The downside of fusion ball launchers is that they require elerium to produce, whereas laser cannons don't. Having engineers manufacture laser cannons, will get you about $ 44000 per month net per engineer (i.e. sales profit minus monthly cost for an engineer). Keep in mind that laser cannons will need some storage space before you sell them.
Early in the game (before you've researched lasers) medikits are quite profitable as well.
But like Sharp said, missions can provide you with a LOT of money. Usually it doesn't take long to end up with more heavy plasmas than you'll ever need -> sell any new ones you loot for $ 171600 each... I usually don't sell any alien ammo, except maybe for plasma pistols and plasma rifles once I've got plenty of heavy plasma clips. Every downed ufo will also provide you with alien alloys and such, that pile up really quickly -> again, sell the rest.

Actually Fusion Ball Launchers only require one alien alloy to build, and as you said, they pile up rather quickly.

Motion Scanners are the most profitable early on as they sell for around the same price as the medikit but are manufactured almost twice as fast (although being more expensive to produce)

For making money by engineers you only need to manufacture three things.

1, Motion Scanners
2, Laser Cannons
3, Fusion Ball Launchers

But in overall value, nothing beats a raid on a supply ship or a Alien base as both give you lots of valuables, and they also increase your soldiers stats which is invaluable.

There is one rule, really, when selling: Don't sell the elerium!
A way to get a little money is to sell off some alien corpses. Once you get 30 sectoid corpses, you know you need to remove a few.

Actually most alien equipment is pretty valuable, as long as you always keep 1 for research, and don't sell the good weapons ;)

And even though everyone says "don't sell the Elerium" since it's not manufacturable, I often do. And as long as you keep nabbing those landed UFOs (specially supply ships), you'll have plenty.

Don't sell the Elerium, since it's not manufacturable ! :D
Sell all your equipment and go fight those aliens with your fists and your faith. If things get really desperate, you might consider throwing them a couple of flares ! :bleh:

One fun thing to do, dont research plasma rifle and pistol and clips respectivly, then rack up the points in picking up alien artifacts from the battle, cant do it with anything else but the rifle and pistol, everything else should be researched, although you might be able to go without the mind probe, and that sells quite nicely as well.

I never realized that, but I never researched plasma weaps anyways, cuz I weren't gonna use them anyways. and I allways sell all corpse, but I allways leave one from any race. and by raiding enemys u constantly get heavy plasmas(I had quite a pile of them) and when u sell them one costs 161 000, so it's no probelm gettin 4 000 000 dollars when u have 40 plasma rifles.

I always give my standard soldiers Heavy plasmas. It much better than hitting someone and then they dont die!!! Also the ammo is easy to get from missions so you dont have to waste time and stock making ammo. I sell the extra plasmas, alien bodies, and sometimes an engine or nav system (If I have to much) and manufacture some stuff (to sell).

I have 7 bases!!! and still have a big profit.
btw on harder difficulty the same sytem still works (just not as well)

By the way, something commonly known that I'd like to drag up again since we seem to be exchanging weapon and ammo tips: unload the ammo from any weapon that has been fired in combat (preferably weapons you've taken from aliens, you might want to keep your own weapons loaded during combat :D ) and you won't lose the ammo clip after the battle. Otherwise, even a clip that still contains 34 out of 35 rounds will be lost.

Sorry if this has already been covered in the previous 137 pages of posts, but has anyone gotten this game to run in DOSXbox? Yes, the xbox dosbox...