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XCOMUFO & Xenocide

Transfer Trick?


Nickisimo

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I'd like to see it go. I'm not quite sure if Microprose intended to have it in the game in the first place(i doubt it), but either way, it should probably go. :hammer: Edited by Nickisimo
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That is officially considered a bug in the original game, and will under no circumstances be allowed in Xenocide. Trick=BUG.
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And how about the "end of month recruiting" trick? Will scientists/engineers/soldiers be paid full salary even if they worked only one day, or will this be adjusted?
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Yeah. The salaries can be calculated on a daily (or even hourly) basis, but then only billed at the end of the month. Should not be that difficult should it?

 

<looks for a programmer>

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Theoretically it's not that hard to program. You just have to assign an integer to each scientist and keep adding one for every day they work and then at the end of the month, multiply each scientist's daily rate(i have no clue what that is) to said integer, and then add all of those together to get one bill. :happybanana: Edited by Nickisimo
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Was there any maximum number in the original game for scientists/engineers? I mean, I know you have to be able to support them with living quarters, but there is a ceiling to the number that you can have? It'd be kinda dumb to have 900 scientists ooh-ing and ahh-ing as they jam the plasma rifle clip into the rifle, and then proudly exclaim, "We figured out what this does!" :beer:
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Guest Jim69
BTW, just 4 reference, in Apoc they were paid by the hour. Incidently, the engineers were on $4.50 an hour. I'm an apprentice Electrical Engineer, and I'm on £4.65 ($7.60) an hour. Damn, slave labour :P
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I think putting the salaries on a daily rate would be a good idea, and IMO you should actually pay them daily or weekly as well. It could work for facilities as well. Then you don't get hit by a huge monthly bill at the end.

 

I think the purchase price is the issue rather than the monthly cost. Since you can fire them the day before payday, the monthly cost is really their pay for the month coming up. You're paying the extra amount when you purchase them up front, so perhaps personnel purchase prices prorate depending on the day of the month when they are hired. Using the original prices of $60K, just divide it into 30 days and the recruiting price drops by $2K per day, and resets to $60K at the first of the month. Of course you'd probably divide by 35 instead, so there's always some cost even on the last day of a 31 day month.

 

Then you pay the regular monthly cost, and you just fire them before the first of the month. It should be easy enough to come up with a formula that pulls the day of the month as a variable, then plugs that into this system and gives you the current price.

 

There should be some minimum cost involved, even on the last day, since you have to fly them to your base and process them, etc. How does that sound?

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It's more a design bug rather that a coding one. They simply forgot to add a few simple "if"s in the code this is totally nothing to fix.
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hm, i really think itd confuse people if the hiring cost changed depending on the time of month, most people would probably assume that its cheapest to hire at the end of the month even though it wouldnt make any difference in the long run.

it could work that way but itd be less simple for the player

Edited by hippyjon
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You just have the entry for price show $XXX hire/$60,000 monthly in the hire screen. Or you have a text entry that explains the system in a sentence or two. That way the player would understand.
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I meant when you open the purchase screen, there could be a line of text across the top of the screen explaining it, or yes you could have a tutorial popup text entry during a mouseover event. Or heaven forbid, we simply explain it in the manual, and if the player doesn't understand they are told to RTFM... I hope we do have a fancy manual...
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Good games usually have fancy manuals(Baldur's Gate, any Blizzard game, etc). I'm sure we can cook something nice up.

 

Umm Brue...RTFM...Read the F- Manual? :D

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Yeah. The salaries can be calculated on a daily (or even hourly) basis, but then only billed at the end of the month.

http://pages.prodigy.net/rogerlori1/emoticons/yea2.gif

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Of course! RTFM=Read the Fantastic Manual. It will be fantastic, won't it? I'd hate for it to be simply decent or mediocre... If it were not fantastic, we wouldn't tell them to the f-ing thing, right? :D
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Will there be tons of background stuff thrown in too??? I like it when there are whole books added to it, like with Warcraft 3: background story, units, this and that and even much much more... even though it's not needed ^_^ Gives me something to read in all my spare time...
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But of course, text files are very small, so I expect that all kinds of storyline stuff will be tossed in for flair. Check out the creative text area, there are lots of options available there.
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Story and or fluff text is something I'd love to see snippets of, interjected around the manual.

 

Stuff like

 

"Day 26. My squad and I have been taken off active duty and put into this weird training scheme. Its like a cross between CQB and Basic and its tough. I thought SEAL training was hard but what we've done today alone has me questioning the sanity of the training officers. I mean cattleprods and flares, since when have they been any use to a soldier? There's definitely something strange going on. The worst thing is that there's not been any scuttlebutt on what we're up to. Someone is keeping this very hush-hush."

Edited by Deimos
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Definitely. Each area of the manual could include stuff like that. I'm currently re-reading the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan, and many chapters start with some excerpt from the prophecies of the ancient storyline. That could be done, on top of more specific chunks like your example which could go into more detail. We just insert it all in italics and/or with quotes for visual distinction.

 

 

:rock:

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Guest Jim69
Txt files are shite, I'd say the best option is Acrobat, but then again HTML is just about as good. I take it that HTML is probably gonna be used, seeming as it would probably be mainly posted here, and maybe with the game itself in it's own folder.
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Wow, that was pretty good Demios, maby we could have just the continuing story of this one grunt throughout the manual?

 

I think that the scientists shouldn't be paid at all but failing that, they should get an hourly rate (that you set I hope) just like most jobs.

 

I don't know about acrobat, isn't acrobat writer pretty expensive?

Edited by Cpl. Facehugger
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Guest Jim69
Wow, that was pretty good Demios, maby we could have just the continuing story of this one grunt throughout the manual?

 

I think that the scientists shouldn't be paid at all but failing that, they should get an hourly rate (that you set I hope) just like most jobs.

 

I don't know about acrobat, isn't acrobat writer pretty expensive?

I'm not sure how much it is, maybe if we give em the old :sorry: they will sort us out with a 1 time licence 4 an opensource project. After all, it is good advertising, and noone's makin ne money, u never know till ya try :)

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Wow, that was pretty good Demios, maby we could have just the continuing story of this one grunt throughout the manual?

 

I think that the scientists shouldn't be paid at all but failing that, they should get an hourly rate (that you set I hope) just like most jobs.

 

I don't know about acrobat, isn't acrobat writer pretty expensive?

Thanks, but that was literally an on the spur of the moment, off the top of my head thing so its not as good as it could be :)

 

I like the idea of the one soldier's story snippets thoughout the manual.

 

Breu we could use a boxout with a grey background for story items. I've been doing that for a few years when I've been writing my own source material for some of my RP games.

 

Acrobat is very expensive but as usual there are open source alternatives.

 

Jim I don't reckon Adobe would give us anything, they don't really like the open source community. After all they locked up Skylarov for nothing.

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Guest Jim69

Really? I didn't realise that some companies would be that tight. I mean, if others c that the Acrobat product is being used 2 good effect others would no doubt dabble. Guess some peeps are just 2 hard nosed 2 realise I guess.

 

On a side note, I also agree that soldier stories and reports running thro a manual would be cool, I can't remember the name but I c that 2 good effect in 1 game.

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Guest Jim69
Don't Adobe control the format tho? Plus it's a pain in the arse having 2 install the reader if u wanna read it. Will HTML be good enough?
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I have the reader anyway. I think most people do. And if they cant be bothered to get it, then so be it.

 

I dont think Adobe control the format, as long as you have the full version converter. Point is, you can make it in Word and then convert it at the end. As long as you dont do any special stuff, I think Acrobat keeps the format fine. Might be worth looking into...

 

But HTML would be fine if thats what we wanted to do.

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