don't know when the original does it... will have to go check later
but I think we can safely assume that it was done at battlescape debriefing, because it's easy and convenient.
I still think that it could also be done when the transport craft arrives back at the base, though. it's just a matter of checking a previously saved equipment list against the actual content of the transport inventory AND the base inventory.
actually, for later modability, I would actually go one step further and propose something like this:
- when you send a transport craft to a battlescape mission, the game saves the inventory list of the transport craft.
- when the battle ends, the crash site remains, and the game saves the "inventory" of the crash site as well as the inventory of the transport craft: everything that's on the ground stays at the crash site, everything inside the transport and on the xcom soldiers goes in the transport.
- when the transport arrives back at the base, the actual inventory is checked against the previously saved list. anything on the transport that's "too much" goes into base storage. anything that's missing is replaced by corresponding base storage content. if there's nothing there, you get an error message.
- the stuff that's left at the crash site needs to be
picked up by a transport craft. for now, this can just happen automatically, but later I would like to see an option at the end of the battle to either "go home immediately" or "mop up". the latter would mean that the transport craft stays on site for, let's say, a few hours (might even be different amounts of time depending on the size of the UFO, the amount of stuff left and the number of operatives on your transport). after that time, the crash site inventory is transferred to the transport inventory, the transport leaves, the crash site disappears, everything else happens as above. of course, you could also send a
different transport to do the mopping up. ("hey jack, how are you doing? I heard you really screwed up on the last mission" "oh, fine, but I'm on the mop-up squad until the end of forever")
so basically I'm saying: I'd rather have it a bit more complicated right now to allow for cool modding later. I'm talking of aliens retaliating against mop-up squads and the like. I know that might be asking a bit much, but it would be sooooo cool
