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XCOMUFO & Xenocide

Economy


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If we look at the X-com Enemy Unknown(UFO defence), the economy was based on funding from different nations. Imo this is good stuff, BUT whats with the goverments giving up and surrender to the enemy?!?

 

Ohhh to get back on track, I think we have to improve either the "real" X-com economy (nations funding) or make a new kind of economy where more factors play in.

 

 

IDEA:

Perhaps u rescue "Bill Gates :P" then he would fund the organisation. or if you have saved "X" number of people you would get X amount of extra funding each month

 

IF X(saved) = Y(criteria) DO Z(extra funding each month)

 

 

There would of course be factors which plays in the other directions (killing civilians etc)

 

 

||Extra questions: Will there still be "operationel tanks in the game? :)"

Base limit 8?

Mix of underwater and dryland battles?

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I'm just hoping the money is more realistic. Xcorp would deal in billions or hundreds or millions of dollars, not millions. Even Bill Gates wouldn't help that much really.

I liked the way the country funding worked originally. It was like, "we don't know how well xcom will work so we will all fund you a little bit." Then success would bring you more funding. "wow these guys are kicking the crap out of these sectoids. Throw some more money at them!"

Frankly, I think most of the money should come from governments, not from selling tech. I just think that game dynamic is ruined two monthes into the game when the government funding barely covers the cost of a single base.

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You have a point Garak about the funding. It does make more sense that most of the funding should come from governments. At least, initially until people get wise :)

 

I've also always thought that selling anything on the market should have consequences/pros/cons associated with it. For example, I could easily imagine a government to reduce funding because they were a little jealous of another one of your funding allies who'd just recieved a big hunk o' loot from you. This line of thinking stems mostly from the fact that, somewhere along the line, there was probably some kind of pact between the various nations funding X-COM - that they'd want dibs on tech and things that'd serve some other need of theirs if not a parallel effort to X-COM.

 

Perhaps there can be a few methods of getting things done with the market.

 

1. You can sell anything indiscriminately on the market (while its functioning that is). There should probably be more cons associated with this method but I'll leave those open to more discussion.

 

2. Filling manufacturing requests for your allies from time to time. Think of it like a manufacuring mission - sorta like calling out for pizza. Not as many cons, but one off the top of my head could be, what if an order didn't go through because you'd just lost one of your manufacturing bases and they gave you two months time to come through on it? Something like this. A Pro might be something like getting time extentions on the next project after coming through early on the previous one, and probably a nice sized grant on top of whatever funding level the country was currently at or willing to pay.

 

3. At some point in some of our gaming, more and more countries may side with the aliens. I think that the market should gradually die and if you reach a certain level of self sufficiency and this eventuality occured that the economy ought to shift to one of a barter system. Trading essentially. Trade with groups of other splinter human encampments who've split with their governments. These would be made up of people more than likely, who couldn't be swayed by the aliens the same way their weak willed comrades and government leaders were.

 

You could chalk it up to the fact that they had unrealized Psi potential, same as your troops. i.e. High strength to resist mind tricks, but no means to develop any skill with it (you have all the labs after all). I dunno, but it sounds like a neat X-Net entry to explain the phenomena of this in other human survivor groups.

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  • 2 weeks later...
I plea the team doing the economy, of _REALLY_ working this subject through since, like in the real life, its a VERY delicate and important subject :) If the money parts sucks, micromanaging will feel sucky. :( also note that when buying stuff there should be an "arrival delay" since it wont be realistic that the object would appear instantly in the base.
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By "arrival delay" I'm presuming you mean after a UFO mission or base mission. If so I agree, the stuff shouldn't appear until the transport makes it back.

 

I wanted to speak more about allies requesting manufacturing missions from you. Considering here that X-COM will have a fairly excellent stranglehold on alien technology (unless you sell some, which should equal repercussions if you do), your funding allies can't hope to mount much of an effective response to the aliens. Not without some help from you that is.

 

Through their various military advisors, I can easily envision them requesting things of you to bolster their defense capabilities. Perhaps an additional bar graph could list the funding country in question with a defense value alongside it. This value could increase as you'd fullfilled any requests, though it may change the buy/sell screen a bit in terms of "who" or "where" you sell.

 

Although, you could just incorporate several sell buttons on that graph page to save screen toggling time, listing them next to each country (your regular sell screen is to sell things more indiscriminately).

 

As countries fall to alien influence, the button either goes gray (untogglable), and only becomes useful again if you win the country back or a resistance group has sprung up in its boarders (they become the new default ally - even though they don't have hordes of government loot or tons of support; all you get from them are requests for goods most times, and other times they might have something to barter to you but don't count on that all the time. They will also be a way to recruit from though pickings might not be great, or as swift in arriving at your bases).

 

Anyway, these sell buttons could be further color coded as well. Gray for untogglable, Green can be for when your order's done being processed within the allotted time they granted/Or for selling what you've made for them so far, & Yellow could be for trading with whoever's still on your side in those boarders if not the government.

 

You'd know at a glance looking at the graph both the country's defense value, and whether you could fulfill manufacturing/trade requests to the region.

 

The next trick is probably how you'd augment alien responses to specific countries. I'd tie some of it to the defense value of the country but not all of it. It might become a little too predictable that way where the aliens would strike next or what likely mission they'd perform there.

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Ah well, I didn't think much of increasing that time considering there's already a delay of 24 for purchases. I don't know if it'd help things there with the market by increasing delivery times but it could. I'd probably make every other delivery take between 24-72 hrs, just to keep things interesting.

 

Besides, these things do come from various outlets and through third parties, and those too probably change up every so often to confound snoops working for the Enquirer.

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These are good ideas as long as you don't need a degree in economics to play the game. It sounds feasable.

The one thing I would like to add though is that countries would pay huge sums of money for alien tech, but only once. If the US buys a plasma rifle, (you might it to them anyway, as in, their funding buys one of everything you get) they only need the one. If xcorp can find 1 gun and research and produce a hundred of them, surely America can buy one and make 1 million. The only thing I believe that keeps the other countries in check is the lack of elerium, (or its equivalent).

heck, I killed an alien last night and already have a good grasp on how his disruptor works.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Good point about countries paying high prices for the first sale of something, then the costs of the same unit to the same country again equalize, since, as you pointed out (and I agree) is that not only would the party have the item, presumably along with that sale is all the associated X-COM research info and manufacturing criteria for it as well (so that they can then mass produce their own - and affect their own kind of separate defense value rating).

 

Its likely they won't stumble on too much Elerium like you said, so for that I can easily see them asking for some along with any manufacturing missions they might ask of you too. Elerium being the one commodity any sane ally would want, it makes sense that prices for it ought to probably go in a different direction.

 

But like anything in a market kind of setup, if an item, even something as scarce as Elerium were to somehow proliferate and climb highter by quantity, then prices should stablize once more to a saner level.

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I imagine that no matter how much we copy, Alien Plasma Rifles are slightly better than terran copies of Plasma Rifles. That means that APRs with Alien Ammo would sell for very high prices. Laser and laser/plasma hybrids(think Particle Beam) would probably be more interesting to Earth manufacturers. After sellign them to the highest bidder, you can buy them from manufacturers rather than making them in-house. Same thing goes for non-xenium HWPs and Craft weapons. So most of your in-house jobs would be modifying ships or weapons or armour that others cannot make.
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  • 11 months later...

I've read the posts in this topic and some sound really cool. Such as trading and selling with and to governments. But what if you sold tech on the black market? You could charge a higher price but the more you sell the higher the probability you'll get caught. If your funding governments discovered what you did they would reduce your funding or possibly quit the project, depending on how much you were distributing and to whom. You would also have to wait between selling periods for suspictions to subside.

 

For example, if you sell a crate of plasma rifles for 5 million the suspition level would rise to %30. If you sold another one at the same time it would rise to %80 because the sudden influx of high-tech weaponry would start atracting attention. Then if you waited a couple weeks, it would drop down to %50.

 

As for the manufacturing idea, it would be cool that once you sell a tech to a government you could contract them to manufacture for you. Branching off from there you could choose from different contracts their offering best suited for what you need at the time. Such as 20 plasma rifles and 40 clips for 10 million in 2 months or 30 plasma rifles and 50 clips for 15 million in 2 & 3/4 months.

 

There's also the possibility that once a government buys a tech, they can sell it to another nation or research it and improve it so they can sell it to you if you don't have it. For example, if you sell Canada plasma tech. then they might research heavy plasma tech. before you do and offer it to you for 10 million or something reasonable.

 

Then when you decide to build a base you might need to buy land from the country your building it in. Hosting nations could charge more for certain area's of land than others and might declare some area's are off limits if it's too close to a city or something like that...

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Ain't brainstorming grand? :)

 

HighTech, I hadn't considered a second type of sell market beyond the black market (things have to move through there to you, after all, you are a secret org - at least in the beginning). Still, you have a valid point about poliferation as one aspect to a diplomatic stance and I'm in support of the idea, though maybe the methods need examining by their happy/pissed 'O meters - what their response is going to be.

 

Manufacturing missions, the way I was thinking of it, simply means your fullfilling orders to allied governments/military/resistance outfits - it still means your using the black market to move those items.

 

If the monetary market collapses (too many defecting countries) in favor of a bartering system it'll still use the black market to move those items. Its likely though that the resistance groups that spring up will want things from you where your role is primarily filling manufacturing requests for them in exchange for something they have.

 

Example:

 

Resistance group A is planning a major (behind the scenes) offensive (around X date and time) and wants 300 Laser (or Plasma) Pistols, 200 Laser (or Plasma) Rifles, 100 Heavy Laser (or Plasma) Rifles, 100 blaster launchers and 500 bombs, 300 grenades (or alien grenades), 50 HWPs and 10 armored troop carriers (the ground kind).

 

They can send you: [please select one]

 

1) 5 new recruits/mercs

2) 500 units of alien alloys

3) 300 units of E-115

4) X number of alien corpses (maybe you didn't research 'em)

5) X various alien artifacts

6) X many raw materials (food and water but also could include construction equipment)

 

You might be wondering why they'd possess alien alloys or things like e-115 to trade to you. Its just an example, but I figure maybe these guys lack (unless you can provide the specs, location and building material) the means to put them to use in terms of ammo replenishment or weapons manufacturing. Also through their behind the scenes actions they've been doing UFO and base assaults on their own so their bound to get the unusual item here and there.

 

Also this is a reasonably large cell group of about 1000 men, so a cell like this might not reach this state if it wasn't continually supplied, either through bartering/manufacturing requests, or through simple charitable gifting by you.

 

Note: by this stage as well, there really isn't any need for organizational secrecy to the public consciousness, so much as location secrecy is.

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