Captured Aliens still need food

[TopCat]

Imprisoned Aliens should need "Alien Food" to alive until interrogations.

In early game user will have to interrogate as fast as possible (before captured alien die ) later will have get enough AF in stores.

This will allow somehow use "Alien Food" in game.

[Arthanor]

That's an interesting idea. I don't think it is doable right not to require an item as food. There is no equivalent for soldiers either. It is possible however to make the Alien Containment unit require research, and have alien food as a prerequisite. That's what I did in my game.

Until you have something like one autopsy, researched alien habitat and researched alien food, you can't research alien incarceration, which will unlock the alien containment.

Once you get the recipe, it should not be overly difficult for a cook to prepare beef the alien way instead of making a steak for the soldiers. By opposition, some of the alien food that aliens have is human based, and I don't believe many would find it ethical to feed human based food to aliens. It is likely that they would rather dispose of it respectfully as human remains deserve (which brings the question of why you can sell alien food, but I guess it could represent rewards for recovering the remains of people who have been abducted..).

[Hobbes]

(which brings the question of why you can sell alien food, but I guess it could represent rewards for recovering the remains of people who have been abducted..).

I can imagine fast food chains would be very interested in getting containers that transform anything you put in them into hamburger...

[pilot00]

Actually it transforms them into a liquid that the aliens inject directly into their blood to get their nutrition (so sais the pedia).

I always believed that you sold this to universities and shady research and development corps that had no much on ethical grounds.

[moriarty]

actually, any device that can liquefy stuff (doesn't need to be humans or animals, you know) and produce a sterile liquid with precisely defined contents would be well sought-after by pharmaceutical companies... either for direct use or for reverse-engineering.

and even if you can only use it to liquefy animals and turn them into nutritional liquid, it would be very useful for intensive care medicine

[pilot00]

actually, any device that can liquefy stuff (doesn't need to be humans or animals, you know) and produce a sterile liquid with precisely defined contents would be well sought-after by pharmaceutical companies... either for direct use or for reverse-engineering.

and even if you can only use it to liquefy animals and turn them into nutritional liquid, it would be very useful for intensive care medicine

True, it kinda exists for many many years on our world too. Though they are not liguified animals but the liquid is artificially created.

[mrxian]

actually, any device that can liquefy stuff (doesn't need to be humans or animals, you know) and produce a sterile liquid with precisely defined contents would be well sought-after by pharmaceutical companies... either for direct use or for reverse-engineering.

Can't you do that with a blender and cooking the results?

[Solarius Scorch]

Can't you do that with a blender and cooking the results?

Some proteins will be destroyed by the heat. I don't know if these proteins are crucial for the aliens, some may be, for some races.

And I need to point out that some alien races do have digestive systems - it says explicitly on the Muton Ufopaedia page that they love eating raw meat.

[TKO]

I would not like to see this implemented if it required inventory management. You don't worry about food for your soldiers, or your scientists, so I don't think it should be a concern with the aliens.  (I think the level of inventory management is already complex, bordering on tedious. If I had designed UFO, I would have avoided inventory management for clips of ammunition for handheld weapons too - or at least partially automated it.)

I can see where you're coming from though, and it would certainly be more realistic. And I do like the idea that a captured Alien would starve to death if you were unable to provide it with food. It does add a degree of urgency to interrogation early in the game.

But once you do complete research on alien food, I don't think it should show up as an inventory item – certainly not one that you have to manage.  Feeding of the aliens is just taken care of in the background instead.

I look at it this way: my job in the game is to manage all military assets and inventory, and there is probably an administrator there who worries about food, toilet paper, weekend employee events at Disneyland, and stuff like that. :-) .. And, compared to a (huge) military budget, it's just not enough to be worth worrying about.  (Especially if we have a resident chef out back, quietly soylent-greening expired soldiers.)