Buying and Selling Meld

[Zerazar]

Would it be possible to make that happen? Even if it'll be a bit cumbersome, like having to manufacture items and then sell them or something like that.

[Amineri]

Selling meld would be quite possible (via an extension of the grey market). Buying meld ... would be like being able to buy alloys or elerium.

[Zerazar]

Selling meld would be quite possible (via an extension of the grey market). Buying meld ... would be like being able to buy alloys or elerium.

That's the important bit anyway. Could you maybe point me in the right direction as for how to do it?

[Amineri]

I think the only thing preventing meld from being sellable is that it doesn't have a configured ItemBalance entry in the DGC.ini.

 

Strategy items are organized into categories. Categories 1-3 are organized around the Engineering Build UI -- each category displays in a separate tab, so category 1 = soldier weapons, category 2 = soldier armor, category 3 =vehicle related stuff. Category 5 is "collectible artifacts", which includes alloys, elerium, and such stuff as UFO Power Sources and Alien Food. Category 6 is specifically alien corpses and captives.

 

How this is important is that the grey market is set up to only show / allow to be sell items in categories 5 and 6 that have a non-negative cashcost, together with some specific exclusions. I checked and the default sell price for meld in XGItemTree.BuildItems is defined at 2 cash.

 

However, in XGItemTree.CanBeSold,:

    if(((kItem.iCategory == 1) || kItem.iCategory == 2) || kItem.iCategory == 3)
    {
        if(((((((iItem != 212) && iItem != 213) && iItem != 214) && iItem != 215) && iItem != 216) && iItem != 217) && iItem != 218)
        {
            return false;
        }
    }
    if((((iItem == 184) || iItem == 127) || iItem == 125) || iItem == 126)
    {
        return false;
    }
    if(iItem == 66)
    {
        return false;
    }
    if(iItem == 164)
    {
        return false;
    }
    return m_arrItems[iItem].iCash != -1; 

there is a specific exclusion for meld (iItem == 164), so this section would have to be modded out.

 

In order to adjust the sell price for meld you'd need to add new BalanceItem lines for meld, such as :

ItemBalance_Hard=(eItem=eItem_Meld, iCash=5,  iElerium=0, iAlloys=1,  iTime=-1,	iEng=-1)	

IIRC, sellable items sell for their listed price, so the above line would make Meld sell for 5 cash on Classic difficulty.

 

---------

 

For EU I'd built a mod that made all manufacturable items sellable (at a loss) directly in the grey market, and I do plan on rebuilding it for EW.

[yerude]

First i thought selling Meld would be lame. But well if a player neither like mecs nor genemods it would be a good alternative.

 

A mod where all manufacturable items can be sold increases the playingstyles possible so i realy like the idea.

With a higher time costs it would be possible to earn money by manufacturing and selling. This would make the game more strategic.

 

I also always wondered, where the Council Item requests and their payment are located. I like the idea of sell stuff on request and getting paid.

If it is panic depending like requests are much more frequent with higher panic would be great too. I hope i can use these ideas for my own mod too someday.

I also wanna change the requesting items to alien ressources too. Maybe france wanna have also a living sectoid for their own researches. So selling it by request could decrease panic and/or give you alot money.

The more difficult it is to capture an alien with arc thrower, the higher should be the reward.

[Amineri]

First i thought selling Meld would be lame. But well if a player neither like mecs nor genemods it would be a good alternative.

 

For Long War EW (still in development), I've also made it so that items can be built faster (the "Rush Construction" option), but this also requires Meld, which gives the player another alternative use vice MECs/GeneMods.

 

A mod where all manufacturable items can be sold increases the playingstyles possible so i realy like the idea.

With a higher time costs it would be possible to earn money by manufacturing and selling. This would make the game more strategic.

 

I personally am not in favor of this, as the way Engineers work in the new XCOM presents no opportunity cost. In the OG building items with Engineers worked more like how research does in NG, so your total manufacturing capacity was limited. In the NG, engineers work totally differently, creating a required limit and also reducing cost. So the only real limitation would be the amount of cash the player has. The more cash the player has, the more cash the player could make, which could easily get out of control.

 

So, for Long War we went with a "sell items on grey market at a loss" -- you can never manufacture an item and sell it on the grey market for more than it cost to build. The purpose of allowing it is to let the player sell off early tech to recover some cash in the late game (e.g. Carapace Armor).

 

I also always wondered, where the Council Item requests and their payment are located. I like the idea of sell stuff on request and getting paid.

If it is panic depending like requests are much more frequent with higher panic would be great too. I hope i can use these ideas for my own mod too someday.

I also wanna change the requesting items to alien ressources too. Maybe france wanna have also a living sectoid for their own researches. So selling it by request could decrease panic and/or give you a lot money.

The more difficult it is to capture an alien with arc thrower, the higher should be the reward.

 

Council Requests are all set up in XGFundingCouncil.

 

We took this approach with Long War, removing all manufacturable item requests and replacing them with only capturable items, including alien captives.

[yerude]

I personally am not in favor of this, as the way Engineers work in the new XCOM presents no opportunity cost. In the OG building items with Engineers worked more like how research does in NG, so your total manufacturing capacity was limited. In the NG, engineers work totally differently, creating a required limit and also reducing cost. So the only real limitation would be the amount of cash the player has. The more cash the player has, the more cash the player could make, which could easily get out of control.

 

Yes thats true, this way of earning money should be limited somehow.

 

 

Council Requests are all set up in XGFundingCouncil.

 

We took this approach with Long War, removing all manufacturable item requests and replacing them with only capturable items, including alien captives.

 

Nice, sounds great. When Long Waris finished for EW i will play it too :blush: