Making money

[tkzv]

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).

How about selling patents for monthly income?

Although personally I prefer the classic making of medkits or alloys (or anything that doesn't consume elerium)

[Solarius Scorch]

How about selling patents for monthly income?

How would that work?

Although personally I prefer the classic making of medkits or alloys (or anything that doesn't consume elerium)

Some manufacturing for profits is OK, I just want to eliminate the most pornographic projects.

[mumble]

Couldn't patents potentially work via a HUGE point bonus to the month, increasing income, like 10k points?...it would also make you impervious to failure that month, which may provide balance issues, but honestly its a possibility, and would simulate a massive monthly bonus...

Honestly I like the idea of xcom being contracted in later months for selective contracts perhaps. Maybe a duel interaction between following a lead, and doing a job for cash, similar to what exists for magma labs.

Can research create items, or just research? I think research, using the give 1 random might work if it can give items, but you would have scientists involved and not engineers. Could then have manufacturing with several possible failures involved, so its a bit more involved making a profit than set and forget.

[Solarius Scorch]

Couldn't patents potentially work via a HUGE point bonus to the month, increasing income, like 10k points?...it would also make you impervious to failure that month, which may provide balance issues, but honestly its a possibility, and would simulate a massive monthly bonus...

Unfortunately in X-Com Files you don't get money bonuses from points.

Honestly I like the idea of xcom being contracted in later months for selective contracts perhaps. Maybe a duel interaction between following a lead, and doing a job for cash, similar to what exists for magma labs.

Well, more paid missions would be okay. I keep adding stuff all the time, so it is a rational expectation.

Can research create items, or just research? I think research, using the give 1 random might work if it can give items, but you would have scientists involved and not engineers. Could then have manufacturing with several possible failures involved, so its a bit more involved making a profit than set and forget.

I think research can produce an item now, but even so, you can only do a given research once.

[tkzv]

How about selling patents for monthly income?

How would that work?

You've already implemented disclosing information to MAGMA(?) as a research project. So, selling a patent could be another research project (with minimum man-hour price) that increases your monthly income.

If the total monthly payment has to be equal to the sum of countries' contributions, the patent price can be evenly distributed between the funding countries. Alternatively, the payment can be added to the monthly funding by the country where the company is based (e.g. Russia for MAGMA).

When a country is infiltrated and quits X-COM, there may be something like:
1. For distributed funding, the monthly payments can be recalculated. Will the engine allow it?
2. For distributed funding, if recalculation is impossible, then "Alien Infiltration" description should say that when a country quits the project, it freezes or confiscates X-COM financial assets it was handling.
3. For funding through a single country, "Alien Infiltration" description may say the same about freezing/confiscating or something about a ban for companies on dealing with X-COM.
4. Or cessation of funding may mean cutting all funding except royalties. Can the engine do that?

I think research can produce an item now, but even so, you can only do a given research once.

But if you research a set of identical items, you can repeat the research until you run out of items.

[Solarius Scorch]

I think little of this is doable at all.
And even if it was, what would it accomplish? It sounds like a lot of work for... I'm not sure what purpose. This is a tactical combat game with conspiracy/mystery fluff, why would a player care about this? It's not a diplomacy game and adding diplomacy to it would be a huge undertaking, and in my opinion it wouldn't enhance the experience in any way.
M.A.G.M.A. and BlackOps deals are a different thing, since it affects mission generation and weapon selection.

[tkzv]

It's another source of income different from score-based funding, mission loot or manufacture. You said you wanted something else and I described how I imagine it. I still prefer workshops, because money bags are too few and far between

[Solarius Scorch]

It's another source of income different from score-based funding, mission loot or manufacture. You said you wanted something else and I described how I imagine it. I still prefer workshops, because money bags are too few and far between

Well, it all depends on the balance. For now I just don't think we need more money sources. If the practice says otherwise, we'll worry about it.

Still, most of these ideas just aren't doable at the moment.

[betatester]

Hi, It's been a long time that I played Xcom Files, I started again with a level 2 difficulty game (I want to do things calmly) and I noticed that less monsters means also less money.
Now that I will have a workshop soon I wonder what item could be used to make my engineers busy and gaining a bit of money.  I thought that Chemoguns (I got a lucky box) could be a good idea but on the wiki it says under productivity -18$/engineer/hour so I suppose it isn't profitable anymore.
Is there objects that can pay at list the cost of the engineers for not losing money?
there's a productivity on the wiki but you have to check every item, maybe a page with items ranged by productivity could be nice.

[Solarius Scorch]

Frankly, very few items allow you to make money on manufacturing, and they all depend on restricted resources.

The intention is to specifically disallow X-Com to make money by producing stuff. The rationale is that a specialized workshop like yours cannot compete with mass-produced goods. In vanilla it works because of the quiet assumption that you are the only source of alien tech, so whatever you make is sure to find a buyer at any price. But in XCF this is evidently not the case, as there are other organizations who clearly have access to alien tech, some of them with a much more robust industrial capacities, driving the prices down.

So long story short, you need to rely on what you loot and on country payments. (And yes, lower difficulty means less loot money.)

[psavola]

At least Dart guns, chemthrowers and electric prods are relatively early-game manufacturable goods with a positive engineer hour rate. So if you have nothing else to do, these are examples of what you could manufacture. But you don't really earn money out of them.

But FYI, building a workshop is not really one your first priorities. I suppose you could even go a whole year 1997 without it. It's more important to use the money for your research infrastructure and research all the important stuff and ones that give you points. You'll also get better council funding that way.

If I recall correctly, in my games, the first things I usually want a workshop for in the early-ish game, and none of this is compulsory:
- manufacturing aqua-plastic suits once you get aqua plastics (I try to rush abyssal artifact delivery and underwater arc), and possibly bio-exo suits if that's the way you want to deal with ninjas (I usually don't bother)
- building scout drones (not really a priority if you capture and train rats and use dogs; otherwise essential for spotting assassins)
- manufacturing electric prods for doing live captures that really need more punch (e.g. if you get lucky with a mission).

EDIT:
 - I forgot manufacturing healing gel. It is one of the first priorities for the workshop for me.

In my recent SH/IM test game, I think I built the workshop in about Oct 1997. At that point I had two bases, essentially giving access to the whole globe using helicopter and later osprey, with a science lab and 40 scientists on primary base and 10 scientists on the secondary base.

[Solarius Scorch]

At least Dart guns, chemthrowers and electric prods are relatively early-game manufacturable goods with a positive engineer hour rate. So if you have nothing else to do, these are examples of what you could manufacture. But you don't really earn money out of them.

Yeah, but only when compared to the engineers doing nothing. It would be cheaper not to pay the engineers at all than to make and sell dart guns. (Unless I made a mistake somewhere, it's too hot to do any code digging to verify, sorry. )