I also have suggestions:
Q. Instead of having the nations of the world pay you from the beginning. Start with zero...A. Almost impossible in the current ruleset. The funding can and will be further reduced after I get to the fine-tuning phase, but you can't bring it down to zero, since you HAVE TO PAY MAINTENANCE and SALARIES from the (hidden) January funding, and your balance are the leftovers... Setting that to 0 (or rather, a very small value, since 0 is hard-gay impossible) would instantly put you in negatives... I wouldn't want to bereft the player of a chance to build a facility or 2 on the Day One too, a true Commander wants to make important Command Decisions like these!
Q. ...Except the one nation that holds your initial base.A. Good idea but Impossible in the current ruleset and I doubt it ever will be.
Q. Allow the hands to be free, since they come from the slums and "forget the money, the action is the juice" as they say.A. Nah, let's don't get ridiculous, they're in for fun AND profit; they were street urchins but now they're a part of a legitimate business operation and the godfather ought to show them some respect! Your suggestion would make more sense
if the salary could be customed to Rank.... They're already cheaper than in X-Com. I Might consider lowering the cost further but at the price of increasing the Living Quarters maintenance OR lowering capacity (and introducing premium Living Quarters types for later).
Q. Raise prices of everything to make manufacturing the way to go. Makes sense for a dystopian world, since armaments will be very difficult to attain. Pre-War armory should still be a bit costly.A. Agreed. Still, I'd have to balance the aircraft maintenance and aircraft weapons costs accordingly... I don't want a ridiculous situation where fully outfitting a combat vessel costs as much as buying a Rifle... Maybe if there was some way to introduce more kinds of "drops" (like craft ammo)... I'm also toying with the idea of your ship having a shitty, unlimited-ammo lascannon as a backup weapon for the times when you don't have cash for expensive craft ammo...
To put it in the perspective, just maintaining the starting base costs
30k/day... which is more than any infantry weapon you can buy right now... So yeah, balancing! Balancing!
Also I had an idea that
the Black Market would be divided into parts and you'd have to pay helluva money upfront to get the opportunity to buy better weapons. Say, like you start with the John Goodman's Hardware Shop, then advance to Mutant Alliance Supplies, then to Crazy Hassan's Weapons Emporium, then to Eurosyndicate Market and so on. That way the guns themselves may stay comparatively inexpensive, but would require a huge starting investment.
Q. Loot dead bodies for manufacturing to let your Aunts combine a number of broken armors into one complete armor piece.A. It's RUNTS and this feature is fully implemented since pre-0.5
Most manufacturable armors and a plethora of other stuff depends on the steady supply of bodies, I mean Booty
Remember when the guys said you probably can't loot a power armor? WELL YOU CAN. Of course this idea can be further expanded. I fully agree with the prime focus on manufacturing here.
Q. Looting anything and everything in buildings and bodies would be your way to making money before the nations begin to fear you for your violence.A: Agreed on principle, requires a lot of fine-tuning though! Might start by decreasing the point values of both your gains and losses...
Q:Add more unarmed civilians in crash-sites so you can gain infamy quickly by shooting them.A: Yeah but the infamy is a political Aikido. You can't be TOO evil or the nations would make a crackdown on you. So I think shooting unarmed civilians (as opposed to shooting, say, the Traders who are competition to the nations) would decrease the 'infamy'. You need to be a bit of a Robin Hood with this.
Q: I like this one: Taking unconscious civilians with you whether you carry them back and escape or beat the mission, you'll get some extra money at the your booty debriefing per hostage.A: Yeah, agreed. Selling hostages is already a very profitable source of income in this mod...
Q: That said, add a melee knock out hit option to knock out an enemy with any weapon you're holding.A: Impossible until Open X-Com gurus introduce such an option into the ruleset. Take goddamned clubs, they weigh 3 units, are 2x1 and can down most guys (even Personal-Armored) in a few hits. Man you START with three different stun weapons in this mod...
Many thanks for your feedback!
