Modding unloaded vehicle weapons

[karadoc]

tl;dr version: Is there a way to mod the game so that weapons on vehicles are not loaded with ammunition when you buy them?

 

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I only recently learnt, on these forums, that some vehicles can be sold for more money than you pay for them. Apparently it is well known that one can make a significant profit by buying stormdogs, removing the equipment from them, and then reselling all the pieces.

 

Anyway, I figure that since I've got my own mod and I don't like that kind of cheap gimmick strategy I might as well just fix it... but that's easier said than done. Raising the price of the vehicles does nothing, because the selling price is based on the same number as the buying price. The problem turns out the be that when a gun is removed from the vehicle the value of the gun is subtracted but not the value of the ammunition. So when you buy the vehicle and then sell it and its gun separately, you get exactly the same amount of money back, but you get left with a pile of ammunition that you can sell for a profit...

 

Ok, so my first idea was to remove the gun from all these vehicles - so when you buy a ship all you get is the ship itself and an engine - guns to be bought separately. That completely fixes the exploit, but it introduces a bigger problem: all the AI organisation that use those ships now have no weapons! They apparently don't know how to arm their own vehicles. Another option is to only equip guns that don't use ammo.. but I don't really want to mess with the power of the AI ships, and I don't want every single AI ship to be firing nothing but lasers...

 

So, currently I can't solve the problem. But I can reduce the cost of ammunition and reduce the availability of most vehicles so that the exploit is less effective. What I really want though is a way to change it so that the weapons are not loaded when the vehicles are bought -- or, for the lost value of the ammunition to be taken into account when the vehicle is resold. Does anyone know how to do that?

 

I suppose it isn't really a big deal - I can't think of a good way to stop stun-raids either, and clearly I'm powerless to stop people from reloading a save whenever something goes wrong for them. So guess I'll probably just have to leave it up the will-power of the end user.

[NKF]

It's a glitch that happens in real life, unfortunately.

 

To put it in a different analogy, think of it like buying new PCs bundles - OEM software, extra memory, sound and video cards, peripherals, printers. They don't go for their standard retail value but you don't get all the extras that came with them. Some enterprising folks take the parts out they don't need and resell them onto others at close to or at retail price.

 

What would've solved this problem (to an extent) would have been to have X-COM expand its supply/demand market beyond simply adjusting the sale price +/- 50% and actually have a demand for so many of certain items. The infinite source of funds is what made cash a non-issue towards the later stages of the game once you've gathered surplus alien tech. This occurs in the three core games.

 

I don't know if it's possible, but how about adjusting the re-sell prices instead? It's the air-guard ammo that makes the real profit off the stormdogs. So rather than $4 - $8 per bullet, how about $2 - $4?

 

- NKF

[karadoc]

Unfortunately, the price for buying and selling is the same - otherwise I could just raise the buying price of the stormdog to be more than the ammunition cost above the selling price. So yeah, reducing the selling price of bullets is exactly what I did to reduce the power of the exploit; but it doesn't fix it completely unless I take it all the way down to zero, which would mean that bullets are free to buy...

 

There is a little bit of 'supply and demand' in the game... well, 'supply' anyway - if you sell a lot of something then the price goes down in the following week. I often build up a stockpile of alien tech and only start selling it at the start of a week to take advantage of this - to get the highest selling price for as much of the gear as I can.

 

As for the unlimited money thing.. yeah. that happens. But it gets to the point where there's nothing worth buying. The only stuff of value is the stuff you make yourself. I reckon that if the game balance is just right, then those things should kind of happen at the same time. It's a bit of a fantasy though, I suppose... hoverbikes with linage plasma cannons may not be great for the end-game, but they're better than nothing, and if you have unlimited money. ... It seems I've gone off topic and started to rant. Sorry about that.