There was a thread (that quickly turned very toxic) over in General Discussion, that I think has the kernel of a decent idea. The OP wanted to see wrecks be auto-abandoned sometime before being destroyed. Some sort of timer use was involved.
While I’m not very keen on taking away a pilot’s choice to abandon a wreck or not, I do see a case for assisting the pilot in carrying out the decision once the decision has been made.
In this vein, I would propose that there be a toggle that would allow a pilot to choose to have wrecks automatically be abandoned.
Perhaps a sliding timer could also be involved - somewhere between immediately and an hour?
To be clear, I’m not suggesting that the life of wrecks be extended.
I see this feature as just a helpful QOL tool for someone who makes a lot of wrecks and would rather leave them for others.
The key reason - yellow wrecks cannot be tractored.
Secondary reason - you know the most likely unfleeted pilot to recover the wrecks, and would rather they didn’t go suspect (like using an alt or corp-mate to clean up).
Tertiary reason - it just saves a step.
There are some drawbacks and risks with auto-blueing, but I find these well worth it the convenience.
You didn’t really want to blue THAT wreck. Oh well loot’s gone and you’ll get popped by CONCORD trying to get it back.
Forget to turn it off in a fight… someone could just move your warp-in points. (stretch, but it’s there)
I think that an auto-blueing toggle could be a decent Quality of Life tool to help pilots of all ilks, while keeping the abandonment choice in the hands of individual pilots.
How about having the toggle issue the command “abandon all nearby wrecks” when you leave grid (warp off, activate accel/stargate, dock up, logoff/disconnect and whatever other ways exist)?
This way the servers would not be overloaded by the abandon commands AND you would not auto abandon recently created wrecks that may contain valuable loot until you are sure you are no longer interested (leaving the area). This would also provide the option to decide before leaving whether you actually want to abandon the wrecks on grid or not and could adjust your toggle accordingly before leaving then readjust mid warp or later for the next grid.
I think it should auto-blue the wrecks only if you leave the system or disconnect. We should give people a chance to return with a ship that is better for looting/salvaging.
The OP’s proposal is a toggle, which means anyone who activates the trigger makes a conscious decision to auto-abandon their wrecks on leaving grid and by default the auto-abandoning feature is turned off, just like how you start the game with your safeties set to green and you have to switch it to yellow or red yourself. Thus nobody loses their chance of salvaging their wrecks unless they deliberately abandon them either manually or using the auto feature.
That’s true.
I don’t know how other players do this, but in my case, if I leave the system I won’t return just to loot and salvage. A single system usually don’t spawn sites often enough to constantly stay in it and stop fighting in every 3.5 hours to clean up after yourself. You just take the boss loot and move on.
This function could also have 3 levels:
off
abandon when you leave the system
abandon when you leave the site/pocket, because you really don’t care at all
All of this would make much more sense if we could find wrecks, turning salvaging into an actual profession (not just during/after null PVP events), but that’s another question.
Wrecks despawn 2 hours after they were created so if you try to only stop every 3.5 hours to salvage you will salvage nothing.
I often blitz 2-3 missions in a system or go on a patrol route in several systems and blitz anomalies then return home and hop into my dedicated salvager and revisit the sites. Sometimes a few wrecks despawn when I get there during me salvaging but usually I make it in time without issues, I can salvage at least most of the wrecks even in the worst case. Usually I spend an hour or so on missioning / anomalies then go salvaging. (Well nowadays am too lazy to salvage so I just blitz but that was how I’ve done it during my early career when salvage was more worth my time.)
The three way toggle could also work so no objection against that, doesn’t seem much more complex, just a new function inserted during session change during changing servers (using stargate).
As for making it easier to find wrecks there were two related suggestions in the other thread mentioned in the OP:
Let blue wrecks (abandoned by the owner) scannable with (combat) probes.
Let the owner deploy a navigation beacon when abandoning a site of wrecks which appear on overview just like any other beacon so salvagers can warp to it without scanning. (I guess could be added to the “abandon all nearby wrecks” function.)
I find the second solution more fruitful and preferable as it makes it easier for salvagers as it grants a greater chance to find the wrecks than if having to scan them down.
I agree though I was just referencing the suggestions from the other thread in response to the part about making finding wrecks easier, as those suggestions could aid @Dior_Ambraelle in formulating a concept and the discussion regarding such features in general.
Also note that those were not my suggestions in the other thread though I personally don’t see an issue with them either, probably because of lack of personal interest in the matter, I see the positives and negatives either way if it is implemented or not but indifferent whether it is actually implemented.
Regarding the yellow wrecks and being able to tractor them, based on the other thread and related posts I think @Gadget_Helmsdottir meant to refer to MTUs by tractoring.
Why did I remember 4 hours?
Maybe because that’s how much I sleep nowadays…
This wreck beacon idea is cool too. The one I found earlier (on the old forum, so much earlier) was a dedicated probe to find wrecks, and a bonus to the Noctis to use those special probes, this way you still have to work for it.
#1: As much as I know, literally anything can be found with the proper probes except for wrecks and containers. If you forget your MTU, you can probe it down. If you forget your mobile depot, you can probe it down. If you leave your ship in the middle of nowhere, you can probe it down.
But you can’t find a field of wrecks for some reason…
#2: That’s easy to work around: beacons can’t be deployed within 30k km of another beacon. One pocket, one beacon. And make them deploy automatically when you abandon a wreck.
Ouuh that’s not what I meant. What I meant was the clutter on the overview. Imagine you had a solar system with 5000 stations and they would all occupy your overview list.
Dat load would be terrible and drive the hamsters nuts.
Ouuh okay. In that case, you can just probe the MTU anyways and your overview can tell you before if you will be finding wrecks or not.
Personally I would prefer if we would need to use probes to find the abandoned wreck beacons, I wouldn’t make them show on the overview or in the probe window. If you want to find salvage left behind by others, you should work for it, which isn’t an option right now.
But again, that’s another idea (which has a most likely abandoned thread by now).
