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I think @Sheepy said it best here, the random drops should be only for creating attachments to your weapons, armor upgrades, specialized weapons but nothing more than that. Most baseline weapons should only be crafted with Alenium and Alien Alloys. That will make a game session more varied and replayable as the drops are entirely random. Some more active examples: - Combat stimulants: give a soldier back 50% of his/her APs back for a 20% loss in health. Can only be crafted with Sebilian Serums. - Mind Jogger: a taser-like weapon that can cure mind control, single use only. Can only be made with a Neural Mapper. - Escape grenade: can be used with only a tiny amount of APs, let a soldier teleport to a random point on the map to escape danger. Can only be crafted with Intact Wraith Glands. - Heat bayonet: an attachment for your gun, a handy melee weapon when an enemy surprise you from a corner and you don’t have enough APs to switch to a shotgun. Can only be crafted with a Vibro Heater. - Air stabilizer: an upgrade to your Jetpack armor, allow your soldiers to shoot while hovering. Can only be crafted with Quantum Gyroscope. - Chameleon field: an upgrade to your armor, make you invisible for a single turn in a battle (I.e. cannot be shoot at by aliens in overwatch). Can only be crafted using Nanothread and a Ceasan Psychic Enhancer. This combined with regional/factional missions (to do favors for certain countries), could create a choice for the player to support certain regions based on the drops they give you as a reward and the exclusive weapons that needs those drops to be made.

After I received Project Update #30 I felt I needed to come here and post my opinion. Most notably due to the remark that there was not many places to go after the first game. I find this to be rather limited in thinking. While I am not promoting a "Terror from the Deep" scenario, there are places to go after defeating the alien invasion story and game-wise. Imagine if you will... The first Alien war is over. The Xenonauts have successfully repelled the alien invasion and Earth is safe once more, but the world has changed. In the aftermath of the invasion countries now have alien inspired tech and resources. The world moves forward into a new era of development with this new technology. Though unable to replicate the Alloys or Alenium, there is enough supply that new tech is supplied to the civilian sector. New power sources are brought online and fossil fuels run out. The peoples of the world become dependent now on the alien tech that brought them destruction at the hands of the aliens. Alas, though plentiful, supplies are limited. The Xenonauts are now tasked with using this alien technology to go beyond Earth, to go beyond our solar system and locate and find more resources before Earth's dependency on alien materials causes it to wither and decay. Moon bases and the colonization of Mars begins in earnest, stepping stones to the grand plan. From here the Xenonauts spread out to the galaxy searching for the right resources needed to keep Earth alive and well. Outposts are built outside our solar system, even the beginnings of colonization of other worlds. The Xenonauts had reached its golden age and funding was near unlimited, but nothing lasts forever, not even Alenium. The rare power source is overused and suddenly begins to run out. The only short supply left is in the hands of governments and the Xenonauts. Citizens begin to rebel as the world collapses and runs out of power Countries fall into chaos and governments begin to blame the Xenonauts for their lack of progress. Funding is cut short which slows progress even further and the world begins to collapse. The Xenonauts lose connection with their ships and outposts beyond Earth. Without supplies from Earth, Mars becomes a barren wasteland once more and all contact with the colonies beyond Earth is lost. The second Dark Age has descended. But beyond the veil of darkness, the Xenonauts have succeeded in their mission. A source of Alenium and Alloy is discovered and quickly they begin to extract the materials for the return trip home. Unfortunately for them, their mining efforts do not go unnoticed. Alien ships of unknown origin begin to decimate the Xenonaut forces. With superior technology, the aliens nearly wipe out the Xenonauts except for one ship that flees back to Earth to warn them. Something was coming. And with that flight, they have lead the enemy straight back to a devastated Earth. The last and only force capable of fighting off this new invasion is the now skeleton crew of Xenonauts... Ok so the point is, there IS a place that a sequel could go and its not limited. It does not have to be a direct sequel after the first or on an Earth we see today, using tech from before the fall (ie Xenonauts 2) against an enemy far more powerful than the last alien invasion. The distance to Earth is the reason the invasion starts out slow at first as supply lines are stretched. Or even set the invasion in space (aka Interceptor story-wise). There is room for more Xenonauts beyond just rehashing the same invasion again and again. Sure the same mechanics could be used in a new game but the story itself could change and by doing so change the feel of the game itself not just in game play but context itself. I'm not a developer or game builder. I do not know what goes into game design, but I know a story will give any game potential. There is, in my opinion, so much more that could be done with a game of this sort. All you need is a good story and you have a point at which to start.

I've no doubt that Chris's vision on the component drop is focused on the... fun aspect from the random mechanic, for lack of a better term. It's just that the suggested mechanics, and some of the suggested solutions, may have unintended side effects. A variation I can think of is make the total rare drop rate to be 100%, but the drop remains random. The ufo commander may drop a Nanothread that makes one lighter armour, an Organic Weave that makes one regenerative armour, a Particle Accelerator that makes one longer range weapon, or a set of Metamaterial Lens that makes an addon for bonus sight range. When drop rate is 100%, the power curve is stable and non-random, but players can and should slightly adjust loadout or tactic with the item acquired. It is lots of effort, of course. To keep it interesting, most players should not get most items on the first run, or even second run. That means many items with many skins. The 100% drop when stunned is another approach, that give a strong reason to take the risk to subdue the aliens. Some players will use this to their advantage, perhaps getting double or triple rare loot than designed, which limits the advantage (and some of the fun) they can give. (When 100% stunned = 1 loot, 10% stunned = 0.37 loot, 50% stunned = 0.65 loot at 30% baseline.) Finite armoury have been a part of every game that let players to manufacture or upgrade individual items. I see no way around it, but XCOM 2 lighten this burden by upgrading all baseline weapons, so that inventory management is focused on the variable (random) part. X1 also lightened it somewhat by automatically upgrading all explosives, which I appreciated. Regardless of the details, a 100% good thing that can be done is make it optional, like the various start options in xcom 2, if X2 doesn't already have them. Building an option screen and remembering the options takes some dev time, but they can be reused for other options, and can potentially be expanded by mods. It is relatively cheap to do during development, but near/after release the cost will escalate, and the chance of it ever happening diminish quickly.

The escort idea I think has merit as it would allow the fighter to engage the UFO, and the transport to make a get away.

Yeah, I certainly see how that could work for rare UFO spawn items - but I was more thinking of the basic items when I said it might not work very well. It's plausible you'd know if a UFO has a special shield generator on it or something but it's rather less plausible for you to know in advance than 3 of the 10 plasma weapons aboard would have functional Beam Emitters when recovered. I guess I could take a leaf from the XCOM playbook and have it so that stunned aliens have a 100% chance of dropping recoverable items, whereas aliens you kill only drop it 30% of the time or something? Might make stunning aliens a bit more rewarding given it's much more dangerous than simply killing them. I quite like that idea, actually - gives the player a way to mitigate randomness through good play, but as you'd probably only ever need a max of say 20 Beam Emitters (or whatever) there'd be minimal advantages to farming the same type of UFO over and over with stun weapons.