Jump to content
XCOMUFO & Xenocide

Damage Control Costs


Robo Dojo 58

Recommended Posts

In the original X-Com, sucessful recoveries give a lot of money. I mean a LOT. A captured supply ship can easily be on par with a month's worth of funding. Several ships can easily triple your organisation's growth. IMO, it's great when you only do 1/3 - 1/2 of the missions, but if you go for them all, the income can be a little rediculous. Therefore, I suggest some kind of system to "tax" the cost of a mission. Shave a little off the top, not only so that you have a less powerful source of income, but so that you have a reason to play well at the same time. I call it "damage control".

 

Damage control basically represents all the hidden expenses of dealing with a ground mission. Such expenses include:

- Cutting up a captured ship/alien base, and mailing it back to base. (basic costs for every ship/base capture)

- Cleanup. Corpses, shells, nothing ever happened here, etc. (basic costs for every mission)

- Damaged dropship (repairs aren't cheap!)

- damaged property. (keep people happy)

- Hush hush money (extended missions may require you to pay more witnesses off)

- costs for killed civilians (hush hush money)

- costs for wounded/killed soldiers (treatment and insurance plans)

 

The function of the damage control is to act as sort of reverse mission bonus. You see, if you blow everything up, lose a lot of soldiers, and kill everyone in sight, even if you win the mission you can incure costs up to 60-70% of the mission profits. That only leaves you with a paltry 30-40% to deal with, not even counting the loss of tanks, replacement troops or munitions. Include that and you may walk away with nearly nothing. However, if you are fast, clean, and efficient, you will get an amazing 70-90% of the profits of a recovered UFO! That's a lot more than you'd get from a sloppy mission.

 

These costs also reflect the hazards to X-Com publicity which vary from mission to missions. For example, an alien ship in the middle of a desert is easily cleaned up, and may incure a small penalty at the end of a mission. Supply ships may be impossible to recover at all, due to the heavy base activity outside its door. However, a terror mission causes headaches all around. The best you can really hope for a terror mission is to lose as little as the aliens are trying to take away from you.

 

So, comments or suggestions?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I believe this was discussed elsewhere but yes it is an interesting proposal. I think it would make things more realistic and intesting but i don't know about the hush hush money. Maybe in the beginning, but money won't keep people quiet. Some other means whether chemical or psionic would have to be employed to keep people quiet as soon as possible.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I like your line of thinking on the drugs and/or psionics in lieu of bribery on leaders. I think it fits in what both the aliens do when they're subverting you, but distasteful as it is, its also something desperate I could easily see X-COM doing at different times.

 

Still, while money is still useful during play, it should remain an option. Actually it makes a good reason to do something by having big payrolls. One of the things that bothered me was that you coudn't really do anything with your wealth in the first game so its fun to think of alternatives.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I believe this was discussed elsewhere but yes it is an interesting proposal. I think it would make things more realistic and intesting but i don't know about the hush hush money. Maybe in the beginning, but money won't keep people quiet. Some other means whether chemical or psionic would have to be employed to keep people quiet as soon as possible.
I don't just mean paying people so that they don't talk, although everyone does have their price. B) X-Corps is a top secret organization that needs to keep a low profile, not only from the public, but even from local police or military as well. It also needs to keep people from getting wise about the alien threat. That doesn't mean silencing everyone, but to keep definite evidence and definate consensus impossible to find. That's not cheap.

 

If you are quick, efficient, and leave little trace in your mission, then that's easily covered up. For example, 10 agents fly in, 9 leave with 6 body bags. Some cleanup here, some money there, and they were fighting an undercover terrorist cell. Privacy is assured. If 10 agents fly in, 3 leave with PLASMA burns, civilians have been ripped apart from the inside with exoskeleton husk remains, and the area is turned into a war zone... that's not so easy to explain. Thus the costs for keeping the project confidential go up, WAY up. And psionics are NOT needed for that. This is just PR stuff that X-Corps needs to deal with, being a top secret organization.

 

Anyway, it isn't particularly important how it's explained (though I did pretty well I think), as what it'd do for the game. The idea is that the better you do on a mission, the more reward you walk away with. The worse you do, the less you get, beyond the relatively cheap costs of people and gear. It provides a reasonable baseline cost to every mission attempt and success, and brings a secondary cost to a "scorched earth" policy. That's pretty much the idea, really.

Edited by Robo Dojo 58
Link to comment
Share on other sites

rats. no more spamming the battlefield with blasterbombs <_>Blaster bomb paradise will still be worth every penny, I assure you. ^_^ We'll just say that a power plant exploded. In the middle of London. And caused 12 separate craters. They'll believe it. :hideit:
Edited by Robo Dojo 58
Link to comment
Share on other sites

rats. no more spamming the battlefield with blasterbombs <_>Blaster bomb paradise will still be worth every penny, I assure you. ^_^ We'll just say that a power plant exploded. In the middle of London. And caused 12 separate craters. They'll believe it. :hideit:

I thought the current policy was to blame terrorists.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...
Question - why hide X-com activities? Is there some written scenario, in which people miss blatantly obvious - war on Earth? I mean, you can hide an UFO in the desert, but not a terror mission in the center of London or dogfaight in the air! And why hide at all?
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...