History Main / NoRecycling

* A single exception in ''KingdomOfLoathing'': while normally you can't get back non-food ingredients of craftable consumables (casserole dishes, for example), anything cocktail crafted with a Tiny Plastic Sword will give it back when you drink it. Of course, it was originally a limited holiday item and is no longer obtainable except from another player, so this is understandable.

* Exception: In the 1998 remake of the arcade game ''Battlezone'', quite a bit of the game's resource management is based on recycling, since the unusual "bio-metal" that makes up most of the game's vehicles and structures is a rare commodity. Thus it can be salvaged from enemy forces as well as your own. One can even scrap an existing unit to transform it into something else. Since the bio-metal reserves in any level are finite, this gives a whole new sense to [[http://spring.clan-sy.com/wiki/Porcing porcing]] (aka {{Turtling}}). Make enough defensive turrets, arm them with cannons and guard your base tightly, and any attacking enemy unit you destroy will take precious resources away from the enemy and into your own reserves (after harvesting). Keep it up and you'll have a huge army while the enemy has too few resources to build anything much. Then smash his base to pieces.
* Another exception: In the RTS game ''TotalAnnihilation'', destroyed (and even active) units can be harvested for metal, one of the game's resources. Its spiritual successor ''VideoGame/SupremeCommander'' retains this mechanic.

** In one of the WoL missions, you can collect scrap metal from crashed ships to convert them into ressources.
* In Activision's ''Franchise/StarTrek'' [[RealTimeStrategy RTS]] series, ''Franchise/StarTrek: Armada'', ships and stations alike could be decommissioned, returning their entire worth in resources and any surviving crew to the player's resource pools.

* Averted in the [[RealTimeStrategy RTS]] ''CompanyOfHeroes'', in which the Germans may salvage the wrecks of destroyed tanks and deceased gun crews may be replaced.

* In ''HostileWaters'', salvaging debris from destroyed enemies is often your primary source of income. Your own units can also be recycled, but oddly enough, do not leave debris if destroyed.

* ''SinsOfASolarEmpire'' averts this, with a scuttle option that allows you to demolish a building for about 1/3rd the resources that it cost to make. In addition, there are some Vasari abilities that allow them to take debris and convert it to health or resources. An Advent Capital Ship can recycle dead CREWS (In effect, raising the level of a new capital ship to the level of a previous one).
* In the ''Army Men'' RTS all units, and much of the terrain, are made of plastic. When destroyed, almost everything left a smear of plastic on the ground, which could be retrieved and returned to your base to be turned into new soldiers, buildings and weapons.
* Obvious aversion: ''SuperEnergyApocalypse''. Not only was it partially possible (necessary, in fact) to retrieve wreckage from destroyed structures, you could also do the same thing with enemies. In fact, [[GreenAesop recycling and efficient resource extraction]] was kind of the point of the whole game...

* Exception in ''MachinesWiredForWar'': you can deconstruct buildings and recycle machines to regain part of their cost. Destroyed units leave behind debris that can be picked up by a special scavenger machine, although the debris disappears if not picked up within a short time.

* AnnoDomini: 2070 lets you regain some of the building materials when you demolish an unused structure, as long as there is room for it on the island. The percentage seems to vary by difficulty. Oddly enough, you can't sell ships, though. Any resources still in the building and the materials used to upgrade houses are lost though.

* Averted in ''UniverseAtWar'' where the Novus and Hierarchy fractions would use damaged war machines as resources. Played straight for the humans though.

* In ''FTLFasterThanLight'', when you destroy a ship, you can pick it apart for fuel, missiles, and the ship-materials itself, which takes the form as "Scrap", the game's currency. As a rule, you get much better rewards if you take the ship intact by killing all the enemy crew. Pretty much everything can be sold (that is, turned into more Scrap). However, deploying a Drone is played straight: If you deploy a Drone, and it's still intact at the end of a battle, you can't "un-deploy" it and bring it back inside. However, the "Drone Retrieval Arm" augment lets you do that.

** Bronze is a metal alloy consisting primarily of copper, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze usually with tin as the main additive, but sometimes with other elements such as phosphorus, manganese, aluminum, or silicon.]]

* Not quite a "building", but the Scavenger perk in the CallOfDuty games allows the player to recover expended ammo and grenades from the supplies of fallen soldiers, and anyone can pick up a dead soldier's weapon if theirs is running low.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}: DawnOfWar'' also had partial refunds on your own buildings that you disassembled.

* Rule of thumb in ''CommandAndConquer'' (yes, this is an aversion): All refunds are half the original production cost of the object in question. Buildings can be disassembled and sold for half of the original construction costs. If the game features a repair pad of some sort, vehicles can be sent there for a refund.
** ''Tiberian Dawn'' had [[GoodBadBugs an exploitable bug]] with a little bit of work involving sandbagging and infantry placement, you could sell ''them'' off, too, especially when you find your footmen too injured to carry on fighting.
** ''Red Alert 2'': Infantry can be sent to a Cloning Vats , refunding half of their original training cost. [[FateWorseThanDeath Best not think]] [[FridgeHorror about it too much]]. The mechanic for the refund wasn't foolproof, though: The Cloning Vats can be exploited to grant completely free infantry (you get a full refund for a freshly-trained soldier that you can't place, but the Cloning Vats still gives you a free clone of them), this can also be used to make infinite money.
** ''Red Alert 2: [[ColonCancer Yuri's]] [[ExpansionPack Revenge]]'': The Grinder is an independent break-off of the Cloning Vat's recycling feature, but this time, vehicles are also permitted for recycling. Electronic Arts had rectified the exploitable Cloning Vats bug at this point.

** ''Red Alert 3'': the Grinder Crane can, yes, grind units to refund a fraction of the price.
** ''Generals'': The Global Liberation Army has the innate ability to scavenge derelict land vehicles for cash or weapons.

* ''Battletech'': The Crescent Hawk's Inception had you salvaging weapons and armour (as well as credits) from vanquished foes, and in the case of defeated mechas, you sometimes had the choice of taking the entire unit, if you had someone who could actually pilot one and wasn't already using such a unit. This was almost always a bad idea, since any unit that you defeated was invariably damaged in either the engine, gyros or sensors, none of which could be fixed by any mechanic in the game.

** Likewise, in the original ''{{Mechwarrior}}'' game, one of the things that determined your salary from any given mission was dependent upon what percentage of the wreckage you wanted to claim for yourselves. The first ''{{Battletech}}'' game was similar, with wrecked mechs granting crucial materials for repairing your own, and otherwise giving parts to be sold (which translated into instantaneous money)

* Played straight in the ''TabletopGame/{{BattleTech}}'' core rules, which concern themselves solely with resolving one scenario at a time, but averted in campaign play, where repairs and battlefield salvage tend to play a major part in keeping a player's force functional. (This reflects the same common practices in-universe.)

* A single exception in ''KingdomOfLoathing'': while normally you can't get back non-food ingredients of craftable consumables (casserole dishes, for example), anything cocktail crafted with a Tiny Plastic Sword will give it back when you drink it. Of course, it was originally a limited holiday item is no longer obtainable except from another player, so this is understandable.

* A single exception in ''KingdomOfLoathing'': while normally you can't get back non-food ingredients of craftable consumables (casserole dishes, for example), anything cocktail crafted with a Tiny Plastic Sword will give it back when you drink it. Of course, it originally cost $10 and is no longer obtainable except from another player, so this is understandable.

**** Although this issue has at some point or another been patched. Now, Brutes created by the Genetic Mutator are coded as a clone of the regular Brute, but with a cash value of 0.

!!Non-video game examples:

* Exception: In the fourth edition of ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' unwanted magic items can be disenchanted through a particular ritual. This leaves behind a silvery powder called [[AppliedPhlebotinum residuum]], which can be used to make new magic items. However, the process returns only a fifth of the value of the original item (Worth noting that: (1) This is typical value you get from selling the item to a vendor and (2) this can be changed at the DM's discretion).

* ''WorldOfWarcraft'' allows unwanted magical items to be disenchanted for materials to enchant new gear; this is in fact the only way to obtain most enchanting reagents. More appropriately, skills such as herbalism, mining, skinning, and even engineering allow you to recover additional loot from NPC corpses of the appropriate type, including the occasional rare item.

* The same is possible in ''{{Warcraft}} III'', where the undead can "unsummon" buildings to regain some of the resources spent on them, while Orcs can research the Pillage ability, allowing them to gain resources by attacking enemy buildings.

* Exception: In the fourth edition of ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' unwanted magic items can be disenchanted through a particular ritual. This leaves behind a silvery powder called [[AppliedPhlebotinum residuum]], which can be used to make new magic items. However, the process returns only a fifth of the value of the original item.

** ''Red Alert 2'': Infantry can be sent to The Grinder, refunding half of their original training cost. [[FateWorseThanDeath Best not think]] [[FridgeHorror about it too much]]. The mechanic for the refund wasn't foolproof, though: The Cloning Vats can be exploited to grant completely free infantry (you get a full refund for a freshly-trained soldier that you can't place, but the Cloning Vats still gives you a free clone of them), this can also be used to make infinite money.

** ''Red Alert 2'': Infantry can be sent to a Cloning Vats, refunding half of their original training cost. [[FateWorseThanDeath Best not think]] [[FridgeHorror about it too much]]. The mechanic for the refund wasn't foolproof, though: The Cloning Vats can be exploited to grant completely free infantry (you get a full refund for a freshly-trained soldier that you can't place, but the Cloning Vats still gives you a free clone of them), this can also be used to make infinite money.

** Orcs with the Pillage ability (especially Siege-type Raiders) can even demolish their ''own'' buildings when resources are tight or when cleaning out a drained resource node to save on building and recruitment costs elsewhere.

* ''Battletech'': The Crescent Hawk's Inception had you salvaging weapons and armour(as well as credits) from vanquished foes, and in the case of defeated mechas, you sometimes had the choice of taking the entire unit, if you had someone who could actually pilot one and wasn't already using such a unit. This was almost always a bad idea, since any unit that you defeated was invariably damaged in either the engine, gyros or sensors, none of which could be fixed by any mechanic in the game.

* A single exception in KingdomOfLoathing: while normally you can't get back non-food ingredients of craftable consumables (casserole dishes, for example), anything cocktail crafted with a Tiny Plastic Sword will give it back when you drink it. Of course, it originally cost $10 and is no longer obtainable except from another player, so this is understandable.

* In EvilGenius, although the help file and tutorial play this straight by saying that you lose all the money you spent on a room or object when you demolish it, it's lying. You got 80% of its value back.

* In ''FTLFasterThanLight'', when you destroy a ship, you can pick it apart for fuel, missiles, and the ship-materials itself, which takes the form as "Scrap", the game's currency. As a rule, you get much better rewards if you take the ship intact by killing all the enemy crew. Pretty much everything can be sold (that is, turned into more Scrap). However, deploying a Drone is played straight: If you deploy a Drone, and it's still intact at the end of a battle, you can't "un-deploy" it and bring it back inside. However, the "Drone Retrieval Arm" augment lets you do that.

* Another exception: In ''VideoGame/{{Sacrifice}}'', not only can destroyed units be salvaged for the key resource required to build more units, but it is the ''only'' way to increase the stockpile with which one starts each round. Enemy units can also be salvaged (although they require processing, during which the enemy may stage a retrieval) and gaining a partial or complete monopoly is a useful way of limiting an opponent's effectiveness.

* In ''FTLFasterThanLight'', when you destroy a ship, you can pick it apart for fuel, missiles, and the ship-materials itself, which takes the form as "Scrap", the game's currency. Pretty much everything can be sold (that is, turned into more Scrap). However, deploying a Drone is played straight: If you deploy a Drone, and it's still intact at the end of a battle, you can't "un-deploy" it and bring it back inside. However, the "Drone Retrieval Arm" augment lets you do that.

* The Dos game ''War Inc'' had structures purchased for cash, and deconstructing them gives a 50% refund. There was a campaign-scale upgrade available by buying out an insurance company, where the 50% refund applies if the building is destroyed by enemy unitst.

* In the Mac (and later PC) strategy game ''VideoGame/SpacewardHo'', fleets that were destroyed in orbit would rain metal down onto the planet - which was important, because metal is a finite resource. A heavily defended planet in a key strategic location could therefore become a "metal farm." You could also scrap your own fleets to recover some of the metal that was used to build them.

* Exception: Structures in ''{{Outpost 2}}'' (though not vehicles) are reduced to rubble upon destruction, which can then be collected by cargo trucks and turned back into usable materials at the Garbage and Ore Recycling Facility ([[FunWithAcronyms GORF]]). Also, structure kits you were planning to build but decide against can be sent to the GORF.