At first, I thought it wouldn't matter that the government was broke and funding went to 0. I mean, the BULK of the income was generated by X-com anyhow, right?

However, the minute that I could send flotillas into the alien dimension and blow up their ships, I found that the government had a LOT of money. Judging by my weekly scores, my income from them could possibly have maxed out at quite a significant level.

Secondly, at that point, I found that my troops didn't have to go on any actual missions, as the alien ships were all destroyed in their own dimension early in the week. Just being able to pass time on max and training them seemed like a nice idea.

Except, I found that, it takes QUITE a few missions on the cult of sirius to pay all the bills. Not a problem... but a big irritation. I would rather not have had to constantly send my forces on farming runs, and had regular funding to cover expenses.

So... any tips on what exactly causes the government to fork out cash? Anyone? How to stop them going bankrupt?

So far, the only one I'm certain of is : make sure that GOVERNMENT buildings are not damaged. Or try to do so anyhow.

Other corporation buildings: does the government pay for that?

Does inflicting economic penalties on corps reduce government income? IE, will bankrupting CoS and some random gang cause a loss of tax income?

Hi Jasonred,

It's been a while since I played this game. But I remember when I got to the stage you are at right now and the Government wouldn't pay me anymore, I simply started manufacturing my own ships and weapons systems and started selling them. It takes quite a while to build a ship or those massive lasers you install on them. But when you sell them off, they do tend to bring a lot of cash.

I don't have the exact figures for you because , like I said, it's been a while since I played the game. But the trick, I've found, is to modify one of your bases so that it contains several workshops and then turn it into a full time manufacturing facility. You can also buy a brand new base and build several shipyards for building new ships. The top level fighter I think sells for about half a million or so (sorry, not sure).

Do it this way and you'll never run out of money, regardless of whether the Goverment pays you or not.

mmm.... problem is, you can only hire so many decent engineers, and I sort of wanted them to build proper stuff.

Besides, you can avoid going bankrupt by raiding the cult like a lunatic. That's a much less limited form of income, just more effort.

In any case, I was asking how to keep my old income, not how to make up for losing it. Sorry dude.

You should never rely on the government funding for anything more than paying for maintenance of your facilities.

Also note that the cash levels you see in the ufopaedia are only cosmetic in function. They do not control how the game actually operates (of course, it may influence what the government can pay you). Damage to the city for example is automaticly fixed every week whether or not the government has the funds to give you a bonus. Same goes for rival corporations. You can give them a negative funding score that's many millions into the red, but they'll still raid their enemies, and gangs will still send out futile two hover car/bike pairs to get slaughtered by building security forces.

Once you gain air dominance in the alien dimensions, you've pretty much won the game - the cash and political side of the game just melt away. After destroying the building that controls UFO production, I once had a couple of hybrids that were maxed out from training in the combat and then psi lab who had 0 missions under their belt. Not terribly exciting, I must admit.

- NKF

You can directly affect a company's income by trashing their buildings - they have to pay about $10K every week or something per damaged block, not sure if the same applies to you - but as NKF says, you're the only one who actually has to pay attention to your budget.

Take out the Alien Command Center and you're home free. It's the one that looks like a giant red mushroom. As NKF said, once that's down for the count, the rest of the game is a breeze, apart from the combats inside the remaining alien buildings, which get harder and harder as time goes on. It's a good idea to rest and recuperate for as long as possible between each building after the Command Center is down, as you don't have to worry about raiding UFOs. When you're close to it, though, the aliens will get frantic and start sending big ships. Take lots of explosives and do as many as you can afford in one throw at the Alien Dimension, with good troops and plenty of Vee-Mines you should be able to do two buildings, the only exception being the one with the white blocks which will require lots and LOTS of Vee-Mines.

The ...erm, Vortex Cannons? Whatever the top alien gun is. Anyhow, it can be used to destroy all targets in the alien dimensions. The only thing you MUST use a V mine for is those alien generators.

How did you get your troops to near max stats, or let them do that resting without government funding??? I don't consider having to go on a couple of psi runs every day a "rest". And I needed my manufacturing for churning out X-com armor, and actual stuff to USE, not just stuff to make then sell off...

Anyhow, so, basically you guys also had 0 government funding? Have you experienced it before?

All I ever want from them is enough to cover my maintainence. Grr... or any amount at all, since I can raise it back high enough through missions. 0 is bad, though.

Yeah, but you can use V-Mines to take out multiple ones at once. It's Devastator Cannon, BTW.

And you don't need the mines for the generators in the alien dimension. One or two Dev. shots will get 'em.

Would givving the government a lot of bribe money keep them from going bankrupt? I don't rely on the money from them, but it sure is nice to have.

Problem with bribing is that you can't bribe a faction that is fully allied with you.

Out of the several reason why the goverment cuts the funding I've only gone though one of them:

- Doing so well that the Gov ends up paying you a lot more than what they get through their income. This causes the Gov's treasury to go down until they reach really low numbers in their accounts. Then it starts making drastic adjustments on X-Com's funding and finally completly cut it off.

If you want to avoid this particular problem then you need to control how well you perform so that X-Com's funding is always bellow the Gov's income rate which I find being a lot more hassle then just raiding hostile factions.

What if you raid the government enough to where they are unfriendly? Then you could bribe them right? Not sure what they would have thats worth raiding though...

There's not much of a point in doing that, and it could hurt you in more ways than one. You'll have to end up paying out money to companies allied to the government, as they'll get unfriendly as well. In the long run, if you do it repeatedly, the government may hit the point where it will no longer accept bribes (and call the aliens their 'friends' - but that's just a cosmetic issue and shouldn't be taken literally). The only way to give them money is if they ask for it.

By the time the government starts to run short of cash, you should be at the point where you're able to sell off large stocks consisting of several warehouses full of devestators and boomeroids. Tip: If you choose to hoard an alien weapon, try the devestator. At full selling price, it should cost around $7,500. If you can get 100 of them, that's $750, 000 in a single sale! The teleporter does great too, but by the time you get it, you should be fully self sufficient. The cloaking device is a good moneymaker too.

With the cash you get from this, you can even start a a few production bases that churn out Explorers or Bio Trans (both can be built fairly quickly) and sell them for twice the amount you spent on building them (100% profit).

Once you've got a few million MP$, you're not going to even care about what the goverment is paying you just as long as they're happy with your progress.


- NKF

when it comes to makeing x-com brand goods, (notice i said x-com brand as if it was a company making goods) anything u make then sell u get a profit out of right down to the crappy module u get at the start to carry the aliens, everything u manufacture can be sold for increased price so u always have a steady and flowing supply of cash
as for gov running out of cash as far as i know its based on a number of factors, damage to city buildings owned by gov, damage to transit system including tubes and roads, forking out cash to the local corporations excluding gangs although thats unconfirmed, x-com funding. all these take tolls on the govs funding and eventually if ur good at this game u will earn so much the gov will drain its limited supply of cash, perhaps its a built in limit to the game, after a time u have to become self suficent or run out of funding and fail the game, hmm theres sumthing to think about a sutle time limit