I’m all for more exploration stuff. In a past thread, I had discussed with someone about tying wrecks destroyed in system that weren’t salvaged within their 2 hour window to an exploration site filled with them.
The idea behind it, is rogue drones would go out and collect the wreck scraps and deposit them in the site. Not literally, that’s just the “story” the site would tell through it’s mechanics. A rogue drone rat would warp into the site, and then the wrecks that despawned within the system in the last 20 minutes would spawn next to the rat in the site.
Over a period of time, the site would salvage the wrecks within the site, depositing the salvage and modules into storage facilities that could be hacked by players in order to gain access to those resources.
The reason I like this idea, is because it ties the site to previous player activity. It also creates a location players can go to to create more player interaction. Some of those large nullsec battles have a lot of wrecks that might despawn over the course of the battle, so creating a location where they pop up again creates a resource players could fight over.
Also… shameless plug for an old thread of mine: The derelict mechanic I put together last year expands exploration and salvaging even further.
As for your ship idea, cov ops salvaging ships sound like an interesting addition to the game. If the salvaging crew mechanic I mention in the derelict thread came into the game, perhaps the ships could have a dedicated crew bay for them and their equipment.