Making money

[bluberd]

Hi,

I understand that moneymaking with manufacture has been nerfed in the X-Files mod and it seems to be reasonable decision, but can someone advise me what is currently the best moneymaker? I found the Alien Laser Rifle almost pays back for maintaining engineers, but is there anything better, which would be better?

[ohartenstein23]

Motion scanners, if they haven't been changed in profitability from vanilla.  Durathread works reasonably well, better than just covering maintenance.  Psiclones perhaps?  I know they sell for a good bit of cash, never looked at their profit margin though.

[Dr.Crowley]

The best way to make quick cash is seelling money cases/bags. But you can find them in Cult Outpost/Suspicious Cult Activity missions. Oops

[Solarius Scorch]

The best way to make quick cash is seelling money cases/bags. But you can find them in Cult Outpost/Suspicious Cult Activity missions. Oops

Seconded.

I actually want to cut down on the classic moneymaking, in favour of treasure hunting. As well as some alternate paths where you can produce for cash OR sell the patent to someone else (like M.A.G.M.A.) and buy the end product from them for way less than you'd pay to make it yourself (because mass production).

[bluberd]

I actually want to cut down on the classic moneymaking, in favor of treasure hunting.

And I fully see that, understand and support this decision. What I am looking at is the reason to even have engineering staff and what size. What you have changed is the reasoning behind even having engineers as a business case.
Manufacturing Alien Laser Rifle, which is better than Motion Scanner, does not even cover monthly wages, not to mention the initial cost of hiring and workshop building. Still good to have permanent engineering dept, but just to cover day2day requirements like manufacturing some small pierces of equipment.
That makes every visit on sites with strange animals/cultists viable source of income.
Issue is I am right now in Aug 1998, most of my agents use laser weapons and I found myself tired of grinding money on every bug/cultist hunt.
Those missions pose no challenge anymore - they were interesting and hard at the beginning but since I got auto-snipers and agents shooting at 120 skill level there is no threat anymore.
I started to lean towards only ufo missions as the only interesting ones but I still need money from those boring missions, therefore looking for some more sustainable source of income.

[Solarius Scorch]

I see your point, but what are these grindu missions exacty? Monster hunts can be ended, early cults too, zombies and later cults are still in WIP. With laser rifles you should be able to do cult HQs and the Spider Siberia mission.

[Meridian]

Issue is I am right now in Aug 1998, most of my agents use laser weapons and I found myself tired of grinding money on every bug/cultist hunt.

Ctrl+D, Ctrl+K ... no shame in that in such cases.
If grinding is the only source of income, do yourself a favor and don't waste your time (it's the only resource you can't buy).

[bluberd]

I see your point, but what are these grindu missions exacty? Monster hunts can be ended, early cults too, zombies and later cults are still in WIP. With laser rifles you should be able to do cult HQs and the Spider Siberia mission.

I do not know what is Spider Syberia mission, but I guess it is ultimate spider hunt ending mission. I need to research it.
I terminated the Red Dawn (that was a hard one) and they are gone.
So from what I see all those tedious missions fade away when you do the ultimate ending mission, question is to finally research it.
I like that concept and thx for letting me know.

So the spiders end with some Siberia mission, zombies wipe is WIP, Red Down is HQ destroy, for EXALT I still need to find Exalt master fo get HQ destroy.

So, returning to my original question, is there a sustainable source of income, better than Alien Laser Rifle?

[Dr.Crowley]

And I fully see that, understand and support this decision. What I am looking at is the reason to even have engineering staff and what size. What you have changed is the reasoning behind even having engineers as a business case.

Issue is I am right now in Aug 1998, most of my agents use laser weapons and I found myself tired of grinding money on every bug/cultist hunt.
Those missions pose no challenge anymore - they were interesting and hard at the beginning but since I got auto-snipers and agents shooting at 120 skill level there is no threat anymore.

Oh crap. I still have to rely on BlackOps weapons in August 1999.

I started to lean towards only ufo missions as the only interesting ones but I still need money from those boring missions, therefore looking for some more sustainable source of income.

Argh. How often did you stormed UFOs?

[Solarius Scorch]

Oh crap. I still have to rely on BlackOps weapons in August 1999.

Man, I am in October 1999 and still no lasers... (Except a few alien laser rifles, but they're crap.)

Anyway, regarding the "need to grind to sustain myself"... I haven't said anything before, because I didn't want to come out as a "you're playing it wrong!" kind of modder, but I honestly do not do all the missions against cults, yet I am doing okay financially. Maybe you overinvested?

[mumble]

To be honest, going on hunts is VERY profitable. Late game on higher difficulties, a 50 zombie swarm nets a cool 1 million dollars in corpses, if I did my calculations right. Plus, its a pretty good way to train rookies, assuming you have more than a van.

You can also try capturing people for ransom

Speaking of both of these, shouldn't corpses be less, while captives are more? I figured higher ups like black lotus witches would sell for MORE than a zombie corpse....

[Solarius Scorch]

Speaking of both of these, shouldn't corpses be less, while captives are more? I figured higher ups like black lotus witches would sell for MORE than a zombie corpse....

Well... Not necessarily. The earth is full of crazy bitches, while a Zombie is way more interesting to an independent research facility.

[bluberd]

Oh crap. I still have to rely on BlackOps weapons in August 1999.Argh. How often did you stormed UFOs?

Blackops auto-sniper is an ultimate rifle and still in service for me; since it does 60 damage with -25% armour, which is more that enough for every kinetic engagement at this stage of the conflict (haven't seen a single muton, lucky me right?)

Well, I storm every single UFO I manage to find landed. <10 Large&Very Large, >20 Medium&Small. I have this place on the north pole, where they land very often (recky for a new base?). Falls in AOI of both my bases (Egypt & Memphis) and I can catch the traffic on the COMINT.

[bluberd]

Man, I am in October 1999 and still no lasers... (Except a few alien laser rifles, but they're crap.)
Anyway, regarding the "need to grind to sustain myself"... I haven't said anything before, because I didn't want to come out as a "you're playing it wrong!" kind of modder, but I honestly do not do all the missions against cults, yet I am doing okay financially. Maybe you overinvested?

Alien Lasers aren't that bad, but fall short in comparison to Blackops Auto-Sniper.

What I really like in the old games is that the devs did not put you in the path of one, correct way of playing the game.
At the very beginning I had 3-4 fire teams responding to every possible event (usually 2-3 at the same time), while investing like crazy in research - I built second base just to have the ability to build second HQ/Biolab/IntelCentre, then going into labs.
Yes, I did invest a lot, but I had a lot of money and great monthly scores.
Right now my monthly maintenance is 8M with nations contribution of 6M.
I am doing great financially (7M to spare), but it is a lot of missions.
Not complaining, from what I see it is just that the dev idea was to stay low profile, with small number of researchers and money.

This is a treason to the human race.

What I see agents, is the alien invasion in 4 months and we need to be ready!
More white coats, more Farms, more lasers.
You have been briefed.

[Solarius Scorch]

I think there is one more thing to mention: what you expect from a game to make it interesting. Missions I dislike most are those that provide no challenge; they are just chores to be done.

That's why I designed OXC to not give you trivial missions. Every mission, or most of them, can still be somewhat dangerous if you aren't careful (except monster hunts vs. flying gear, but that's a necessary evil, and flying gear is hard to get while monster hunts are still going on). When you get stronger, simpler missions are usually phased out in favour of more difficult ones. I personally find it satisfying, though obviously I am not a very good candidate for a judge.