Selling Acquired Alien Stuff

[Straker]

I never really liked how most of what alien equipment I get is automatically sold off. In the X-Com games I always held some stuff back, like heavy plasmas, to quickly equip my troops once the technology becomes available then sell the excess.

[anotherdevil]

you can't equip alien weapons, that's why it gets sold. You need to reverse engineer your own equivalents

[Straker]

I see. Is that in the alpha? Haven't come across it yet.

[anotherdevil]

is what in the alpha? reverse engineering your own equivalents? It is if you research laser weapons...

[Straker]

Didn't see that yet and I've researched all of the plasma stuff. Laser weapons are plasma equivalents?

[Sathra]

No, laser weapons are laser equivalents. They're required to be able to build plasma tech though (lasers are a 'first foray' into energy weapon tech).

You should have laser weapons researchable after finishing alien alloy fabrication, plasma technology and alien power source.

[Straker]

Oh, ok. I'm doing the last of those three techs now.

[BlackObsidian]

There is a bug that sometimes stops laser weapons appearing as a research option. Happened to me twice now

[Frothy_Mikhael]

I still think auto-selling is a terrible idea. Why can't I hold on to an alien plasma rifle in my base, even though I'm not able to research it yet? As soon as I research the pistol I can research the rifle, so it's annoying and pointless to deprive me of my captured rifle. I found that a very frustrating aspect of the game because it (a) takes control away from the player; (b) makes no sense... why sell your only copy of an artifact simply because you can't use it yet? You can't use the pistol either, but you keep it for research. Rifle should operate the same way.

[Sathra]

Actually its meant be be stored, and it does (from what I've seen). It just that the current build doesn't tell you that. The previous ones did though, its all a bit odd. It sells all captured copies of that item after you've captured one (again, it might not actually do this yet, but it should). Same thing should be happening with alien corpses, and to a lesser degree prisoners (after you research a live alien, only useful ranks of that race will be kept. The rest are killed and incinerated. Repeat for each race).

They just never go into 'Stores' because it'd end up getting cluttered with 1x items.

[BlackObsidian]

So perhaps captured tech that's not yet available for research should be displayed as greyed out on the research screen? At least that way you know you have one waiting for a pre-requisite to be researched.

[Straker]

Sounds good to me.

[anotherdevil]

sounds good to me too. Just don't forget this is still in Alpha

[Gauddlike]

Maybe the research lab should have its own stores type section then?

Or it could be an entry in the Xenopedia.

Just a simple little section that gives a list of recovered artefacts with basic info and any pre requisite research.

I am thinking along the lines of:

"Appears to be a heavy plasma type weapon, attempts to disassemble should be discouraged until more is known about plasma containment".

Or "A powerful alien grenade-like device, further investigation into alien explosives should be undertaken before examining more closely (or letting Sathra near it)".

[Straker]

I would like to know what is being held for research so I know something I haven't or can't research isn't being sold off.