As I mentioned earlier, for alphas or those who don’t wanna buy the noctis, a destroyer is comparable to the noctis.
When mission running for myself, I used mtu’s and a noctis. Had it fitted for straight salvaging and not tractoring, since the mtu’s had everything pulled in.
The reason a Noctis is barely any more useful than a destroyer with 8 salvagers is that the MTUs were introduced which made a tractor bonus on the salvaging ship less relevant.
If MTUs were removed, the Noctis would again be the absolute king of salvaging.
this is exactly my point, the noctis is only marginally better than a destroyer and infact the exploration frigates such as magnate and heron and such STILL give better agency for people who want to salvage than that cheap fit destroyer
there is no point spending 100 mil on a noctis when it doesn’t even do the same job, you can easily buy a destroyer and fit it out and drop an MTU and play the waiting game.
if the scale of progression here is meant to be Rifter → Magnate → Noctis (which is just an example of course)
but the magnate is greater than the noctis
and there is also a cheaper alternative to the noctis
which works on the same level as a rifter, which grants you the same agency in the salvager role as a noctis
what is the point in buying the noctis?
i think its safe to say that if you want people to progress from these small exploration frigates to the noctis, the noctis could do with some healthy buffs, other wise you’re throwing your ISK away when you could just buy a destroyer, some lasers and a MTU for a fraction of the cost.
i mean, i want to be able to fly my noctis in game and know its worth flying and not a 100 mil hunk of scrap metal with nothing in the hold. seems players can fit a destroyer with lasers and an MTU and get good results.
if your Retriever gave you less ore than a venture, would you bother to train into it?
if your astero granted you the same scanning capacity as a rifter, would you bother to train into it?
if your noctis gives you less agency to perform the role it is intended for, would you train into it?
so why by a noctis when you could just fit up a cheapo destroyer
as i’ve said, seems like its worth giving the noctis some healthy and long needed improvements.
people can still use MTU’s in their battleships or can happily drop several at different sites in a magnate.
but the noctis should be able to troust all these when it comes to its agency and efficency.
it should be able to find a combat site, warp in, clean up and move on.
i’m not saying the noctis is bad, i’m not saying it needs to be removed or MTU’s need to be removed, but what i am saying is, there is almost no point to it as it currently stands due to these alternatives.
so why not just give it a bonus to combat scan strength and maybe a slightly faster salvage time then a exploration frigate.
would make a lot more sense to upgrade into a ship that functionally was superior to its frigate counter part.
it would need only minor tweeks, it would be worth the investment and everyone can keep their MTU’s and cheapo destroyer fits.
Because the Noctis can salvage faster, has a larger cargo hold for loot and salvage and has bandwidth for salvage drones.
If your Orca gave you less opportunities to travel through wormhole space, would you bother using that instead of a Porpoise?
If your Prospect gave you less warp core stability than a Venture, would you bother to train into it?
If your Occator gave you a slower align time than a Nereus, would you bother to train into it?
If your Helios gave you less high slots than an Imicus, would you bother to train into it?
Not everything about a bigger or higher tier ship is supposed to be an improvement. In fact, often the cheaper ship has some benefits that make it better in certain situations. Usually the price, but many times other things as well.
noctis has the same salvage speed as an exploration frigate
given the exploration frigates scan bonus it allows players to scan down combat sites, get in and start salvaging (which provides that smooth independant salvage experiance i have been talking about)
sure if its designed for a different role or purpose or a varient role or purpose within that group.
seems like you’re now tripping over your own words because it seems like you don’t want players to upgrade but are happy to for them to buy ships and fits equal to something bigger and better within the role group but not actually buy the specialist ship
if you want players to go from exploration frigate to notics
the noctis has to be superior to its predecessor, just because it can tractor over a large area does not automatically make it superior.
when a magnate can scan down someone in a site and warp in and either drop an MTU or begin salvaging. in fact as part of its very purpose and design the exploration ships have bonuses to scanning
in a noctis, I have “NO bonuses to scanning”, making the task “MORE DIFFICULT” and thus “REMOVING PLAYER AGENCY”
yet a noctis is an “IMPROVEMENT”
there for it is suppose to be better than its exploration frigate counter parts.
the tractor beams are fine, but it needs to be able to at least match these frigates otherwise it fails within its conception this in the real world would be considered “a design flaw” like building a car with nowhere to put the wheels or a building with no doors or windows.
there is no sense in paying 100 mil for a ship + fittings which gives you less agency to do the thing it is designed for. when there are cheap exploration frigates which do it better.
and yet we have frigates which grant a dedicated salvager more agency than someone in a noctis.
Not sure if you noticed, but the Noctis has 8 high slots while an exploration frigate has only 3. Also, the Noctis can use 5 salvage drones rather than 4 of the Imicus. The Noctis can salvage faster.
Noctis does not have to be superior to its predecessor as it is not a T2 version of a T1 ship. It has a different role.
Not only that, but with my noctis, the mods run just one cycle and the wreck is salvaged
false, it has a higher chance of success due to the variable factors of more lasers and more drones, each laser individual laser and drone still salvages at the same speed, you just have more lasers to focus for higher success, further more this ultimately means firing more lasers on one target rather than spreading your fire out across multiple wrecks
the salvage lasers still have to finish their cycle before you’re informed if you’ve been successful or not
further more you have to lock onto wrecks and tractor them in, which further takes time and each salvage laser takes the same time as the exploration frigate.
noctis has 8 high slots
so you have 4 tractors and 4 salvagers
cool, sure you can pull the wrecks in from across the field but this is only 1 more salvage laser then its exploration frigate counter part
which as i keep mentioning has the ability to scan down combat sites which the noctis has a more difficult time doing
you’re having to both ways again
a noctis is not the king of salvaging when a smaller ship has more agency in the same role or in a knock off destroyer fit.
it statistically has a higher level of success due to the factors it doesn’t “salvage faster.”
it also lacks the same qualities and functionality as a much cheaper exploration frigate
if the noctis is meant to be the king of salvage it shouldn’t have less agency than exploration frigates regarding scanning down combat sites.
yes its role is that its meant to be the king of salvage, literally no job too small and intended for also large battles,
so why does an exploration frigate get to scan down battles but a noctis doesn’t?
again, design flaw.
needs a buff
give the players the agency do find this stuff themselves.
yes you can scan without it, but it seems pointless to invest in this role when an exploration frigate is a fraction of the cost and is only by a thin margin under performs a noctis
Give MTUs and Mobile Depots the ability to launch for fleet not only for self.
Because neither are designed to scan down sigs for salvage.
It just so happens players often leave MTUs next to their salvage, which allows a smart player with combat probes to scan it down and ninja-salvage. Emergent gameplay, not designed gameplay.
As you are asking about ship design here, that’s why: the game is not designed for scanning down wrecks to salvage.
Also, again: you do not need scanning bonuses to use a probe scanner on your ship. Noctis can easily scan down MTUs as well, the sig of a MTU is huge. I just wonder if it’s wise to use a slow ship incapable of combat and worth more than a hundred million ISK to do something that may anger other players, such as ninja salvaging.
Explo frigates are good at in-and-out actions (ninja salvaging, data/relic sites, etc) which is in line with their cost - inexpensive ship to put at risk in higher-potential-for-loss situations.
The Noctis is good for battlefield clearing as part of a fleet, meant for a long-haul engagement with a single location.
These are entirely different roles that have different bonus needs. The Noctis does not have a reason to horn in on the ninja salvage arena when it is meant to fulfill a completely different role.
Power creep is bad.
I covered this earlier in my post, that was an over sight on my part and since then I have been talking about scanning down combat sites
yes we’ve already established this, I’ve held my hand up to my mistake near the very beginning and have been talking about scanning down combat sites.
I genuinely don’t know why you’re so obsessed with scanning down MTU’s when i’m talking about scanning down combat sites.
again this is established but again stastically it is only marginally better depending on load out and how you split your fire with lasers.
why should “the king of salvage” be made to loose out on smaller and profitable revenue streams, a explo frigate will still have the speed bonus, but first come first served.
in order to be able to find these combat sites you have to be able to scan them down, its not about weather or not an MTU is in there, it is about efficency at performing your role as a player.
explo frigates are designed to zip in and zip out
but the king of salvage should be able to find a combat site faster and easier than an explo frigate no?
might be slower getting there but it should be recognised as a power house rather than marginally better
given the noctis cannot scan down sites, how is it meant to find these big battlefields in order to clean salvage them?
seems like it has a design flaw.
Most combat sites do not need to be scanned down.
And even if they do need to be scanned down, they need to be cleared of pirate ships first which neither of the salvagers can do on their own.
You may be able to combat probe the combat ship that is currently doing the site, but then we’re in ninja salvaging territory again.
See above: scanning down combat sites is useless for a salvaging ship.
Either the site shows up in your probe window, in which case you need to clear it first and the salvaging ship is useless.
Or the site is done and you have wrecks, in which case the site doesn’t show up anymore and cannot be scanned down.
The only thing that can be scanned down in that case is the MTU, if the player doing the site left one there.
I do not see how 8 high slots is ‘marginally better’ than 3. How more than triple the cargo space for loot and salvage is ‘marginally better’.
I don’t know your definition of ‘marginally’ but I would call it ‘significantly better’.
Noctis should not find salvage sites faster. Noctis should salvage it faster with it’s 8 high slots and 5 small drones.
Finding salvage is about knowing where battle took place, as salvage is never the first step in a process. Either you or your friends, or maybe some other people created a battlefield full of wrecks and all you need is to have a salvager on standby to clean it up when you know it’s there.
8 high slots are great but not when 50% of them are taken up with tractor beams
this only gives your one more slot which fires at the same speed as your explo frigate.
if you focus fire all your salvagers you have a statistical edge over the explo frigates.
salvage sites don’t exisit, better scan down MTU’s
it does not “salvage faster” either, it only has a statistical edge due to high slots and drones
so the things you say it should not do, it can’t do
and the things you say it should do
it also can’t do
what i have been saying this whole time
is that it should have the ability to scan down combat sites/missions.
insert whining about ninja salvaging here
ninja salvage is the key way people salvage, the noctis needs to be able to meet the same scan capability to find people in missions or combat sites.
so lets move off the how many slots a noctis has aspect here and talk more about emergant gameplay
given recent events in the game such as the triglavian invasion and such, it would be practical for a noctis to be able to scan down an active combat site, where say an incursion or invasion is taking place.
much like in narija
it should be able to save the location from the probe scanner once it has been scanned and then warp to it when its safe and clean up?
yet… you seem to think that this is something the noctis SHOULDN’T be able to do
despite the fact this is EXACTLY what is meant to do?
being able to scan down big battles and then go in AFTER and clean them up.
I fail to understand your logic here
The Player Base: “a noctis is designed to clean up after big battles”
Noctis: has no way of independantly finding active battles to clean up after
Logical solution: “give it a bonus to combat scan strength so it can”
The Player Base: “this is ninja salvage and you can’t do that!”
Logical point: “going into / returning to a site and then salvaging is ninja salvage, ninja salvage is clearing up other peoples combat sites/missions and is how 99% of all salvage in the game is even done”
additonal points:
so logically a noctis should be able to scan down big on going battles and save them
scale of the battle doesn’t change the fact the noctis does not have the ability to scan down mission sites or players actively engaged in pvp. were as its explo frigate counter part DOES
even if you took out the concept of the mission sites / combat sites
the exploration frigate would in a bench test be able to out perform the noctis regarding scanning and accessing information about active battles
the explo frigate could theoretically sneak into the big battle site and take a little amount of salvage before having to book it out of there or risk getting popped.
how is it suppose to clean up these big battles if it doesn’t have the facilities to find these battles faster than a rifter?
i mean this is literally the thing its designed for and you’re saying it shouldn’t be allowed to do it.
i’m not saying it has to be faster than a frigate, but in order to find such large scale combat sites, it needs to have bonuses to scan so you can find an active battle. FW is an example
the trig invasions are another
small gang war fare as well as waring factions in high / low sec are also applicable here without combat / mission sites.
the noctis moves slow, it doesn’t have the luxory is snooping around slowly like a sloth trying to find something, it needs to know where it is and then go get it and it needs to know before the frigate which implies it needs a bonus to scan strength which is higher than the explo frigates.
Seems like you’re doing multiple things wrong.
The key way people salvage is by (1) clearing a combat site with a MTU out, bookmarking the MTU and (2) then warping in later in their salvaging ship to clean the pile of wrecks.
Sometimes you have a friend clear out the combat site and give you the bookmark, after which you can clean the site.
In either situation you do not need to scan down the site as you already know exactly where the wrecks are.
Ninja salvaging, where you look for a salvage field someone else made and steal the salvage of their wrecks before they come back to clean it themselves, is a rare occurance. For this specific playstyle you could use a probe launcher, but this is definitely not common for salvaging. Common salvaging has no need for a probe launcher at all (unless it happens in WH space 
).
The solution is simple, CCP created this issue when they added MTU.
Remove MTU and go back to good old teamwork.
this is why i mentioned earlier it depends on your load out and the loadout i have used in this discussion is only an example because it evenly splits the tractor ability and salvage ability evenly
additionally though it only confirms that you have a statistical edge you don’t actually salvage faster
it does not
I actually have to agree with you on this one i remember talking with people about it
there was a big community push to make improvements to the noctis
CCP didn’t wanna do it but gave us MTU’s
I wouldn’t go that far.
however in the interest of emergant game play, given there are now
you as a player in a noctis, should have the ability to scan down and find large fleet fights happening in system, you can then save these locations and warp back to them later and clean them up
the noctis is designed to be able to clean up big battles
lets put some in so a noctis can do what its actually suppose to do
lets also give the players the ability to find these locations independantly while additionally maintaining the explo frigate salvage which doesn’t need to be changed
but also by doing this doesn’t reduce any of the other previous methods of salvaging in combat sites, missions / finding mtu’s etc.
it will however give the noctis the ability to do the thing its actually designed to do.
I’m sure in time as things go on the war between trigs and edencomm will increase and further increasing scaling combat will occour, it would be great if salvagers could actively scan these battles down and mop up afterwards.
adding a level of agency and immersion into the game
while allowing independance to occour within a role which previously only happens based on player dependancy.
doesn’t stop people still working as a team
actually would add content for new bros to learn from experienced players and allow the old vets to teach the new salvage bros and strengthen the community more in its favour.
there is far more to this then simply how many high slots a ship has.
No.
Again, different ships for different roles. No one ship should excel every permutation of a task. The Noctis is the king of large-scale salvaging, suited to partnering with other ships (either multiboxing or with actual other players) to maximize value from fleet engagements (PvP or PvE), where large volumes of wrecks are produced and cleaned up rapidly by a single dedicated ship. Meanwhile, explo frigates are designed to nip in and out of high-risk environments where snatching one or two rarer items can pay for the entire ship. The Noctis has no business in that situation.
This would be like arguing that mining barges should have bonuses to make them better at ninja gas mining, when that is the purpose of the Venture. Bigger ships are not always better than smaller ships in roles specifically suited to the low cost and high stakes activities of the smaller ships.
again you are missing my point, I’ve moved away from the concept of scanning down missions and combat sites
say you’re a new bro into the game, you’ve omega’d up, trained salvage and all the skills and you get yourself a shiney new noctis
which is designed for the ability of finding and cleaning up after fleet battles.
so how can you clean up after a fleet battle
if you cannot independantly find it.
no other role in the game requires you to be dependant on another person and even when it comes to salvaging you can warp into a site blap everything, drop an MTU and come back.
talking strictly immersion here, whatever ship you fly you should have the agency to undock and go do the thing the ship is designed for, equipment and skill level depending naturally.
so if you can’t find a people engaging each other with a noctis.
it doesn’t do the thing its intended for.
you would have to be involved in the fight or find it with another ship and then come back.
this approach does not create immersion in the game, nor does it allow for players to have the agency they need to salvage independantly should they choose too.
without it, the noctis does not do what it is intended to do and requires players to switch ships or work in teams.
explo pilots can scan things down on their own and go off and do their thing.
miners are the same can go mine roids in belts or gas clouds or even sneaky ninja mine from a popped moon det.
combat pilots the same they can fly off and engage people as and how they like and deal with those consequences.
salvagers require co-dependancy.
this needs a fix.
even if two npc factions engaged each other and had a decent battle, which would be cool to watch / be part of.
if i were an independant player in a noctis, i’m new to the game and i don’t talk to anyone in my NPC Corporation, i should be able to scan down the battle going on and come to it in my ship
which is designed for this very purpose.
i mean this is literally the thing is does and you’re saying it shouldn’t be allowed to do it because its a different role
when again. this is literally what its designed for.
as the changing dynamic and background state of the game changes and progresses with new factions, new NPC’s and encounters, sov changes and such and rebalances, is it really too much to ask to say
“hey this ship which is meant to do this one thing… mind if we actually have it do the one thing as advertised?”
doesn’t seem like an issue to me.
as I have said in other posts, anything which takes away a players agency to actively perform a task in game is a bad design
is a noctis is the king of salvage, it needs to act like it, having more high slots doesn’t make it the king when a destroyer can have the same number of lasers and the same scan strength.
would be more notable to have a bump in scan strength to find ships, this would require active scanning but thats only part of the fun.
Says who?
This is an MMO - lots of ships are meant to be uses as part of a group rather than independently.
If your whole argument is that Noctis pilots should be buffed for solo play, you are doing it wrong.