How to handle laser rifle clips?

[zee_ra]

I have noticed that currently laser rifle clips are set to be disassembled for E-115 like their plasma counterparts.  I wonder, if that is an oversight, or a deliberate design decision.  Ideally, I would like to be able to convert clips (e.g. if I really love portable laser cannon / PLC, and would like to transform all of those Alien Laser Rifle clips into PLC clips).  I think that such conversion should be possible.  Question is, whether it needs to involve going through E-115 and then back, or perhaps the laser clips should be broken down into something like "laser clip components / pieces".  What are your thoughts?

[Juku121]

AFAIK, it's deliberate. Alien and alien-derived lasers are powered by Elerium. Or, more accurately, are using Elerium as an energy storage medium.

IMO, making an extra item will do nothing useful, since you still have to disassemble and then manufacture the PLC ammo. And 'realism' would say that 'laser rifle clip parts' are not the same as 'laser cannon clip parts', especially since one is of X-Com manufacture and the other is made by shadowy orgs or perhaps even the aliens themselves. So there'd be another extra step.

One could, of course, make a submod that directly converts Elerium-based clips of one type to another, similar to the streamlined armour-manufacturing submods of Piratez.

[zee_ra]

AFAIK, it's deliberate. Alien and alien-derived lasers are powered by Elerium. Or, more accurately, are using Elerium as an energy storage medium.

IMO, making an extra item will do nothing useful, since you still have to disassemble and then manufacture the PLC ammo. And 'realism' would say that 'laser rifle clip parts' are not the same as 'laser cannon clip parts', especially since one is of X-Com manufacture and the other is made by shadowy orgs or perhaps even the aliens themselves. So there'd be another extra step.

One could, of course, make a submod that directly converts Elerium-based clips of one type to another, similar to the armour-manufacturing submods of Piratez.

I think all lasers are powered by elerium-based power sources.  Check out the manufacturing specs for clips of MiB laser weapons at https://xcf.trigramreactor.net/.  They all require elerium to produce.

Given the latter point, why is it not extractable?

The rationale behind "parts" approach would be that the extracted part is a certain substance which is used for energy storage and includes elerium, or was produced with the aid of elerium.

[Juku121]

Given the latter point, why is it not extractable?

Ah, I see, so the issue is why these clips cannot be disassembled? No idea, might be just that Solarius never thought about this, or maybe there's some hidden lore explanation, like MiB batteries being of inferior manufacture (maybe deliberately, alien collaborators are kept on a short leash by their ET overlords? ) and the Elerium gets destroyed during disassembly.

The rationale behind "parts" approach would be that the extracted part is a certain substance which is used for energy storage and includes elerium, or was produced with the aid of elerium.

IMO, this is still extra bookkeeping for no appreciable gain except perhaps 'realism'. Keep it to just Elerium, like everything else.

[zee_ra]

Ah, I see, so the issue is why these clips cannot be disassembled? No idea, might be just that Solarius never thought about this, or maybe there's some hidden lore explanation, like MiB batteries being of inferior manufacture (maybe deliberately, alien collaborators are kept on a short leash by their ET overlords? ) and the Elerium gets destroyed during disassembly.
IMO, this is still extra bookkeeping for no appreciable gain except perhaps 'realism'. Keep it to just Elerium, like everything else.

I think, the disasembly of sonic weapons for Zrbite has been also a relatively recent addition.  So, the more likely case here is that the laser clips were not accounted for the purpose of disassembly.