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Say you're manufacturing 5 laser rifles and you asign 100 people to it, are their enough parts in each rifle for 20 people to manufacture? Also, during the later stagges of design, doesn't that amount get smaller and smaller as you begin to assemble all the pieces?

 

maybe we should limit the amount of people that can be set to manufactuing certain smaller items.

 

Obviously, the more you build the the less of a problem this is, but it would take up more workshop space.

Edited by Ancalagon
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Yep, methinks research and engineering efficiency should be based on polynomials not linears. Makes things more complicated but IMO more realistic and fun. Edited by miceless
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Of course, you could argue about all sorts of things here.

 

Take an example of ten men making ten laser pistols. Are they going to make the laser pistols ten times faster than if only one man was making ten pistols? Would they even take the same amount of time as it would take one man to make one pistol? Would they all work on one pistol together, or would they make one pistol each? Somwhere in between? Whats the most efficient way for them to work?

 

All gets a bit complicated really. I think that a linear model is probably quite innacurate, but I feel that we should not go too complicated (if we do anything at all, which i feel we should). A generic model for polynomial curves would be the best way to go IMO.

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In the first Xcom it was easy, they all seemed to work on one rifle, as no matter how many you ordered only one seemed to require space in the Workshops ^_^ .

100 Engineers, working on the same rifle... :blink: "Yeah, John is making coffee. So we sent Maria for water, Timmy for the beans, Anatol for the filter, and 81 others for all the various parts and foodstuffs we're going to need with it. Meanwhile the remaining 15 of us are working on this rifle here" :D

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To make it non-complicated there should be a max amount of peeps that can work on 1 thing at a time, and upto that level is a multiplier. Makes sence and isn't particuarly hard 2 do.
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Another issue is that they work 24 hours a day on an item, so you can say that the extra people are like nurses assisting a brain surgeon. So you have 1 "surgeon" working on the pistol while several others are assisting them. It doesn't account for all of it though.

 

While I agree that there is a reasonable limit to how many techs can work on a given item, changing this feature of the game will change the gameplay balance IMO. Do you create a different limit per item for every item in the game? More people could work on 1 avenger than could work on 1 medkit for example. So you have to create a limit for every item, which IMO requires playtesting.

 

Because of this, I'm moving this thread to the laboratory, but please continue discussing how to balance this system. The more discussion about it there is, the sooner after v1 releases that we can look at it.

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Another issue is that they work 24 hours a day on an item, so you can say that the extra people are like nurses assisting a brain surgeon. So you have 1 "surgeon" working on the pistol while several others are assisting them. It doesn't account for all of it though.

 

While I agree that there is a reasonable limit to how many techs can work on a given item, changing this feature of the game will change the gameplay balance IMO. Do you create a different limit per item for every item in the game? More people could work on 1 avenger than could work on 1 medkit for example. So you have to create a limit for every item, which IMO requires playtesting.

 

Because of this, I'm moving this thread to the laboratory, but please continue discussing how to balance this system. The more discussion about it there is, the sooner after v1 releases that we can look at it.

That's what I was suggesting, that each item would have a set number of peeps that can work on it, obviously more peeps can work on an Avenger than a Laser Rifle so it should reflect that. I like the scientists and mechanics not working 24 hours a day, tho I think either they work in shifts or not at all between 6PM and 7:30AM. Maybe an option to choose between them, tho that may get complicated ( Tho I like the idea personally ).

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I think you could assume that each tech works 8-12 hour shifts and that they get some sleep and food, it's just details that we don't need to know about. Rather than having progress stop for the hours when the tech is sleeping it's all averaged out.

 

So what kind of categories would you use to divide all the items into? Craft like the avenger are obviously in the huge category, maybe you have small (10 techs max), medium (25 techs), large (50 techs), and huge (100 techs)? Or maybe huge is allowed unlimited techs? Then you say pistols and medkits are in the small group, medium and heavy weapons are in the medium group, armor and craft weapons are in the large group.

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I'd agree with that, I think those numbers should all be doubled tho. I like the idea of putting a cap on the number of engineers working on one thing at a time.
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But you would also need to take into account how many you are making. 50 engineers could work on one Avenger, and ten could work on a Power Suit, but if you are making five power suits why cant ten work on one each? Thats 50 engineers again. How do you explain that away if you dont take it into account?
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u definatly should take that into account ur right. This could be complicated but the user doesn't have 2 see any of this so if we can come up with a basic formula that is good 4 gameplay while still realistic then we should go with it.

 

So, a system COULD be arranged 2 replace the original 1 ( this is way past V1 but bear with me ) with a priority screen instead of a number of engineers. That's the way it would work in a real Engineering enviroment, so maybe a minimum number of Engineers are required 4 a job? Then maybe not. But anyway, the comp makes sure that the priority tasks are the ones with a good number of engineers, if there is a surplus then they move on 2 the next 1, if not they all work on the first 1. Tho I'm not sure if that'd work, that's the way it would happen in real life, or at least that's the way we work.

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Why don't you just have X no of engineers per item, and you order 10. Then, each item has X engineers on it - you have 5X engineers, so they split and do 5 at a time. To make a progress report, all progress is averaged. eg, each item is 1/5 done, then you have 1 full unit. I suspect that would just appear like the old system, which seemed ok.
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Part of the workshop space was taken by an object you were making, whether it was 1 or 50. As the production occurred, you'd get 1 after another, not all of them at the same time at the end. So I think at least for the original it assumed 1 was made at a time. The new version could take up workshop space for each item if you wanted to produce more than one in parallel.
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  • 3 months later...
Maybe there could be technologies that you could research that would speed up engineering, or robotisize it. You could have robotic assembly lines, which would be (very) expensive to start up, but cheap to mantain and would build very fast. And then you could have some of those random events that there was a post about, like the robots stop working, or the robots go insane... maybe we should have technologies to improve the base, like larger storage rooms that take up the same amount of space for more money...
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And then you could have some of those random events that there was a post about, like the robots stop working, or the robots go insane...

 

I Love the idea of robots rebeling and attacking a base. Just as long that the program runing them is NOT...SKYNET. :whatwhat:

What would happen if they would take over the base. Could we have a other enemy on our hands.

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Not for long once my men with pretty plasma guns get there!

 

Anyway, Perhaps we should make it so that you can have stuff produced in bulk? Like you want 100 laser pistols right now, so you pay extra to get them sooner and all in one go. Just a brainfart.

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hmmm..... back to the max engineers...

 

heres how i think we can do it:

 

1)its devided into miniature (only 2 per unit) with ammo developing, small, medium, and heavy.

 

2)the 2,10,25,100 is halved at shifts (25? should someone be choped in 2?)

 

3)if you make more then one item, the ammount of max engineers is multiplied with that ammount.

 

4)everyone (2 on one item with shift) work on each their item. If there are more items then engineers, then they will make that after they are done.

 

there. easy, wasnt it?

 

we could also have secret numbers for the tech crew, and the scientists, for their skill, so one with 100 would do their job faster then someone with 30.

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... ok, more realism in building? you make an automated factory and slam them out in hundres per hour. case and point.

 

if you want something more realistic in the sense it hurts us, small items max at 2-4 enginers, larger weapons get more, (the ships have virtualy unlimited), also for the really big things, couldnt you have more than one base work on them? one group makes one part, another makes another, then they ship one part to the other.

 

of course, you should be able to get advances that can increase construction rate, and if those numbers are too low, well they were a blind guess

Edited by Gradea
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  • 11 months later...
Yep, methinks research and engineering efficiency should be based on polynomials not linears. Makes things more complicated but IMO more realistic and fun.

A single-term exponential would do the trick.

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I like idea of limiting techs / item the most, and constructing multiple items simultaneously should add to efficiency, a serial constructing case.

 

If techs are working 12 hours a day 7 days a week (which i think unrealistic even in military project) a very small item (2 techs at a time) can be constructed by 4 persons. In fairly normal work, 2 persons at a time means 10 persons total for the work to be done 24/7, as three shifts take 6, and there are some days off.

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