The Accountant

[hszp]

I plan to do a little code mod. I want to be able to track more precisely how the player uses money.
In its most basic form, this would just be a list very similar to what you see on the BUY/SELL screens that would contain the total number of purchased and sold items and their total value.
In a bit more advanced form you would be able to see all the facility, personnel, manufacturing, purchase costs on a single screen in a monthly breakdown and also the incomes: XCom funding or trade.
The most advanced version could differentiate between loot income and manufactured income, and also keep track of the total net worth of the organization.

[BlackLibrary]

Hey...Sounds great.  Do you think you would include sneaky cost of production?

[Solarius Scorch]

I agree, it's an interesting tool you're proposing.
It would be even better if it could give you some advice, Civ style.

[hszp]

Hey...Sounds great.  Do you think you would include sneaky cost of production?

Definitely not as I have no idea what that is But it sure sounds difficult to handle.

[BlackLibrary]

Definitely not as I have no idea what that is But it sure sounds difficult to handle.

TOTAL COST OF PRODUCTION  = TOTAL FIXED COST (Sum of all FIXED [Non changing] expenses) + TOTAL VARIABLE COSTS (Cost of Variable Expenses used to produce an item)

TFC = Facility Costs, leasing of Aircraft, cost of full-time contracted staff (All staff)
'NOTE:  TFC will remain constant.

TVC = cost of essential raw materials and components consumed in production. 
'NOTE:  Keep in mind Total variable cost rises as output increases.


So what does this mean?  Lets take ole fashion full press Plasma Cannon manufacture to market to fund XCOM.  A staple of many XCOM commanders:

Plasma Beam   
Manufacture Price:  226,000   
Sale Price:  267,300   
Material Cost: 75000 (15 Elerium @ 5000 each)


So we can see that making 20 plasma cannons cost, say 6,020,000. 
Looking strictly at the Manufacturing base we calculate the cost of all base facillities + leases + staffing was 5,000,000.
So the total cost of production for the Plasma Cannons is actually 11,020,000.

Divide 11,020,000 by number of actual units made (20) and you get 551,000.

So the true cost to produce a Plasma Beam for sale: 551,000 if you only make 20 to sell with current facilities at Base XYZ.
So for each plasma cannon produced, you actually lose 283,700 per plasma cannon.  You lost 5,674,000 on that quick run of 20 plasma cannons!

Knowing this, you now can see you have to severely trim your TFC costs to make production worthwhile, otherwise...its a waste of resources and you are actually GOING BROKE producing a few Plasma Cannons and selling them. You need to stream line that manufacture base better.  Trim a few million in costs, and then produce at least 12 more plasma cannons.  In fact, in truth, you will never produce a profit on producing and selling plasma cannons.  The true minimal cost per cannon is 301000, while the sales price is a flat 267,000.  That would be the sagely words of the XCOM Accountant.

[Dioxine]

While I play, I calculate these costs per rule-of-tumb as follows:
- each Engineer works 24*30 = 720 hours per an average month and is paid $25k
- So each workhour costs $25.000/720 = $34.72 on an average month

Since the maintenance of the workshops must be added as well, I usually calculate $40 per hour, so an item needing 1000 workhours costs around $40k on top of the cost of production and materials. But I realize this number is an approx only, and that's why your Accountant would be great to have