that could impact your relationships with funding nations? Something like "Russian separatists have used Plasma Rifles in attack against the Russian military. Russia has cut funding for the XCOM project by 25% and is threatening to pull out of the project entirely".

Would something like this be possible to add in the current engine?

[Align]

How could separatists pay more than a government?

[kharille]

Obscure organizations are willing to pay massive amounts of money for black market items and all.  A government has a lot of legitimate expenses and money movements are to some extent traceable. 

Illegal organizations don't pay tax and have more money to pay for things they want.  Plus they have access to illegal funds, blood diamonds, arms trade profits, slavery, piracy, ransoming VIPs, prostitution...

Who knows what a live alien will fetch to some perverted billionaires?  As for consequences...  well, without Elerium, what can they do?

[Mr. Quiet]

Obscure organizations are willing to pay massive amounts of money for black market items and all.  A government has a lot of legitimate expenses and money movements are to some extent traceable. 

Illegal organizations don't pay tax and have more money to pay for things they want.  Plus they have access to illegal funds, blood diamonds, arms trade profits, slavery, piracy, ransoming VIPs, prostitution...

Who knows what a live alien will fetch to some perverted billionaires?  As for consequences...  well, without Elerium, what can they do?

Your post made my day!

I want a freakin' Black Market mod where you deal with the black suits and non-government organizations when selling items!! Adding another layer your X-COM gameplay . You send out your own operatives and wait a fews days for them to report back with the money or without, with or without casualties, so only send new recruits since you have little to no control over how the deals go. Deals can go good or bad, you might even get to keep the goods and take the money if things get too tense and one side starts shooting the other over pressure. Man I freakin' want this mod ;_; Also a nice background of a deal going through in a dark alley in trench coats for hidden arsenal. Ok I'm done

[Amunak]

I think that even just the random events, which don't need to have too big impact, are a really nice idea. It'd nicely spice up the game, add another story element into it.

[Mr. Quiet]

The UFOpaedia is really awesome. Here's this page:

https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Background_%28Enemy_Unknown%29

2000
X-COM expands, with more bases placed strategically around the globe. This pacifies most of the contributing nations, and the organization's funding stabilizes. Even so, X-COM base commanders come up with alternative funding scenarios in case the situation worsens in the future. Tentative deals are made to sell X-COM and alien equipment and weapons to certain underground organizations for a significant profit.

Then reading under 2002, they mention selling to "unknown buyers". I want to see a mod on Black Market selling so bad!

[kharille]

Imagine selling snakemen or chryssalids.  Good money, but they'll be infested with chryssalids later, and you'll have to do a mission, or a series of missions to clear out chryssalid infestations. 

Good money in the short term of course.  Any respectable organization qualified to contain chryssalids probably don't offer a high profit compared to badly organized groups....

[MKSheppard]

Imagine selling snakemen or chryssalids.  Good money, but they'll be infested with chryssalids later, and you'll have to do a mission, or a series of missions to clear out chryssalid infestations.

You can simulate the difficulty of dealing with snakemen or Cryssalid corpses by creating a ruleset called "SafeSelling.rul" or whatever, and putting forth:

Code: [Select]

items:
  - type: STR_ETHEREAL_CORPSE
    costSell: -20000
  - type: STR_CHRYSSALID_CORPSE
    costSell: -10000

It will now cost you $20K to dispose of an ethereal corpse safely, and 10K for a Cryssalid corpse.

Basically figure in the cost of making sure the bodies are all incinerated, and maintaining a chain of custody so that nobody can walk off with one.

[Amunak]

...thus the best method of disposal is to keep them in your own stores :-)