Engineering (Apocalypse)
Engineering with X-Com Apocalypse is the discipline of 'making stuff'.
Units
The total quantity of Engineers across all bases at any one time is fifty. If it is reduced for any reason, more Engineers will become available to be hired.
Facility
The workshop is available as Small in the beginning, and when relevant research is completed, a Large facility will be an option. Placing small or large labs would be ideally spread across all bases to limit the possibilty of losing all manufacturing capability if one base were to be attacked.
A compact Workshop base which will wipe out all manufacturing capability if it were to be lost.
Workshop Manufacturing
X-Com will need to build facilies to enable the manufacture of advanced weapons, crafts and devices, armors, etc. Constructing an item will allow a profit to be made when sold on the market. Optimising production allows larger profits!
Completion And Timing
Time to finish anything built is always completed on the hour. Small items with short build times should be optimised to best use the small workshop and five engineers, to complete a manufacturing run on the hour, however:
- multiple small items built over a multiple day production run, more efficiently use workshop space and engineer skills instead of short stop-start projects.
- massive projects, usually taking many days for just one item, may not profitable if those items can be recovered from a mission since higher-profit items should be X-Com's priority.
- An idle workshop is not making money!
Overheads
or, Costs Of Upkeep
Engineers receive a salary and maintenance of facilities (living and workshop) will reduce your profits by a certain amount, each and every week. Once a project's profit is calculated without interuption then matched with the size of the facility, profit totals will become more accurate:
- Small Workshop costs = 250
- living quarters is half filled, so maintenance can be halved as well.
- Large Workshop costs = 500
Note: an idle workshop should make something even if it is barely profitable but flooding the market may turn it into a eventual loss.
Flooding The Market
Every item is (usually) profitable to manufacture, but your sell price is determined by market forces. If you sell so much (ie: flooding) that you drive the price down in the proceeding weeks, you will have to re-evaluate each manufacturing run using this new sell price of the new week, to find the best profits.
Items have differing amounts in the Market Capacity column which is a rough indicator of how many you can sell before you heavily influence the Sell Price towards its lowest value.
eg: selling x25 Dimension Missiles may slightly reduce the new-week sell price, but selling x25 Disruptor Guns will be classed as 'flooding' and will drive the sell price down, faster with a 'flood' every consecutive new week.
Profit Per Build Time
The only important thing!
The higher the decimal number, the better the profit. The best item may not be researched yet! Find another suitable item from your current manufacturing list.
Note: Everything is profitable (no negative decimals) as default until you start flooding!
Chart Definitions
- Manfacture: no know = no no
- Build Cost: internal cost to build one item
- Build Time: one unit
- Build Time: one unit in hours (rounded up) to make it easier to understand.
- Facility: small (250/week) or large (500/week) in maintenance costs.
- Market Capacity: how much to sell before price starts to gets affected every week.
- Sell Price: typical of the market.
- Raw Profits: sell one-something to get this many credit-dollars, without paying your way or time.
- Profit Per Build Time: portion of a credit-dollar you get for each tick of the build clock if using large workshop with 1000skill:
- Using small workshop only: raw profit ÷ (build-time-in-hours x0.5) = Money/Hr (or halve the Build Time Per Profit).
- Using large workshop only: raw profit ÷ build-time-in-hours = Money/Hr
Manufacture Item | Build Cost | Build Time | Build Time¹ | Facility | Market Capacity |
Sell Price | Raw Profit² | Profit Per Build Time³ |
|
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Bio-Transport Moudle | 700 | 4000 | 8hrs | small | 4 | 950 | 250 | 0.0625 | |
Boomeroid | 230 | 3000 | 6hrs | small | 15 | 840 | 610 | 0.2033↓ | |
Vortex Mine | 250 | 5000 | 10hrs | small | 25 | 1130 | 880 | 0.176 | |
Disruptor Gun | 600 | 7000 | 14hrs | small | 10 | 2100 | 1500 | 0.2143↓ | |
Devastator Cannon | 1200 | 12000 | 24hrs | small | 20 | 4500 | 3300 | 0.275 | |
Dimension Missile Launcher | 1200 | 5500 | 11hrs | small | 25 | 3100 | 1900 | 0.3455↓ | |
Dimension Missile | 400 | 4000 | 8hrs | small | 30 | 1300 | 900 | 0.225 | |
Personal Disruptor Shield | 2000 | 14000 | 28hrs | small | 30 | 5770 | 3770 | 0.2693↓ | |
Personal Cloaking Field | 3000 | 18000 | 36hrs | small | 30 | 8300 | 5300 | 0.2944↓ | |
Personal Teleporter | 6000 | 25000 | 50hrs | small | 40 | 18200 | 12200 | 0.488 | |
Toxigun | 1200 | 3000 | 6hrs | small | 8 | 2780 | 1580 | 0.5267↓ | |
Toxigun A | 200 | 800 | 2hrs↑ | small | 16 | 500 | 300 | 0.375 | |
Toxigun B | 300 | 900 | 2hrs↑ | small | 16 | 700 | 400 | 0.4444↓ | |
Toxigun C | 400 | 1000 | 2hrs | small | 16 | 900 | 500 | 0.5 | |
AAG Heavy | 280 | 1200 | 3hrs↑ | small | 15 | 700 | 420 | 0.35 | |
AAG Mini | 360 | 1600 | 4hrs↑ | small | 30 | 900 | 540 | 0.3375 | |
AAG Grenade | 250 | 1000 | 2hrs | small | 15 | 600 | 350 | 0.35 | |
Disruptor Armor - Head | 1500 | 3800 | 8hrs↑ | small | 20 | 3480 | 1980 | 0.5211↓ | |
Disruptor Armor - Chest | 1500 | 3800 | 8hrs↑ | small | 20 | 3480 | 1980 | 0.5211↓ | |
Disruptor Armor - Arms | 1200 | 3400 | 7hrs↑ | small | 20 | 2830 | 1630 | 0.4794↓ | |
Disruptor Armor - Leg | 1200 | 3400 | 7hrs↑ | small | 20 | 2830 | 1630 | 0.4794↓ | |
Inversion Launcher | 3000 | 8000 | 8hrs | large | 8 | 7000 | 4000 | 0.5 | |
Inversion Missile | 1500 | 4000 | 4hrs | large | 25 | 3500 | 2000 | 0.5 | |
Stasis Launcher | 2000 | 6000 | 6hrs | large | 10 | 4760 | 2760 | 0.46 | |
Stasis Missile | 1200 | 2000 | 2hrs | large | 20 | 2650 | 1450 | 0.725 | |
Multibomb Launcher | 4000 | 10000 | 10hrs | large | 14 | 9260 | 5260 | 0.526 | |
Multibomb Missile | 1800 | 5000 | 5hrs | large | 30 | 4230 | 2430 | 0.486 | |
Light Disruptor Beam | 2000 | 12000 | 12hrs | large | 5 | 5600 | 3600 | 0.3 | |
Medium Disruptor Beam | 4000 | 20000 | 20hrs | large | 10 | 10500 | 6500 | 0.325 | |
Heavy Disruptor Beam | 8000 | 35000 | 35hrs | large | 15 | 20500 | 12500 | 0.3571↓ | |
Small Disruption Shield | 5000 | 20000 | 20hrs | large | 10 | 12500 | 7500 | 0.375 | |
Large Disruption Shield | 8000 | 30000 | 30hrs | large | 15 | 19800 | 11800 | 0.3933↓ | |
Cloaking Field | 6000 | 35000 | 35hrs | large | 17 | 16450 | 10450 | 0.2986↓ | |
Teleporter | 11000 | 45000 | 45hrs | large | 20 | 27700 | 16700 | 0.3711↓ | |
Advanced Control System | 4000 | 15000 | 30hrs | small | 6 | 8000 | 4000 | 0.2667↓ | |
Dimension Probe | 6000 | 25000 | 25hrs | large | 2 | 10000 | 4000 | 0.16 | |
Bio-Trans | 12000 | 35000 | 35hrs | large | 2 | 34000 | 22000 | 0.6286↓ | |
Explorer | 22000 | 55000 | 55hrs | large | 2 | 44000 | 22000 | 0.4 | |
Retaliator | 35000 | 75000 | 75hrs | large | 2 | 70000 | 35000 | 0.4667↓ | |
Annihilator | 50000 | 100000 | 100hrs | large | 2 | 100000 | 50000 | 0.5 |
¹ when using all engineers with 100 skill. (Small=500, Large=1000)
² not regarding time, salary, maintenance.
³ all based on using large workshop and 1000skill.
↓ shortened to four decimal places.
↑ to next full hour, recalculate with quantity without rounding up to get accurate time if building multiple.