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Here are issues (some problems, others things to to consider; some minor, others major) with the franchise, and they might or might have an effect on RPG versions:

Mother may or may not have been calling the shots. It can't be the former because Dallas was the captain of the ship, and the only one who could order him to do things like re-route the ship would have been Weyland-Yutani (WY), the company that owns the Nostromo. That means Mother was in periodic contact with WY throughout, which is also what WY would have wanted because the distress signal was equivalent to finding intelligent life, which is similar to finding an alien craft on earth. But if that were the case, then WY would have known enough about the alien, including the coordinates of the beacon. That means WY wouldn't have needed to get them from the lifeboat flight recorder that carried Ripley.

After the facehugger dropped off Kane, Dallas told Ripley (who questioned Ash's question) that he doesn't know Ash that much because Ash replaced their original science officer only recently. Usually, writers add these small details because they are important. This might imply that the company knew about the aliens and the beacon before the Nostromo launched from the port where Ash replaced the science officer.

Ripley later tells the others that Ash followed the special order she discovered from Mother because WY wanted to use the organism for its bio-weapons division. The formation of such a division implies that WY was preparing to exploit such organisms, and probably even this specific one, early on.

During the whole time that WY had the coordinates (if it did get them from Mother, which it would have naturally asked for), it did not bother to investigate the location of the beacon (whether or not it went offline for any reason, either through volcanic activity according to Cameron or turned off according to the Isolation game) during the decades that they didn't hear from the Nostromo and when they even built a colony on the same rock.

Ripley's hearing in the second movie was strange: the only thing that could have proved her story and thus her innocence were checking the coordinates of the distress beacon given in the flight recorder. But for some absurd reason the ICC and ECA refused to honor her request to investigate them; isn't the accused innocent until proven guilty? Also, wasn't that supposed to be a board of inquiry and not one involving prosecution?

We're not sure how much information the colony gave to WY, but if the transmitter went down due to an alien attack, then that means WY knew more than enough, but probably assumed that only two aliens were involved (given two dead facehuggers, and the other two extracted alive but killing their human hosts). That's why they sent only one squad, because they thought with two aliens and over a hundred colonists, the job of killing few aliens would have been easy, especially with armaments they were carrying. Also, WY knew the location of the derelict ship, which made getting the facehuggers not that important because there were still hundreds of eggs in the alien craft (according to Ripley, as reported to her by Dallas, Kane, and Lambert) that they could exploit.

Why didn't the Sulaco have a captain and a crew? Surely, something equivalent to a capital ship and nuclear-armed (later, the survivors wanted to destroy the colony with a nuclear strike to end the suffering of those left behind and cocooned by the aliens) would have had that. But that would have ruined the storyline of the second movie because one of the difficulties they encountered was not having anyone onboard to send down a second dropship. Also, didn't Gorman tell Ripley that she wouldn't get into harm's way because she'd be onboard the Sulaco instead of on the ground?

It also looks absurd and un-military: having no captain and crew, no one aboard the orbiting ship, no backup transmitters, no fortified command post to conduct operations, etc. Even WY looked incompetent, with the colony having no backup transmitter, too.

In the third movie, after he was re-activated Bishop told Ripley that WY knows everything because the Sulaco computer was feeding them everything that was going on in the ship. That's why WY knows about the embryo inside Ripley. Why is a military computer feeding information to a private company? Does this imply collusion between the two?

Also, was the derelict ship destroyed by the nuclear blast caused by the colony reactor? If so, then that explains why WY needed to capture the alien in the prison as well as the one inside Ripley's body. But if not, then the third movie would have looked unnecessary because the company could have retrieved the eggs and more from the derelict ship.

Some more issues, but they are based more on opinions: first, Ripley turns from a tough-minded blue collar worker (she's a flight officer, but of a towing vessel, which makes her and others the equivalent of space truckers) to an action hero and leader all of a sudden. Also, when the Nostromo crew and even the board find out about the derelict ship, they don't seen excited about it. Wouldn't you be if you found an alien craft with what should be advanced technology? It'd be similar to finding a gold mine.

Lastly, several media licensed by the company resolve some of these issues but create new ones. For example, some explain that the company set up a bio-weapons division, special orders to capture aliens, changed the Nostromo science officer, and re-routed the ship after partially decoding the signal which indicated not distress but a warning, because of what happened in the prequels. The reason why the ICC and ECA did not honor Ripley's request to check the coordinates was because WY scrubbed the coordinates from the flight recorder. And not just the colony but even Burke was sending messages to WY and others. Meanwhile, the Isolation game shows that another ship found the derelict ship and caused infestation to spread to a space station between the first and second movies.

Long post - will try to break up parts of reply:

MOTHER IN CHARGE?
Dallas shipped out several times before with a different science officer. [from the movie where he and Ripley argue in the bridge corridor]

Two days before Nostromo left Thedus, he was replaced with Ash.

To me, this has always implied W-Y knew about the transmission before Nostromo ever left dock.

But it also implied to me that it was very recent discovery by W-Y and that they looked for the next available ship they could divert to investigate.

Also factor in the Nostromo (and Thedus) were roughly twice the distance out from Sol than Z2Reticuli ... so there was some reason everyone had missed the Derelict signal up until then.

W-Y BIOWEAPONS DIVISION
As humanity expanded across space any number of diseases or critters (like Harvesters) may have been found - and someone started studying them in WY to make cash.

I've never assumed that was specifically targeting the XX-121 ... just "anything found that could be profitable" across all of space exploration.

In my Alienverse - W-Y bioweapons is still trying improve the common cold if they can find a buck in it.

WHY NO FOLLOWUP INVESTIGATION?
A number of reasons may have conspired together to keep W-Y from following up on the Nostromo:
The exec who reassigned Ash to Nostromo and issued the special order may have been canned when the Nostromo went missing.
... and maybe kept the secret or tried to sell it to some other corp and failed. (or did they? what if some other corp has had XX-121 samples since 2122?)

So, with the records lost ... volcanism or Marlowe silences the beacon and its just a derelict waiting.

Meanwhile the colonies keep expanding and there was enough there to found Hadley's Hope.

In the current corporate world - all you have to do to lose data is put it in Sharepoint and no one will ever find it again ...

RIPLEY'S ICC HEARING
... assuming Ash didn't alter, encrypt, or otherwise disguise or alter the Narcissus records.

The real problem I have with the hearing scene is Van Leuwen claiming there was no evidence.
Except - we still see the gun wedged under the door in the opening salvage scenes.
And at the end of ALIEN itself we see the xeno getting ready to cocoon itself into the side wall of the Narcissus.
The thing is dripping goo all over the place ... also known as "evidence".
Why wasn't that at the hearing?
My personal head-canon theory is ... Carter J. Burke.
He and W-Y got to the Narcissus and scrubbed it of everything useful before ICC ever heard about it.
This could also remove any coordinates even if Ash hadn't already had opportunity to hide them.
I personally go with the Ash theory because of the Advent extra from Covenant - I get the feeling Ridley really wanted Ash to ship back records and transferred that to David when he came back to Alien decades later.

TRANSMITTER DOWN
Again, with Carter trying to make a buck - if the transmitter went down on LV-426 he could have easily hid the records from the colony before they got the ICC.
Do you think they send a whole Marines squad to check every down transmitter? Heck no.
Burke maneuvered all of that because he knew bad things were afoot - he'd already heard Ripley's story *and believed her* enough to dispatch an order to check a grid coordinate.
So, he wanted to go in with gung-ho guns on his side out of basic self-preservation - but still driven by the greed to get the exclusive.

STAFFING THE SHIP
Gorman was inexperienced and did not correctly make backup plans like having the second dropship on standby with someone to bring it down.

COLONY TRANSMITTER
We only have W-Y word that they had no additional contact... but in Advent we see W-Y robots using encoded transmissions into the Network to pass spy info back to W-Y.

And W-Y *is* incompetent. Look at the entire history of the canon Alien stories ... W-Y's record with the xeno is a *century* of failure from first encounter to the current end of the timeline.

My personal handwave on that is that there are factions in W-Y ... one trying to weaponize XX-121 and some do-gooder faction (like the admin from Dark Descent) who keeps undermining and sabotaging the weaponize it faction from within W-Y ... it's a long term covert war within W-Y itself.

ALIEN 3
The Sulaco was arranged by W-Y for a colony rescue mission.
Who knows what got baked into the mission computers from bribes or collusion between W-Y and USCMC?

W-Y knows about the embryo specifically from the lifeboat scan you see in the movie - there's also a scene showing the supervisor's terminal confirming receipt of the EEV medscan data.

DERELICT DESTROYED?
Don't get me started on the difference between thermonuclear fission and fusion. Ron Cobb designed a fusion station. It doesn't crash the same way a fission plant might.

But assuming a fusion station can somehow go boom like that rather than shutdown because it's so dang hard to start and maintain a P-P or C-N-O fusion reaction ... the derelict was "out past the Illium Range" which could have shielded it from direct blast effects.
Given we know the size of the moon vs the size of the state of Nebraska, and how far you can drive in a week even in bad terrain in a Daihotai ... its possible the derelict didn't even get a gust or breeze from the explosion.

RIPLEYS RANK
Yes, writers are not very good about consistency across decades with details like Ripley's rank.
She was a flight officer who seemed to get promoted every hypersleep ...

NOSTROMO CREW EXCITEMENT
Kane was excited - there's some extra material about him wanting to find treasure and get rich quick etc and that's why he was always in the lead while exploring, including going down the shaft. Dallas was more laid back just trying to get through the work day and Lambert didn't want to be there in the first place.

Kane definitely showed the gold mine aspect.

SUM UP
Your last paragraph seems like you ended up in the same conclusions I discuss above.

Given the cost of setting up a bio-weapons division and potential revenues from such an incredible find, which would have involved not just weaponizing organisms but even the advanced technology in alien craft, it's extremely unlikely that W-Y would have taken this lightly. There will have to be valid reasons for losing records multiple times such that each time no one appears to know what happened before: after the prequels, after the first movie, and after the second movie, and if you include the other licensed media, after the _Isolation_ game, after _Alien: Out of the Shadows_, and so on. It's as if each time the company experiences amnesia, or all messages sent are conveniently not received. No firm can grow that big and remain grossly incompetent at the same time, and the chance of 100 pct failure makes no sense.

Similar applies to the military: it's very rare to see a fictional work or game involving an armed warship which has no captain or crew. This is obviously something that doesn't involve budgetary constaints or an expedition launched by a mere lieutenant, and thus a major problem with the story.

A bio-weapons division involves R&D, reverse-engineering, and manufacturing. These are extensive capital investments and not set up on a whim.

Not following up on the matter doesn't make sense if it's not hard to do so, and especially after the same company spent twenty years setting up a colony on the same rock.

According to the board, the flight recorder indicates that the Nostromo landed on the rock, and then took off. Weirdly enough, that would have included the coordinates but the same board refused Ripley's request to have the area investigated. Even van Leuwen's reason is absurd: the colony had been there for two decades and didn't see anything. Even a greenhorn lawyer would have seen through such phony reasoning. With that, the only thing to rectify that problem is to follow the W-Y Report which states that the company manipulated the logs and removed the coordinates.

From what I remember, Burke explained to Ripley that the company owns the colony facilities, and is operating based on a deal with the government: by terraforming the rock, they get mineral rights. That means if it's a colony-operated facility, then communications would be directly between company and the colony manager, who's a company employee. This explains why even Burke's instructions to the colony would not have been read by the ICC or even ECA.

Back to the Sulaco: it's very difficult to fix that error involving the absence of a ship crew. The only thing I can think of is that somehow Gorman managed to steal a nuclear-armed warship, and that the military was not able to detect one of its own vessels launched from its ports. And even the personnel tasked to maintain the ships did not notice that it was missing at the docks. If this is the type of backstory used to explain what happened, then the whole thing might look like a comedy.

The company must have had additional contact with the colony: it's just that it didn't want Ripley and the Marines to do know that. But that would mean that they would have also known about multiple aliens emerging, which in turn would logically mean sending a larger contingent. Given that, the logical backstory would be that two aliens emerged, with one metamorphosing into a queen and the second capturing more colonists to become hosts while damaging the transmitter. That explains why only one squad of Marines was sent: given reports from the colonists, they thought that there were only two aliens.

The idea of factions within the company looks intriguing, though, and might be used to explain some of these discrepancies.

The problem of the derelict intact plus the company having the coordinates to it in the first movie, in the _Isolation_ game, in the second movie, and in the third movie, remains. That is, having that information and gaining access to the eggs in the derelict ship makes getting the alien from the Nostromo, from the colony, and from the prison and Ripley's body not very relevant.

Finally, one reason why they didn't look so excited could be seen in the dialogue where they discuss the bonus situation. Rather that talking about the possibility of having first contact with not only intelligent but probably even advanced life forms (i.e., non-human and artificial distress signal in the middle of nowhere), they instead complain about the loss of bonus thanks to early delivery of the ore because they have to re-route, and it was only after Ash told them that they would lose everything due to breach of contract if they didn't investigate the signal that they agreed to do so. And they even continued griping after that, with Parker asking Ripley if those who stayed in the Nostromo (they had to stay to make repairs) would get full shares like those who explored the derelict ship, and she "yes" according to law.

But that's a minor issue compared to the others raised earlier, e.g., corporate amnesia in each turn and military behavior that can only be described as absurd.

CORPORATE/GOVERNMENT COLONY JOINT VENTURE
The colony on LV-426 was not established yet.

The outpost we see in ALIENS is the team setting up the atmospheric processors and running them.

Those are entirely W-Y "we manufacture those by the way" ~ Burke.

The families are there for the terraformers and surveyors - it looks far too small, early, and non-self-sufficient to be a colony yet in the sense of growing its own food etc.

Newt's birth there a few years ago was that big of a deal because it was a work outpost long before the real start of colonization for colonization sake.

Remember, W-Y is "building better worlds" - that screams long-term joint venture. W-Y is setting up long term atmosphere processor network and control colony, with gov't funding support, and could/will lease it back to the government once the initial terraform is done and the network goes into ecosphere maintenance mode.

W-Y gets a big bump of cash up front for the terraform *and* a long-term residuals deal on leasing/maintaining the network once the colony is opened by the government itself. The future colonists who don't directly work for W-Y may even be in debt to W-Y for decades until a bunch of negotiated payback happens.

As to the rest, I am guessing I did not make my points clear enough.

BIOWEAPONS
We only have Ripley's *speculation* that W-Y wanted it for some bioweapons division - and why would a truck driver even know about any of that?

My feeling is that its her distrust of W-Y itself after the maternity suit over Amanda in the first place (from the 20th anniversary DVD easter egg timeline/crew bios).

Burke doesn't look smart enough to properly handle a pop-tart much less bioweapons - he's from some other part of W-Y.

CORPORATE AMNESIA
This is exactly why I've just thrown in an internal faction of W-Y itself that keeps watchdogging and stopping these egregious attempts to destroy the human species.

SPACECRAFT AUTOPILOT
I don't have a problem with a bunch of folks leaving an automatic ship in orbit.
They expected to have the APC comms to bring down the backup ship on remote *if* the primary dropship mechanical'ed.
Keep in mind these people go to sleep for weeks / months at a time with just the autopilot in charge to do the entire mission management.
Having all that automation makes the missions cheaper which W-Y and USCM would embrace if possible.
The Sulaco was also sized for a much larger complement - so the mission to LV-426 was a skeleton-crew bare-bones thing.
There's some flavor text in one of the many books about Burke arranging this as part of his secrecy - the group was as big as he could go to get the job down, but as small as possible for secrecy.

Cameron's own commentary on ALIENS:SE talks about wanting the Marines to be too trusting and dependent on their technology superiority and that's part of why they get smacked by xenos

Not even worrying about leaving the mothership on automatic for a few orbits (after it had been in charge for WEEKS getting them there) while they take the heavily armed ground-to-space-capable craft to go fix a radio (they think) doesn't cause me any cognitive dissonance here.

It seems maybe only Gorman even knew of the xenos before they left gateway - which - itself - is a hint to me of Burke maneuvering for secrecy.
They couldn't give a 10 minute speech to the marines BEFORE they left?

BIOWEAPONS INVESTMENT
Correct - we find out in the canon that W-Y had Cold Forge too ... not all the eggs in one silo (pun intentional)

NARCISSUS RECORDS
You assert that the Narcissus would have coordinates logged - which assumes my early note about Ash altering or disguising records stored there didn't happen.
There's at least one non/semi-canon story where Ash's entire personality is *in* the Narcissus computer after Ripley escapes the Nostromo with it.

WHAT THE COLONY/COMPANY KNEW
Once the Jordans found the facehuggers - there were already more than 2 aliens.
They reported all the ones they had in stasis vats at least.
Those reports are what Burke was looking out for after hearing Ripley's debrief and sending an order to go investigate.

So I don't see what problem you think remains with colony comms - they were going through W-Y already and Burke was in a position to do with them as he pleased with no one the wiser - much like OUTLAND I suppose.

CREW EXCITEMENT
The two not-excited guys were Parker and Brett.
Kane is the one who wants to be the first to go out and investigate, first down the hole, etc because he's treasure hunting.
"Come on over here! Take a look over here!" etc.
Watch the galley scene again and compare Kane, Ash, Parker and Brett.

In his audio commentary to the movie, Cameron said that he wanted to talk about "evil" corporations and used for his examples the Dutch East India Company exploiting colonial India, the Vietnam War (where the U.S. defense industry was colluding with the U.S. military), and the Bhopal Disaster (where a multinational company exploited cheap labor and caused environmental damage and death). In short, he wanted to depict the military industrial complex taking place in the franchise together with collusion between government and business. In this case, the reason why the government works closely with WY isn't only because it gains from the capital of the latter its military also gains from technology developed from alien craft and organisms.

Also, the point isn't that the colony wasn't developed yet. It's that even when the colony was developed the company didn't bother to check the coordinates. To explain the issue with the beacon, Cameron had to point out in one sci-fi magazine article that it stopped working after it was damaged by volcanic activity. Meanwhile, one game pointed out that another company ship visited the site and deactivated the beacon.

The government owned the rock and gave WY mineral rights, which Burke pointed out. Because mining operations would require a community and a breathable atmosphere, the company also had to set up and pay for colony facilities, terraforming, and the energy sources needed to power them. In light of communications and the government, likely the whole colony was like a township, with the head being the colony manager, who was a company employee, and deputized by the government with authority equivalent to that of an elected official.

Very likely, employees like Ripley were at least knowledgeable about the major divisions of WY, and that would include the bioweapons division. I think the crew would have also been smart enough to know that the reason WY puts requirements in their contracts to investigate things like signs of intelligent life is for the various divisions of the company to exploit such finds and monetize them; otherwise, what's the point of investigating. In return, just like the Jorden surveyors, the Nostromo crew would get a percentage of profits from monetization, which, if they're lucky, would allow them to retire early and in financial comfort. That's why when you look at one novelization of what happened to the colony, you will get to read dialogue between the Jordens, about how finding a mine would allow them to receive shares from its exploitation and thus allow them to finally go home and even retire early.

I think Burke was smart enough, and here's my backstory: he told Ripley that he had to tell the colonists to investigate the site so that the company could get "exclusive rights" right away to the derelict ship. Why? Because if the ICC and ECA found out about it, then they would immediately impose lockdowns on the colony and cordon off the derelict ship, declaring it off limits and any entry and analysis subject to government restrictions. This is notable because WY had only mineral rights to the rock, which meant anything on the surface was by default owned by the gov't unless discovered by anyone else. (In this case, that would be the Jordens, who were employees of WY.) It's similar to what happened during the start of the movie, when salvagers were happy to discover the lifeboat, which meant finders keepers, and then were disappointed when they found Ripley, a company employee and still alive, which meant that they had to turn over the boat to the authorities and the company.

Factions within a company can be considered but it looks so absurd, as it makes no sense for one faction to destroy company records to screw up another. Rather, it would steal those records and exploit them itself.

Autopilot is commonsensically not used to replace a flight crew because it might stop working. In addition to that, it makes no sense for a military to give Marine infantry with a flight complement rated for small vehicles like drop ships to command a nuclear-armed warship. The only way to explain this is that something like Jerry Lewis movie took place, but instead of losing a warship Gorman gets to steal one, and all of the commanders of the military are like the one in the movie _Stripes_.

In his audio commentary, Cameron also readily referred to the Vietnam War, and depicted the Marines as similar to gung-ho soldiers that time who thought that superior firepower would overwhelm the enemy. In this case, one Marine squad was sent because they thought that there were only around two aliens, which was probably what the colonists reported before comms went down.

It makes no sense whatsoever to leave one's orbiting ship unmanned. Even in the real world, there was still one astronaut on board the orbiting craft while the other two went down to the moon. It's even seen in the Nostromo, where at least the science officer remained at the command area while three crew members investigated the derelict ship. (The two techs and the XO remained because the two had to repair the ship while the latter supervised the three.)

Even sci-fi movies like this which took great pains to be realistic had to consider these points.

My point about the coordinates isn't whether or not Ash removed them but whether or not the company received them from Mother. Logically, a company that's excited over the find would have asked for them.

I think there were four facehuggers in the med labs, with two alive. That meant that one came from Jorden, where an embryo emerged, and another emerged from another host. Nothing came from the other two hosts because the facehuggers were pulled away from them, including John Marachuk. My guess is that one metamorphosed into a queen and started laying eggs while the other protected her while capturing and cocooning colonists, and eventually damaging the transmitter. With that, the colonists managed to report these two, which is why the military sent only one squad; they thought it was enough to deal with only two creatures.

Parker was complaining over dinner, with Brett always saying "right," and the others, from Ripley to Dallas to Kane, looked either complacement or were even slightly smiling. Meanwhile, Ash was frowning, and had to remind them that if they don't investigate, they lose all income derived from the trip due to breach of contract. I got this feeling that they just wanted Parker to shut up and even criticized Brett for acting like a parrot, and only because Ash was right.

Personally, the original Alien 1979 and Aliens are essential for the franchise which respects the terror and isolation of the characters. Fincher's Alien 3 isn't so bad either, but he killed Newt and Hicks and that's unforgivable.

After that I'm cruel and blunt, not much good.

Prometheus and Covenant are good films but they are not "Alien" franchise films. This is another thing. Ridley Scott came out of his frame. It's not bad but it's not Alien either. There are a lot of good things in these films though.

The only other very, very interesting product is the Alien Isolation game on Sevastopol. It takes back the universe, the genre and it keeps the different elements that made the success of the first Alien 1979.

That's my view of it.

There are events in the first movie, like Ash replacing the science officer, the formation of a bio-weapons division, and the use of special orders, that imply that something went on before them, and that's how the prequels help. The problem with the latter is that they moved in so many directions it's as if the producers were essentially rebooting the franchise, which is probably what they were doing because most of the expected audiences had not seen nor heard of the first four movies.

What's interesting, though, is that there are certain things about the first movie that can also be seen in the prequels. For example, deleted scenes indicate that the aliens include things like spores, which eventually showed up in the prequels.

I think the third movie was supposed to have ended at least Ripley's story, if not the franchise, which is why the other protagonists had to go, but producers had to continue it, which is why they had to come up with a fourth movie involving not only aliens but even clones and hybrids.

Meanwhile, additional media like the _Isolation_ game complicate matters. For example, the company is not supposed to have done anything throughout the 50+ years that the Nostromo went missing, and yet the game revealed that company ships visited the alien craft, etc.

I read that the TV series will take place between the prequels and first movie and involve not only aliens but also competing corporations, AI, technology, etc. That should be the case because in order for a TV series to unfold it has to go in different directions for new content. Meanwhile, I also read that the new movie will be like added media that won't necessarily affect the first three movies, about thieves encountering aliens, and set between the first and second movies, just like _Isolation_.

It's similar to the audio drama adaptations of novels from Audible which referred to adventures of the colony as it is infested, Ripley awoken from sleep between the first and second movies and encountering another group of company ships encountering aliens on another rock, etc.

Given that, the franchise already had problems as seen in the content of the first two movies at least, the additional media (all of which are licensed and thus should be considered canon) complicate matters further. Here's what can be done to partially remedy the issues:

The prequels take place, and then add new content in the unmade third prequel to explain why the company loses all records of encounters with the aliens. At best they know about the eggs and aliens, and prepare a bio-weapons division and special orders to anticipate acquiring and exploiting them.

The first movie takes place. Come up with new content explaining how the beacon was damaged by volcanic activity and how content sent by Mother was delayed and yet recovered by the company, leading to the _Isolation_ game.

Add content explaining how the coordinates to the derelict ship are lost (the game explains how the beacon was de-activated), together with everything involving the game, leading the company to start from scratch once more, and while searching for the derelict ship, set up a colony on the same rock for mining operations but with covert activities to prepare for the discovery of the alien craft (hence, scientists in the colony in _River of Pain_).

Meanwhile, _Out of the Shadows_ takes place, but it doesn't affect the timeline because all data pertaining to events depicted are lost, and Ripley's memory is wiped.

The _River of Pain_ story takes place, leading to the second movie.

The second movie takes place.

Bring in new content explaining how the company tried to exploit contents of the derelict ship but failed, which explains why they need the alien and the embryo in the third movie.

The third movie takes place.

From there, various new media can now fit and set between the third and fourth movies or after the fourth movie.

Marlowe's ship, the Anesidora, in Alien Isolation was not described as a W-Y ship in anything I've seen.

Also, there are media set in and around all of the franchise movies.

Here's a timeline of the canon ALIEN materials that I have put together so far from the things I have.
https://weylan-yutani.com/canon_timeline

I have not yet gotten _Bishop_ or seen any update that says _Vasquez_ or _Bishop_ are canon or not.

I have not seen Dark Descent described as official canon either, but its definitely head-canon for me.

You're right: it's privately owned. I should have referred to the Sevastopol. Also, according to the Colonial Marines report, several ships also landed near the derelict ship.

Here's another timeline which uses licensed media:

https://avp.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline

I don't know who declares what's canon or not. My assumption is that if it's allowed by IP holders, then it should be considered. The catch is that it allows for all sorts of inconsistencies.

But even then, what's acceptable by some, like Isolation, already create a mess if we assume that computers on ships, space stations, colonies, etc., routinely send signals, logs, and messages to authorities and/or companies. After all, given levels of technology which allow for high levels of automation and even the use of synths, one has to assume that frequent transmissions take place.

That means either one or more of the ff. take place for companies, government agencies, colonies, and military forces: signals not received due to technical problems, signals sent but not received due to natural phenomena, signals sent and received but misplaced due to technical problems, and signals sent and received but misplaced due to incompetence. In addition, high levels of incompetence allow for warships stolen, warships with no crew, no backup transmitters, and so on. And they conveniently take place to resolve inconsistencies.

Andrew E.C. Gaska defined what was canon - which was part of creating the ALIEN RPG itself.
The link was at the top of my timeline but I'll copy it here too:
https://roguereviewer.wordpress.com/202 ... ien-world/