New UFO Type: Recovery Ship

[MKSheppard]

In the mIRC chat, we were talking; and Warboy mentioned that UFO crash site length is variable -- with the code being roughly:

RNG::generate(24, 96)*3600

Which is somewhere between 1-4 days.

My idea was this:

If you arrive in the last 20-15% of the RNG generated for an UFO crash site; you run into a special battle type -- the aliens have landed a RECOVERY SHIP -- I'd imagine it to be a slightly modified SUPPLY SHIP, with emphasis on having a lot of medical type equipment -- Luke83 has done some of the artwork for this (see attached photo); and lots of open space full of random piles of alien equipment -- such as melted down ingots of alien alloy from the hull of the ship being recovered.

An even crazier alternate is to have the RECOVERY SHIP be absolutely huge -- huge enough to have the UFO being recovered sit inside a huge hangar bay inside the recovery ship.

This comes from the line of thought I had regarding UFO recoveries -- the aliens have a few choices open to them:

First is to fix the UFO up enough to have it slowly fly off -- feasible for multi-engine ships

Second is to cut apart the UFO into pieces if it's too badly damaged (all power sources blowed up); like with smaller ships -- basically junkyard stripping it and crushing it into a cube.

Third is to obliterate the entire crash site with a UFO laser -- I'd imagine unfeasible for any of the larger ships; plus the huge flash of light and explosion would attract attention from human authorities.

Fourth is to pick up the damaged unflyable ship with a bigger UFO

[Hobbit Lord]

An even crazier alternate is to have the RECOVERY SHIP be absolutely huge -- huge enough to have the UFO being recovered sit inside a huge hangar bay inside the recovery ship.

This comes from the line of thought I had regarding UFO recoveries -- the aliens have a few choices open to them:

First is to fix the UFO up enough to have it slowly fly off -- feasible for multi-engine ships

Second is to cut apart the UFO into pieces if it's too badly damaged (all power sources blowed up); like with smaller ships -- basically junkyard stripping it and crushing it into a cube.

Third is to obliterate the entire crash site with a UFO laser -- I'd imagine unfeasible for any of the larger ships; plus the huge flash of light and explosion would attract attention from human authorities.

Fourth is to pick up the damaged unflyable ship with a bigger UFO

Wow... love the idea of a gigantic mother repair ship

You think you're investigating a 'very small' UFO (one of those one or two sectoid ones) and run into something 4 stories high taking up half the map

[Shadow]

First is to fix the UFO up enough to have it slowly fly off -- feasible for multi-engine ships

Second is to cut apart the UFO into pieces if it's too badly damaged (all power sources blowed up); like with smaller ships -- basically junkyard stripping it and crushing it into a cube.

Third is to obliterate the entire crash site with a UFO laser -- I'd imagine unfeasible for any of the larger ships; plus the huge flash of light and explosion would attract attention from human authorities.

Fourth is to pick up the damaged unflyable ship with a bigger UFO

From my point of view, first of all, it's important to remain consistent with the game's design, any UFO targeting a crashed spacecraft like that should appear in the Geoscape and behave like any other UFO: following a mission (i.e. Alien Recovery). I see three viable options, chosen at random when the mission is generated, which require different types of UFOs:

1) Repairing the crashed craft would require a special Recovery UFO (I'd make it Medium size, since those are rather uncommon), which would swoop in from space, land on the same spot as the crash site and 'erase' it and take off after a few hours.
2) Salvaging the crashed UFO could require a Supply Ship (or something else, since those are prized targets to catch landed, and the mission could be exploited). If it were a Recovery UFO, this case would be no different than the previous one. This variant would take approximately the same time as 1), perhaps a bit more.
3) Obliterating the crash site would likely require something like a Terror Ship for medium-sized and smaller wrecks, and a Battleship for larger ones. The mission craft wouldn't land at all, and instead hover over the site for probably less than an hour, 'erase' it and fly out.

The fourth suggested case seems pointless to me, since a damaged, air-unworthy UFO would either be repaired or salvaged. Not to mention the fact I doubt the aliens would go through the trouble of dispatching a large UFO to haul away the average small/medium (the only kind I see being hauled) spacecraft. And at any rate it'd work like the third case, since the transporting craft probably wouldn't land to grab ahold of the target via tractor beam or whatever.

Finally, of course, the aliens would gain points whenever they successfully complete any form of this Alien Recovery mission.

[Hobbit Lord]

From my point of view, first of all, it's important to remain consistent with the game's design, any UFO targeting a crashed spacecraft like that should appear in the Geoscape and behave like any other UFO: following a mission (i.e. Alien Recovery). I see three viable options, chosen at random when the mission is generated, which require different types of UFOs:

1) Repairing the crashed craft would require a special Recovery UFO (I'd make it Medium size, since those are rather uncommon), which would swoop in from space, land on the same spot as the crash site and 'erase' it and take off after a few hours.
2) Salvaging the crashed UFO could require a Supply Ship (or something else, since those are prized targets to catch landed, and the mission could be exploited). If it were a Recovery UFO, this case would be no different than the previous one. This variant would take approximately the same time as 1), perhaps a bit more.
3) Obliterating the crash site would likely require something like a Terror Ship for medium-sized and smaller wrecks, and a Battleship for larger ones. The mission craft wouldn't land at all, and instead hover over the site for probably less than an hour, 'erase' it and fly out.

The fourth suggested case seems pointless to me, since a damaged, air-unworthy UFO would either be repaired or salvaged. Not to mention the fact I doubt the aliens would go through the trouble of dispatching a large UFO to haul away the average small/medium (the only kind I see being hauled) spacecraft. And at any rate it'd work like the third case, since the transporting craft probably wouldn't land to grab ahold of the target via tractor beam or whatever.

Finally, of course, the aliens would gain points whenever they successfully complete any form of this Alien Recovery mission.

Or mission #5

The UFO is going to take more time to recover. More likely to happen for larger UFOs than tiny ones. Anyway, the gigantic repair mothership is currently busy with something else

The aliens instead send a small UFO with a squad of Mutons (?) to protect the ship until it can be recovered

This small UFO if detected at all will hover around the crashed UFO for a few minutes and leave again so unless you saw it arrive you won't know they got reinforcements

X days later one of missions 1-4 occurs

[Arpia]

I don't think this recovery ship would need to be very big...

think about it, what's a ship made of? alloys, power core, navigations and some fuel.
everythings made out of alloys that can be manufactured from nothingness... aside from the elerium in the power core and any surviving crew, theres not much worth salvaging I'd assume. probably a lot quicker for a mid size ufo to recover the crew and 1-4 power cores and get out fast.