Selling civilian crafts

[Winderlies]

Is there any reason why civilian crafts cannot be sold after a successful combat mission besides balancing issues? It doesn't seem to make much sense to me that the gals would dismantle huge ships right down to its plasteel plates but simply leave perfectly functional civilian crafts lying around. Especially game-start, where you may be tight for cash.

At first, I thought that maybe the ship could be brought back to your base, somehow. Since the game, at least at the start, would detect that you do not have enough hangars (and your other ship is busy), it would prompt you to sell your newly acquired ship. Of course, that runs into the problem of you being able to gather a small fleet not soon afterwards (considering the obligatory nurse scoutings and base attack at the start).

If the ship cannot be brought back, then maybe it can be directly sold. Could the ship, somewhere in its tiles, contain the equivalent of its market price in cash chips? I recall the original game stored ellerium in the same tile as its functional engines, so you'd lose both if an explosive went off nearby. That makes sense, as theses little ships might be considered worthless if some piece of equipment inside of them stops working. The chips could be put in one of those tiles gals cannot get onto, like the control panel, and salvaged in post battle.

If neither turn out to not be possible, I guess the ship can be simply converted into scrap metal. The early scrap can be saved for a later project or immediately sold for a bit of cash. Either of these approaches would work, and might help you out in case you are needing to spread out the reward distribution in-game a bit more.

[Solarius Scorch]

These things, generally speaking, are technically possible... But also very time consuming for the modder. Also, probably a bitch to balance.

[ivandogovich]

The other perspective is this:  How are you taking these ships?  You are shooting down 95% of them.  Consider it lore that battle damage precludes selling them, so they have to be scrapped for parts, etc.

[alinare]

In the Alien Ufo Invasion, they imply that UFOs shot down, are stored in warehouses other than the base.

[khade]

At least the other Air Buses you probably followed and ambushed, so those at least should be functional still.  It might make things even harder, but full sell price for those you didn't shoot down, and scrap for those you shot down.  Of course you're dealing with fences, and the agreements favor them heavily, so you're still not getting a huge amount for the civilian vehicles.

As to looting the vehicles and keeping them, they're too recognizable, you need to send them through a fence and a chop shop, use the funds you got from selling them and you're effectively getting a decent discount.

[Dioxine]

Considered that, but if they were sellable, they would also have to be lootable (flight-capable), and then somebody asks why only these craft... fuck that.
Also you're getting $100k+ from one already.

[Martin]

Now, why not strap cloaking device on a humble runabout? It’s better than the basic battery crafts and no way the thing would not fit in the hangar.

[ohartenstein23]

Combination of engine limits, balance, and the reason Dioxine stated; if we can re-equip Runabouts, why wouldn't we also re-equip Cutters, or Gunships, or Bombers? It wouldn't make much sense to have one without being able to do more.

As for the engine limits and balance, you already get the ship engine, slave AI, plastasteel, and hellerium automatically from the tiles on the map; if a recovery item was added to allow rebuilding a Runabout from it, you'd be either effectively getting two ships worth of loot, or have to rebuild the ship from the parts, which would require the same tech level that allows for building ships better than Runabouts from similar parts. Recovering a landed Runabout to fly it again simply doesn't work in a balanced way this engine and mod, at least without a lot of extra work for little benefit.

[khade]

We do already get 100k from the airbuses?  Because that's where I'd put the price at.  And I can think of several reasons why the Gals won't use freshly looted vehicles:  They're too obvious without some very specific work, which our pirates aren't interested in doing, bad juju, seats are too small, ships are too big with too few seats, some idiot blew a massive hole in it, not trusted black boxes, high chance of viruses.

Only reason I can see for using shipping from any other group is false flag operations, and I've been assured that setting off wars between factions is not practical.

[Winderlies]

But I'm not talking about roundabouts or any other ships which could reasonably be confused as a ship which was in vanilla. I'm talking about the crafts which were specifically made for civilian use, like the airbus. They aren't made of components, or can even be destroyed, as far as I'm aware.

My main point of contention is that these ships are perfectly flight worthy, so they are probably worth something. Why would they be left behind at all to rot in the wilderness when you can sell them for cash or dismantle them into parts?

[ohartenstein23]

You do dismantle them into parts; the small ship engines are the 100k each that you loot from them.  The rest of the parts are just not worthwhile and by the time you have the technology to repair and re-equip one, you can get better craft.

[sinisteragent]

Yeah, I think if need be you can even consider the 'small engine' selling for 100k to be an abstraction. Maybe a few bits of scrap metal would come from it too, but even in the early game, sitting around a downed craft hacking away at it for long enough to get scrap wouldn't be worth the risk of discovery.

Pirates travel light, loot and scoot is the order of the day.

[BetaSpectre]

IMO without a cloak the vehicle will be tracked. Which will then lead to the aliens knowing who did it, and where they're coming from.

While they find out later, in this case it'll be so widespread and obvious.

Still the most valuable part is the engine so it's basically all you need. While it might make sense to get an old hull from some of these crafts.

[Ethereal_Medic]

Still the most valuable part is the engine so it's basically all you need. While it might make sense to get an old hull from some of these crafts.

I wonder how they would 'loot' a whole intact hull and squeeze it into a battery-fueled craft or very early dropship.

[Zharkov]

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