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to pick up the unconscious alien on the ground will also identify
alien's rank and position.


4.7 STUFF THAT CAN BE BOUGHT, HIRED, OR LEASED

These are the stuff you can buy, usually not very interesting.

Item Category Cost Note
---------------------------------------------------------
Soldier Personnel 40000 monthly salary
Scientist Personnel 60000 monthly salary
Engineer Personnel 50000 monthly salary
Skyranger Craft 500000 monthly lease
Interceptor Craft 600000 monthly lease
Stingray l'cher Craft Weapon 16000 6 rounds
Stingray missile Craft Ammo 3000
Avalanche l'cher Craft Weapon 17000 3 rounds
Avalanche missile Craft Ammo 9000
Cannon Craft Weapon 30000
Cannon Ammo (x50) Craft Ammo 1240
Tank/Cannon HWP 420000 30 rounds
HWP Cannon Ammo HWP Ammo 200
Tank/Rocket HWP 480000 8 rounds
HWP Rocket HWP Ammo 3000
Pistol Weapon 800 20 rd/clip
Pistol Clip Ammo 70
Rifle Weapon 3000 25 rd/clip
Rifle Clip Ammo 200
Heavy Cannon Weapon 6400 6 rd/clip
HC-AP Ammo 300
HC-HE Ammo 500
HC-I Ammo 400
Auto Cannon Weapon 13500 14 rd/clip
AC-AP Ammo 500
AC-HE Ammo 700
AC-I Ammo 650
Rocket Launcher Weapon 4000
Small Rocket Ammo 600
Large Rocket Ammo 900
Incendiary Rocket Ammo 1200
Grenade Weapon 300
Smoke Grenade Weapon 150
Proximity Grenade Weapon 500
High Explosive Weapon 1500
Stun Rod Weapon 1260
ElectroFlare Equipment 60



4.8 STUFF THAT MUST BE RESEARCHED AND MANUFACTURERED

See 5.4 for profitability study of these items. Keep in mind
that UFO:Enemy Unknown may have different prices.

Engineer Workshop Alien Sale
Hours Cost Space Elerium Alloys Price
[Equipment]
Motion scanner 220 34k 4 - - 45600
Medikit 420 28k 4 - - 46500
Mind probe 1200 262k 4 1 - 334000
Psi amp 500 160k 4 1 - 194700
[Armor]
Personal armor 800 22k 12 - 4 140000
Power suit 1000 42k 16 5 5 310000
Flying suit 1400 58k 16 16 5 420000
[HWP]
Tank/laser 1200 500k 25 - - ?
Hovertank/plasma 1200 850k 30 30 5 980000
Hovertank/launcher 1400 900k 30 25 8 1043000
HWP fusion bomb 400 15k 25 5 8 31500
[weapons]
Laser pistol 300 8k 2 - - 20000
Laser rifle 400 20k 3 - - 36900
Heavy laser 700 32k 4 - - 61000
Plasma pistol 600 56k 3 - 1 84000
Plasma pistol clip 60 2k 4 1 - 4440
Plasma rifle 820 88k 4 - 1 126500
Plasma rifle clip 80 3k 4 2 - 6290
Heavy plasma 1000 122k 4 - 1 171600
Heavy plasma clip 80 6k 4 3 - 9590
Blaster launcher 1200 90k 5 - 1 144000
Blaster bomb 220 8k 3 3 - 17028
Small launcher 900 78k 3 - 1 120000
Stun bomb 200 7k 2 1 - 15200
Alien grenade 200 6.7k 2 2 - 14850
[Crafts]
FIRESTORM 14000 400k 30 - 65 -*
LIGHTNING 18000 600k 34 - 85 -*
AVENGER 34000 900k 36 - 120 -**
[Craft Weapons]
Laser cannon 300 182k 6 - - 211000
Plasma beam 500 226k 8 15 - 267300
Fusion ball launcher 400 242k 6 - - 281100
Fusion ball 600 28k 6 4 - 53300
[Misc]
Alien alloys 100 3k 10 - - 6500
Elerium-115 - - - - - 5000***
UFO power source 1400 130k 22 16 5 250000
UFO navigation 1600 150k 18 - 3 80000

* needs 1 UFO power source + 1 UFO navigation
** needs 2 UFO power sources + 1 UFO navigation
*** Elerium can ONLY be captured as parts of UFO or base,
which makes it extremely valuable, so NEVER sell or waste
any of it


5 Finance


5.1 WHAT REALLY EATS UP MONEY AT XCOM?

Maintenance, and salary. If you have 100 scientists, their
monthly salary is $6 million (!). Add that to your bases (the
BARE MINIMUM radar base costs over $1 million a month to
maintain!), and you will go broke pretty quick.

Sponsors' money barely makes a dent in your expenses, as they
only pay you a few million, probably not even enough for base
maintenance.


5.2 HOW DO I EARN MORE MONEY?

Three (real) ways to make money in XCOM:

Make your sponsoring countries happy -- so they will increase
their payments. Unfortunately, they don't pay much to start
with, and their increase is just enough to sneeze at. Their
payments may be enough to buy some ammo and stuff, but don't
expect much of an increase.

Manufacture arms for sale -- 5.4 shows you what to make to really
make money, but usually you need the weapons and other stuff for
yourself, so that leaves us to:

Sell captured/surplus equipment -- most of your money will be
made this way. Dump off all your obsolete equipment (pistols,
rifles, etc) and surplus and you will get LOTS of money. You
will usually end with plenty of surplus heavy plasma, and those
fetch very good prices on the market. :-) Doing this also means
you need less storage space (and less maintenance) and more
"real" weapons on base defense (due to the 80 item limit)

Keep only one item of each type for research, sell the rest,
unless you need it for building something else. You need the
money and the space for more useful stuff. After you have
researched the dead bodies, sell them all. Yes, there's a market
for those.

As a last resort, you can always cheat. See the last section for
how.

Oh, and NEVER EVER sell Elerium unless you have a SERIOUS
surplus. Those are pretty hard to come by.


5.3 HOW DO I CUT EXPENSES?

In general, there are three ways without using "exploits" (tricks
that exploit bugs in the program)

* Cut Maintenance -- dismantle any unused facility (see 5.6)

* Build your own crafts -- Skyrangers and Interceptors have a
monthly rental fee, your own crafts do not. Of course, this
means you have to research UFO construction and things, and have
enough Elerium to run them.

* Minimize salary -- Hire just enough people to do the job, and
fire those you don't need.

If you want to use an exploit, use the salary transfer trick!
(see 5.5)


5.4 WHAT DO I MANUFACTURE TO MAKE MORE MONEY?

X-COM Profitability study -- by Jeff Shaffer [edited]

Recently, we at the XCOM Business Institute (our motto: "If it's
worth doing, it's worth analyzing to death") spent all last night
to bring you the following table. The basic assumption is that
you are willing to support engineers long-term in order to make a
profit. I calculated results for a hypothetical 2 workshop
operation. You would get slightly better results with larger
facilities, due to the economy of scale.

[some numbers are rounded to the nearest 1000 for space]

Work Eng Raw Sale Unit|Monthly|Net
Item Space Hrs Material Cost Price P R O F I T
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Motion Scanner 4 220 - 34K 45K 11K 3765K 1275K
Medikit 4 420 - 28K 46K 18K 3146K 656K
Psi Amp 4 500 1E 160K 194K 29K 4242K 1752K
Personal Armor 12 800 4A 22K 54K 6K 491K -
Power Suit 16 1000 5E+5A 42K 85K - - -
Flying Suit 16 1400 16E+5A 58K 115K - - -
Alien Alloys 10 100 - 3K 6K 3K 2343K 3K
Elerium 115 - - - - 5K - - -
Laser Pistol 2 300 - 8K 20K 12K 2916K 376K
Laser Rifle 3 400 - 2K0 36K 16K 3049K 534K
Heavy Laser 4 700 - 32K 61K 29K 2958K 468K
Plasma Pistol 3 600 1A 56K 84K 21K 2586K 71K
Plasma Pistol Clip 4 60 1E 2K 4K - - -
Plasma Rifle 4 820 1A 88K 126K 32K 2787K 297K
Plasma Rifle Clip 4 80 2E 3K 6K - - -
Heavy Plasma 4 1000 1A 122K 171K 43K 3078K 588K
Heavy Plasma Clip 4 80 3E 6K 9K - - -
Blaster Launcher 5 1200 1A 9K0 144K 47K 2797K 332K
Blaster Bomb 3 220 3E 8K 17K - - -
Small Launcher 3 900 1A 78K 120K 35K 2846K 331K
Stun Bomb 2 200 1E 7K 15K 3K 1166K -
Alien Grenade 2 200 2E 6K 14K - - -
Mind Probe 4 1200 1E 262K 304K 37K 2202K -
UFO Power Source 22 1400 16E+5A 130K 250K 7K 310K -
UFO Navigation 18 1600 3A 150K 80K - - -
Fusion Ball L'cher 6 400 1A 242K 281K 39K 6836K 4396K
Fusion Ball 6 600 4E 28K 53K 5K 617K -
Laser Cannon 6 300 - 182K 211K 29K 6760K 4320K
Plasma Beam 8 500 15E 226K 267K - - -
Tank/Laser Cannon 25 1200 - 500K 594K 94K 4371K 2406K
Hovertank/Plasma 30 1200 30E+5A 850K 980K - - -
Hovertank/Launcher30 1400 25E+8A 900K 1043K - - -
HWP Fusion Bomb 25 400 5E+8A 15K 31K - - -


First six columns are just basic information from my version of
XCOM. (Editor-- I have seen posts stating that UFO:EU has higher
sale prices for some items, notably armor! However, this has NOT
been confirmed!)

The 'Unit Profit' column is sale price minus cost, minus the cost
of any E-115/Alloy used in manufacture. A '-' means a net loss,
no further analysis.

'Monthly Profit' column is based on "XCOM Month" of 24*31 = 744
hours. The calculation is number of engineers that fit in two
workshops times 744 times unit profit, divided by the hours
required to make one item. For example, the monthly profit for
Motion Scanners is 96*744*11600/220 = 1275993 (1275K).

The 'Net Profit' column is the bottom line. Monthly expenses are
the salaries of as many engineers as fit in the workshops times
$50K, plus the maintenance on 2 workshops and 2 living quarters.

As you can see, Fusion Ball Launchers are the winner, narrowly
edging out Laser Cannons. A profit can be made early in the game