Copying my post over from reddit as not all of you are unfortunate enough to be redditors:
When I started playing this game at the end of last year I fell in love with the sandbox nature, the way players produce most of the items in game and the impacts this has on the economy. I also loved the idea of the multiple professions you could carve out for yourself. I loved the idea that I could be this space junker hoovering up salvage and debris and selling it off to people who could turn it into better things, and in turn make money themselves or even better turn it into weapons and ships of the line for the alliance. This was my dream.
Crash back to reality:
Salvage is essential to the production of both ship and structure rigs. Yet salvaging in its current form is dull, uninteresting, and dependant on finding someone creating wrecks that you can follow (through clunky bookmark trading, or asking them to let you know when a site is done so you can warp to it), or creating the wrecks yourself then reshipping and hoovering up. The reality is most people are smart enough to understand that it is more valuable to just roll site after site and mission after mission instead of stopping to reship and salvage, leaving the salvage to that cute adorable newbro who doesnât have the skills yet to produce his own wrecks (hi!).
The noctis:
I like this hull. I like it a lot. I like that it has sensible bonuses for a salvage breaker and that it is slow and cumbersome and completely defenceless. Iâve grown to admire the balance of risk and reward in this game and a salvage ship should be a victim if you are dumb enough to get caught in it. That said, I feel like it is missing something that would allow salvaging to really be something of a profession - the ability to scan down debris fields and wrecks.
Iâll wait a moment while the tortured autistic shrieks die down
Iâm not naive enough to miss that being able to probe down a wreck is a powerful thing in the wrong hands, which is why I feel it should be limited to a slow and vulnerable hull like the noctis. I would even accept that the risk be increased by making it a Tech 2 variant of the noctis and therefore at least double the isk on the line (also no cloaking devices). I just so badly want to cruise around, probing down debris and wrecks and salvaging them. Is that really too much to ask? Make the bloody thing have a mini siege cycle if you must, just let me be the unshaven drifting space captain with a ship made of junk.
The wrecks:
While it would be great to be able to scan down wreck fields and salvage them Iâm also aware that they dissapear at downtime. If you have ever flown through Delve/Esoteria/Deklein/Vale of the Silent youâll know that there are no shortage of wrecks generated immediately after downtime, but perhaps as a longer term idea it would be nice to see some small percentage of abandoned wrecks reborn in the form of a debris field that generates like an cosmis sig.
TL;DR
I want to play space salvager roleplay simulator 2018
Salvage is an important part of the economy for rigs
Salvaging is dull and dependant on following ratters/creating your own wrecks
Give Noctis/T2 Variant Noctis the ability to probe down wrecks and increase the risk (more isk on the line/time on wrecks (mini siege))
Longer view tiny % of wrecks deleted at DT has chance to spawn as a debris sig
I welcome any additional ideas/thoughts that lead to the improvement of the salvaging profession. Thanks for listening to my rant.
edit 1: /u/samspock makes an excellent point > What would make this less op would be to make blue wrecks scanable and have wrecks go blue 15 minutes before they despawn.
If you want to salvage for real, go get yourself a dommie alt or 50, move to null, drop an MTU and let the salvage drones chew on stuff. Fit a salvager for stuff the drones canât chew on.
One alt to each carrier ratter, and youâll be rolling in more salvage than you can imagine. Once theyâre trained, turn them into SP farms while you salvage with them, and theyâll even pay for themselves while you salvage.
The actual input would be very low on your part per ship, running 50 sounds somewhere near full capacity.
Some people like to play âcause what they do is fun for them and not âcause it makes âem money. âs also a big reason for stayinâ in highsec, where thereâs way more people around spread out far and wide. I know that most peeps out there nowadays only care âbout making the money, but when all ya think about is ways of makinâ money, you stop actually havinâ fun playing a fuckinâ game. Ya know, playinâ for playinâs sake. Fun, not greed. Am I rantinâ? A bit?
Marauder in siege mode + MTU + 5 salvage drones = tons of salvage
Some select missions returning 16-20 million in salvage (not loot) alone.
Probably have 30B+ in salvage parts just laying aroundâŚI really need to do something with those!
Iâm in dreddit, I moved to nullsec on my second day. Not that I think that is relevant. I think salvage in any area of space is subject to the same constrained gameplay
I feel like you get the point. I know I could min max stuff more lucrative, but I actually WANT to salvage and for that to be more than following my supercarrier bros around and clearing their sites in the system one after another
If you have fun salvaging, mining, doing PI, or whatever else, thatâs fine. My point is equally valid in HS as it is anywhere else. Find a group that wants you around, and then follow them with a fleet of dommies.
If you REALLY just want to fly a noctis around, youâre still best off getting warpins. I know in our space, you call your sites in the jewingchannel. When you see someone call a site, warp to them because theyâre likely outbound to their next site. Any active ratting system you wonât have to wait long for a warpin.
Edit:
Make damn sure they know youâre gonna do that though. Most of our supers would volley you for even landing on grid with them unannounced. The power of the awox is undeniable (and arguably a lot more fun than using that noctis for salvaging )
Assuming CCP manages to make salvaginâ an interesting and engaginâ thing to do, prices would just drop to a point where no oneâs goinâ to bother doinâ it anymore, until they level out at some point. All yaâd really need to make salvaginâ great again is pushinâ prices upwards and I canât really see that happeninâ.
Think about it. The mtu and the noctis helped killinâ off salvaginâ by givinâ players a way for automatinâ what had to be done manually. Naturally prices drop. No matter what ya do to make salvaginâ fun, all itâd be doinâ is beating on a leper with a mace.
I wish that the noctis could be fit more defensively. when/if we salvage in Wspace we use a gnosis.
It is cheaper, it can be fit with better tank or jammers ect because of slot layout and does the job better than the âspecializedâ noctis because it can actually protect the space junk long enough to get off grid if attacked.
The noctisâs lack of slots is a major downfall, I think we should be using a noctis for these roles, but why would we when it doesnt do the job?
I had a similar thought ages ago, though clearly it went nowhere.
Used to be, a Magnetometric signature could either mean youâd found an Archaeology site, or a Salvaging site (an NPC battlefield full of wrecks you could salvage). They stopped using flavored signatures and just started calling them Relic sites straight up. But it wouldnât hurt anyone to make another sig and call it Salvage Site.
If a wreck has been floating on grid for, say an hour, then have it spawn a Salvage Site beacon. And at the same time, that wreck and any others on that grid will go Blue. That gives the âvictorâ an hour to do whatever theyâve got to do, and come back for their loot. If they havenât done so after an hour, then anyone with Core Probes can scan down the location and come salvage.
Yeah I like this approach a lot. Could even tighten it so only abandoned wreck fields spawn a salvage site, or have them auto abandon 30 mins before they are due to despawn
The problem with that is all the folks who are too busy with their lives to abandon their wrecks before they warp off to the next battle site.
And sure, you could limit it to the last 30 min, but Iâd say giving them 1 hr and then giving the general public 1 hr before the wrecks automatically disappear after 2 hrs, is fair.
)