Improving on how wrecks are salvaged

[Thundercraft]

I was inspired to start this topic by the following question:

 

Is there a higher chance to get upgrades and items from ships with salvaging lasers? Or are salvaging lasers just for getting materials from the ship?

 

And the answer is... no. Salvaging turrets do not increase the chances of modules or turrets dropping. But I think it's safe to say that some of us find this fact to be very counter-intuitive.

 

I'm writing about this as a player who's spent an embarrassing amount of time salvaging wreckages, just because I find it a fun pastime and because I enjoy the random chance of getting an especially valuable or good module or turret. And I can honestly say that I don't salvage for the sake of gaining ores - mostly because salvaging wreckages is not an ideal method for that. Mining mineral-rich asteroids with a good mining laser is way, way faster.

 

I really think that there should be more incentive to salvaging wrecks. And part of my reasoning is because salvaging is too time consuming, compared with the relatively minor amount of ores we can get out of it.

 

Part of that issue, though, is how a typical procedurally generated NPC wreckage has enormous amounts of really tiny blocks and pieces. And, generally, trying to salvage these pieces doesn't even generate 1 ore. These tiny pieces have a nasty tendency to break off, creating a cloud of debris. This can make finding actual wreckages actually worth salvaging a real problem, since the tiny pieces show up on our radar as "Wreckage"...  :-\

 

Further: Please consider changing the game's destruction mechanic so tiny blocks below a certain size threshold are treated as a whole conglomerate and do not break apart. It would be much less of a headache if tiny pieces could be chewed up all at once, as if they shared a common pool of hitpoints.

 

Also, perhaps tiny individual pieces should not show up on radar (at least not as "Wreckages") if they fall below a certain volume threshold. Or, at the least, you could have them gradually disappear (i.e., get deleted) after a while, much like how cargo pods, turrets, and modules eventually disappear if they are not picked up.

 

Alternatively, or in addition, you could change the procedural generation of NPC ships so they do have so many tiny, tiny pieces.

 

Another issues is how wreckages typically have some armor. Using even a good salvaging turret on armor is usually a waste of time and effort because they don't have much ore, but they take forever for the salvaging turret to chew up.

[Tchey]

I'd prefer if wreckages act like asteroids more. When i mine, i remove large chunks and i rarely need to "find the missing pieces". I'd like the wreckages to stay as a few big pieces, even if less "realistic", instead of breaking into so many tiny parts quite tedious to catch.

[WARGAMES]

I'd prefer if wrecks and salvaging meant higher(I mean a lot) chances of items compared to just blowing it all up.  like surgically going for blocks you KNEW turrets fired from.

[clearmist]

currently if you want upgrades just blow the ship up with your guns, if you see hyperdrives/shield gens/computer cores, harvest those with salvage turrets for a lot of quick resources.

 

Salvaging becomes very good if you run into a huge wreck in a hidden system picked up by scanners with like 12 million xanion and you can harvest 200k from just 1 or 2 generators.

[Ishmod]

Agreed salvaging is a bit meh, but i love the idea of noshing on some twisted metal. 

 

An idea might be while the Wreck may not have better percentage to ÈhaveÈ drops , what if the drops it WOULD loose when you salvaged it had a much higher chance to be of higher quality or rarity (within the level of tech the wreckage is from of course. No need to get a lvl 40 purple item from a lvl 12 wrecked ship) than the ton of white item drops currently scattered on destruction ...