UFO Recovery Values

Although Country Funding is the mainstay of X-COM's working budget, and manufacturing can be a great supplement to that, alien artefacts and UFO components recovered from UFO Ground Assaults are the greatest source of funds for commanders.

The following tables list values for fully-intact ships. If you attack ships while they are landed, you can recover most of the items listed below.

UFOs which have been shot down will usually have several destroyed components, especially UFO Power Sources and the Elerium-115 contained within them. Aliens which were standing near the power source(s) will often be killed. Their corpses and personal armament may or may not survive the blast.

Artefacts and UFO components can also be destroyed during the course of a mission, particularly by Explosions -- so use HE munitions and grenades sparingly inside UFOs if you want maximum salvage value.

Alien Armaments

Items which the aliens carry -- weapons, almost exclusively -- are identified as "Alien Artefacts" until you fully research them. They can still be sold at full price once you get them back to base.

In the first few months of the game, the aliens will be relatively lightly armed -- Plasma Pistols or Rifles. As time progresses, they will start sporting Small Launchers, Heavy Plasmas, and eventually Blaster Launchers. Within a few months, they will abandon pistols and rifles altogether, and most aliens will carry a Heavy Plasma.

Aliens on the smaller (scout) ships will also sometimes carry a Mind Probe, worth $304,000, the highest-priced alien artefact you will ever encounter. Since the UFOs you encounter in the first few months will mostly be scout ships, the value of alien artefacts (per alien) will remain relatively constant throughout the game.

Here are several item sets commonly found on aliens:

                                                          Total Value
Plasma Pistol + 2 Plasma Pistol Clips                       $92,880
Plasma Rifle + 2 Plasma Rifle Clips + 1 Alien Grenade      $153,930
Heavy Plasma + 2 Heavy Plasma Clips + 1 Alien Grenade      $205,630
Small Launcher + 3 Stun Bombs                              $165,600
Blaster Launcher + 4 Blaster Bombs                         $212,112

You will only recover ammunition clips if they have not been used. If you unload alien weapons before the battle ends, you can recover more clips (see Known_Bugs#Disappearing_Ammo).

Every alien corpse you recover is worth $20,000. Terror units have built-in weapons and will never carry artefacts, although their corpses are worth $20,000 as well.

In the tables below, the average value of each alien's armament is assumed to be about $180,000. The number of aliens found on each ship type varies; on higher difficulty settings, many more aliens will appear.

Small Scout

Item	Sell Price	Quantity	Value
Alien Alloys	$6,500	1	$6,500
Corpses	$20,000	1	$20,000
Alien Armament	$180,000	1	$180,000
Total			$206,500

TODO: all other ships

Terror Missions

When a Terror Mission has begun, there is no ship to recover: the Terror Ship will disgorge its aliens upon some hapless city and take straight off into space. Alien corpses and their armament can still be recovered.

X-COM Base Defense

As with Terror Missions, there is no ship to recover during a Base Defense mission: only corpses and armament can be recovered.

Alien Base Assaults

The loot available from alien bases is quite variable. Each base is randomly assembled from several standard modules, which may contain Alien Food, Alien Entertainment, and even UFO Power Sources (and Elerium).

Each base will also contain several hundred Alien Alloys, and many aliens, meaning lots of corpses and lots of armament.