Issue with item despawn

[An Ning]

I didn't even know that a despawn timer had been made for dropped turrets and upgrades, so I let them sit as a marker for where I defeated enemies (as a way to find the wrecks for salvaging) and just had a bunch of rare and exceptional tier items vanish because I took too long getting to them.

This wasn't an exceedingly long time... this was less than 5 minutes -you can have fights that last significantly longer than that... and items that were hard-fought-for and hard-won disappearing before you reach them is just annoying.

While I can appreciate having something "clean up" the active sectors, I really think that it would be better for the game to just pack all loose items within a certain area into a container of some sort instead of just having them vanish.

[BloodyRain2k]

That sounds suspiciously short. I'm pretty sure I've had good loot sit around for 10 min at least if not more.

5 min sounds more like the timer for dropped cargo and resources.

[Weylin]

I've even had goods vanish right in my face, it's very frustrating. I understand cleaning up sectors that have been left for a while, but losing half the loot because a fight keeps dragging on is a bummer.

I like that container idea, maybe it would act like a beacon, or a stash with a glow coinciding with the top item rarity inside?

[Rand]

Major cleanup should mostly only happen when a player is out of the system.
But despawning tiny chunks progressively after a good amount of time while still in-system would be fine.
I think there's a mod that looks at the value of debris and starts with the least valuable stuff and won't ever touch valuable things over a certain threshold.
That's something the game should do natively.