How does looting work?

[Vae Victis]

Hello,

I'm playing v2.6 and I've noticed an odd thing about loot from aliens. When I win a mission I always get the alien corpses and armor, but not the alien weapons. To get the weapons I must personally collect them during battle. However, I've noticed that on missions where the loot-collecting soldiers were killed the items that they've picked up were still taken to the base (which particularly odd since those soldiers' personal armor was not returned to storage).

So how does looting work? Can I go about picking up alien weapons, immediately drop that weapon on the ground and take a different one and it'll still count as looted? Or do the soldiers have to carry it all? And why can't successful missions be auto-looted completely?

[Noordung]

If game dont auto collect all weapons after mission there is a bug. But you have to research alien weapons if you want to use it. Did you research them? At least one alien weapon have to be in base where you are researching.
Also post screen of battle results. You can see there how many alien weapons were collected.

[anonymissimus]

No items except corpses are always collected I think. Armor seems to have lower chance to be "destroyed", ammunition seems to have higher, or maybe a deterministic destruction rule, depending on whether it's partly used. Unused ammunition seems to be as likely to lie on the ground as weapons. And it seems to be the same for items a solder carried or an alien. Which is why I shouldn't equip  cannon fodder soldiers with too many or expensive items and kill aliens without them using their ammunition, for maximizing the economic battle gain.

[geever]

No items except corpses are always collected I think.

You are wrong.

I always get the alien corpses and armor, but not the alien weapons.

Could you describe the situation a bit better. Which items you expected to get and what you got?

As Noordung said, if the items are not collected there could be a bug. Probably we'll need to add some extra logging to collect more info and understand where, if the items are lost.

...those soldiers' personal armor was not returned to storage).

Dead soldiers are buried in their armor, that is by design.

-geever

[anonymissimus]

You are wrong.

Please explain. Unless you want to state that corpses are also not always collected.

What I said above is what I witness. It can of course differ from the expected behavior.

Dead soldiers are buried in their armor, that is by design.

Definitely not what happens. The armor comes back most of the time, but not always.
Fortunately, since until late in the campaign, the nanocomp armor is very valuable.

[geever]

Please explain. Unless you want to state that corpses are also not always collected.

What I said above is what I witness. It can of course differ from the expected behavior.Definitely not what happens.

The way you described it suggested that there is some sort of a "chance to get destroyed" mechanism. This is not the case.

-geever

[Vae Victis]

Thanks for the prompt replies, everyone!

I've researched all the alien weapons that I've encountered so far. The weapon that most often isn't looted is the Plasma Rifle. If all weapons are supposed to be auto-looted then it may be because I leave the aliens with Plasma Rifles for last.
Anyway, I'll keep a close eye on the stored vs looted equipment and will attach a log file if when I see the bug occurring again.

[DarkRain]

I just thought of two things:

One: do you have auto-sell (the small lock icon between the buy and sell buttons) enabled for those items? If you do, your loot is being sold upon the arrival of your dropship.

Two: Do you often do more than one mission in a row (without returning to base between them)? if so you'll have noticed that soldiers seem to resupply mid-flight (known bug) and I don't know how well that plays with looted items.

[geever]

Two: Do you often do more than one mission in a row (without returning to base between them)? if so you'll have noticed that soldiers seem to resupply mid-flight (known bug) and I don't know how well that plays with looted items.

The loot should still be collected, but there could be limitations (fixed size arrays). However I don't think that this is the case.

-geever