I’ve spoken with 2 Iraq and Afghanistan vets I work with and they reported that when an area was secured, all weapons, ammo, even empty clips were collected. They left nothing for the enemy to come back for.
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Simple solution.
If a mission is something along the lines “go somwehere and wipe all opposition” then ALL loot should be collected. We killed all opposition and we are an essentially guerilla organization so as we have time why leave anything that can be used to help us ? We have time. We aren’t on a mission on foot. We have a transporter. There aren’t tonnes of loot. Some weapons, some ammo, some corpses for our scientists. If a transport ship can carry an armored vehicle it can carry 100-200 kg of loot.
Is a mission is something like “hold on and don’t die until evacuation comes” then we get what our soldiers are having on them and the rest is left behind. We don’t have time to search corpses. We must get out to save ourselves.
Is this so hard to concieve ?
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Agreed but I’d change a little.
If you merely survive 5 turns you don’t auto loot, but if you manage to kill all enemies within the 5 turns (which on occasion is possible) you still get to take their stuff.
Agreed.
Any mission where you clear the map should autoloot everything. The player earned that loot fair and square, and shouldn’t be penalized for playing well.
Keep in mind that in some missions (such as Haven defense missions) - you’re there in someone else’s base to help them defend. The items on the map technically belongs to them. The Phoenix Project wouldn’t normally loot and pillage their allies base after helping with a defense.
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That is quite interesting! Looks like that I never met this one bug only - my soldiers always regularly collect all loot when there is something to collect (loot boxes and human weapons from the enemy). Offensive exceptions happen on the most difficult and costly missions to clean the lairs - there is always zero loot if there are no newts.
Oh I remembered one exception when weapons from enemies are lost - if the mission loading has stalled and ! have to use ‘win’ through the console. It looks as if the loot data does not get their turn to load. If I wanted to get it, I had to use earlier saves.
The haven point you made sounds logical but there’s still scavenging missions, surviving ambushes by clearing the map and maybe all the enemies you kill during a nest/lair etc raid because it says the creatures flee after the mission is completed.
And the point you made is about allies bases, what about factions you’re not on friendly terms with but still do the defense mission?
It could be a bug, and I’ve flagged it. The game should make it clear under what circumstances looting is done automatically.
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It is a good point, but the fact still remains that from a practical game play perspective you’re requiring (and allowing) the player to engage in some rather cheesy game play to work around it. And it’s not a one off mission, this is going to form a large percentage of the game play experience.
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I would like to have a possibility to sell mutant-points (to Anu for example, or to Syn for research) - because it’s funny to capture aliens alive and it might be an extra income! 
Conversely, would you begrudge the allies who just risked their lives to save you a little salvage?
Surely some middle ground exists between thematic storytelling and Quality of Life streamlining.
You could show the loot available at the end of the game by value or weight and then allow the player to choose a percentage of that loot, with the percentage varying based on how good of a relationship they have with the faction that they’ve just helped.
If taking stuff from the faction’s storage is considered taking their stuff, shouldn’t they essentially treat it as raid in the time of crisis rather then help in defending their turf? Especially if they don’t need help?
Could be an option
You can defend and raid which doesn’t give faction relations but does allow you to take things. Or you can Defend and protect which does increase faction relations.
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What I have in mind is a more sophisticated way of calculating relation change with said faction after heaven defence.
It is not something Snapshot haven’t considered. I recently listend to facebook Q&A with Mr. Gollop from January2018, and one of things there he mentioned is how open ended missions are to be. Example he gave was heaven defence where you could defend them, and gain positive reputation, or you could use this opportunity to steal their stuff and loose rep. It might also be possible they would forgive your transgresions if you did well enough defending the heaven. In other words, things you do have consequences, but weren’t to be set in stone rewards.
What this asks for is a more nuanced system:
- your reputation gain should scale depending how much the heaven needs help (the worse their odds, the more appreciable they would for your help)
- every item you steal should act as negative modifier to reputation change.
- game should track your involvement in battle. (aliens killed?) If there will be faction defendants in final game it might work, as if you are busy looting, instead of killing, and aliens are on disadvantage, faction might deal with enemies while you are busy looting, granting you negative rep but not a postive one.
- if system from point 3) works well, artificial modifier mentioned in poin 1) might not even be necessary, as comparitive force of faction soldiers vs alien enemies might scale positive reputation gain automatically - the more effectively faction defends, less work you do, and therefore you gain less rep.
- any more nuanced system like that would need a detailed result breakdown at the end of the mission.
It is not impossible that something like that is already to be implimented. Something to that effect was discussed in QA I mentioned. In BB5 those strategic decisions weren’t working well.
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Have to put my 2 cents in on this matter. I too think there should be auto looting. It makes sense to me. If I killed a area out, I’m taking everything.
In haven defense missions, some differentiation could be made between loot dropped by allies and loot dropped by the enemy. It shouldn’t be an issue to take enemy loot, and as Wolff_Laarcen said, surely your allies wouldn’t begrudge you that for saving their skins?
I’m guessing that objects on the tactical map don’t have an attribute for their previous owner?
@UnstableVoltage: Thanks for flagging this issue.
Having just watched an episode of Retcon Raider on YouTube I want to support the auto-loot feature in case this is not a bug. Consider looting the battlefield as a reward for winning. To me being forced to manually loot is a punishment for playing.
Remember the UFO: After series? The one that everyone said was too “basic”, “sucked”, and “didn’t have enough features?”
They handled this.
Do we still have a situation where turrets are left behind on the map at the end of missions if you don’t pick them up?
I’m wondering whether that issue is linked with this - the game just doesn’t have the feature to recognises what’s still on the map at the end of a battle.