Extract elerium from plasma clips?

[MadMelvin]

I've always thought it would be nice if you could direct your engineers to extract elerium from all those plasma clips you end up with. I never end up researching the smaller plasma weapons, because I know the ammo will become scarce. It might make the Plasma Rifle and Plasma Pistol more useful if you could build their ammo from spare Heavy Plasma clips.

It's easy enough to implement in the ruleset; I'm just trying to figure out the best way to do it without unbalancing the game. My thoughts:
- It should cost more $$ to extract 1 unit of elerium, than you can get by selling said unit on the market
- You can't get very much per clip; maybe it should take multiple clips to extract one elerium?

[kharille]

True, it would be good, especially since you've researched the clip. 

I think someone else suggested that elerium costs for plasma cannon should be higher.  I find that agreeable, though cumberosome.  But its realistic, 1 elerium 1 plasma pistol clip.  Yet it doesnt' cost much elerium to down a ufo with a plasmacannon blast.

[SupSuper]

I think someone already came up with this feature before, though I can't seem to find the thread for it.

[MadMelvin]

Was it this: https://github.com/SupSuper/OpenXcom/pull/341? Did anything ever come of it?

EDIT: That guy was suggesting there be actual code changes to allow the extraction of more than one elerium per clip. I don't think that's really the way to go. To avoid unbalancing the resource system, it should be an expensive, inconvenient process, only to be undertaken when absolutely necessary. It should be considered a "bad idea" in most circumstances. I played around with the ruleset a bit and came up with this:

- Only Heavy Plasma clips will contain enough elerium to get anything worthwhile. It takes 3 units to make a clip, but you'll only get 1 out.
- After researching the clip, you have to research the extraction process separately.
- It's expensive enough that you can't make elerium for profit.
- It should take a large amount of workshop space. Like, more than it takes to build a ship. The idea here is that this is a super-dangerous process, so everybody has to clear out of the workshop with the exception of maybe five or ten guys. If someone wanted to tackle the coding, it would be cool if there was a small chance for it to blow up, destroy your workshop, and kill a few engineers.