Combat scan down other peoples npc wrecks to salvage?

Council Of Stellar Management Assembly Hall
1

Where do i go to ask for a new feature? Or give feedback?

I dont know, i come here.

Example:

Players do pve everywhere in the game world, such as high sec, low sec, combat anomalies, DED combat sites, security missions, etc etc

They leave the wreck.

BUT

wreck show up on D-scan

aha! sneaky sneaky!

I want to combat scan probe the wrecks, warp to that wreck / deadspace location, where there are most likely more wrecks, because the area was probably a combat anomaly, security mission, or DED combat site, and salvage all those wrecks and loot them all OM NOM NOM NOM

The person who made those wrecks abandoned them. Didnt even bookmark them. Gone. Reduced to ashes.

So i want to combat probe the wrecks down and loot and salvage them for myself!

Tried already, didnt work, wrecks show up on D-scan but can not be combat probed down.

1 Like
2

Hi Varrra,

This is a common request, as you’re definitely not the first to see wrecks on dscan that you cannot reach.

It is only natural that people then ask themselves and the game “what if I could reach them?”. And then probes come to mind.

As this is such a common request I’ve already answered the same question many times in the past, so here’s the things that need to be considered:

The negative consequences of reaching wrecks with probes

Combat probing currently has a healthy balance.

Players are able to counter combat probes by fitting sensor boosters and signal amplifiers, implants and more modules to reduce their signature and increase their sensor strength to make it much, much harder for combat probes to be able to scan their ships.

Players can also spend a significant amount of extra ISK for their MTUs to increase their sensor strength by a factor 3 for ‘packrat’ and 6 for ‘magpie’ versions, so that hostiles have trouble probing not only their ships but also their MTUs:

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Now if people could simply ‘combat probe the wrecks’ all of this delicate balance and gameplay of tools and counter-tools is thrown out of the window.

Combat probing balance, gone.

The next issue and one that isn’t often talked about is that despawn mechanics are not fun to interact with. Despawning things in games are a necessary evil, as things cannot linger forever but seeing things despawn in your face is jarring and bad gameplay. The least bad despawn design is to make things despawn after they stopped being relevant for players.

Wrecks in a site for example stay for 2 hours so that someone who has been creating those wrecks has plenty of time to loot and salvage them, but eventually they’re considered ‘no more relevant’ and will despawn.

Your suggestion is to make these fields of wrecks, of which many are likely end-of-life and thus about to despawn, suddenly relevant again for players by allowing players to warp to these wreck fields.

This will cause far more players to see stuff despawn right from under their nose, and is very frequently going to result in frustration and disappointment. In other words, not fun gameplay.

Alternative recommendations to access wrecks

If you wish to find wrecks as salvager you can already easily do so.

You could have access to that field of wrecks you see now on dscan if you had done a bit of preparation:

  • bookmark sites that people are currently running. Once someone is finished in a site and left wrecks behind, you now have a bookmark to those wrecks!
  • or just bookmark all sites in your systems
  • combat probe the player doing those sites if he’s in a site without signature
  • combat probe the MTU of the player doing those sites, or the MTUs left behind
  • cooperate with the players creating wrecks, ask them to leave bookmarks behind for you in a shared folder
  • create your own wrecks by running your own sites

Lastly you could triangulate the location of the wrecks with your warp drive, in-warp bookmarks and your directional scanner. While this is a fun exercise to kill AFK players at a safe or find a mystery container in space at a safe, I probably wouldn’t spend the time to get to a site with NPC wrecks containing a few million ISK worth of salvage. But it is possible!

Salvaging doesn’t need us to be able to combat probe the wrecks. In fact, I think it’s better for the game if we cannot do that.

2 Likes
How can I find wrecks in the middle of space?
3

The most relevant issue is: You’d suddenly have thousands or even tenthousands of “wreck signatures” in any given system where is a high level of missionrunning happening. So, expect your client to freeze or your connection to drop the moment you launch your set of combat probes…

It would be a total mess updating their scan-results every time someone does a scan cycle in that system, for what gain exactly? And basically every minute a 100 new ones appear from active people shooting other NPCs…

1 Like
4

Yeah, you have a good point.

Theres another idea, where players who are PvE-ing and leaving behind wrecks can specifically label their wrecks as not only abandoned, but also warpable, along with a timer showing how long until it despawns.

This would mean wrecks would be abandoned, people could warp to them for easy salvaging, and there is a timer for when they will despawn.

Maybe, 30 minutes before they despawn, they stop being warpable to.

Though the idea might have bad effects and consequences for the game, idk, i dont have a degree in eveonology.

Might help with creating a system where people who do not want to be combat probed down still have their tools to make it harder to be combat probed down, but people who dont care about the wrecks and dont mind if other people salvage and loot them, can specifically label the wrecks as abandoned and warp-able, when they leave the area and the pve encounter is finished and everyone left.

5

The problem with this idea is that it creates inconsistent behaviour.

Currently:

  • you see wrecks on dscan and cannot get to them unless you prepared some bookmarks

Your idea:

  • you see some wrecks on dscan and cannot yet get to them if the timer isn’t gone
  • you see some wrecks on dscan and you can never get to them if the creator did not abandon them
  • you see some wrecks on dscan and you can scan them

Or in other words, you never know whether you can warp to things you see on dscan or not, and do not know why either.

Maybe it’s just me, but I very much dislike inconsistent behaviour in games that cause me to never know what I can do and cannot do. I’d rather be told that I cannot do something than to have to try doing it every time only to be told most of the time that it is impossible.

You find it frustrating now that you cannot warp to wrecks you see on dscan.

I honestly think it’s going to be far more frustrating to see wrecks on dscan and you do not know why you cannot warp to them now and if you need to wait for them to become available or whether they’ll just despawn before then.

And all of that still results in warping to end-of-life wrecks which are nearly guaranteed to frustratingly despawn on you multiple times a play session.

In addition to that, ‘abandoning wrecks’ is not something I’d do when I do combat sites. I have no reason to help other players to my wrecks, they can make their own. And if I wish to cooperate with a friendly player who wants to salvage my wrecks I can simply drop a bookmark for them so only they can access it and can access it instantly instead of waiting until after a timer.

No, I think the current situation is simpler, better, encourages more cooperation and is much less frustrating.

1 Like
6

Does anyone run around chasing gankers to then scan down their wrecks? Blue loot is safe to salvage.

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The good news is that you can scan down the mission runners whilst they are in the mission, then warp to them in the mission, and bookmark the wrecks, wait until they have finished, warp back to the bookmark and voila.

This is an ancient and storied profession called ninja salvaging. To do it you need a T1 scan ship, with combat probes and a salvager, so a Probe, Imicus, Magnate, Heron, Astero.

Find a system with wrecks on DSCAN and capsuleers in space. Launch combat probes and set your filter to BS and BC class hulls, probe down a mission runner. Warp to them, or more likely to the first gate, if there is a gate take it, cloak as soon as you land, so the rats can’t attack, bookmark a wreck, if there is another gate wait until the mission runner takes it and a bit longer, you could loot/salvage the 1st room while you wait, then follow them through, cloak and bookmark a wreck, rinse and repeat until all rooms are clear or bookmarked, then finish up the looting/salvaging by warping to your bookmarks.

Of course this is a criminal activity, and you will go flashy, and everyone in system will be able to attack you, but that is part of the fun. You have a cloak and some safes, so you should be fine.

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salvaging will no produce the flashy status only looting.

1 Like
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True, if you only salvage it’s all completely legal.