Salvaging and Targeting

[EnVenta]

Trying to salvage even a stationary wreckage with a manual-aim salvage laser is an exercise in masochism. The parts of the wreck are minute, sometimes the wreck is spinning, and minute-for-minute, I had all but given up on salvaging because of its grossly inferior returns -- even with the potential for turret and upgrade drops -- compared to mining.

I can much more confidently mine some dense nodes, sell their output, and buy some decent hardware in much less time and frustration than it takes to meander through some wrecks with a salvage laser hoping for some maybe-useful drop that I maybe-might-want-but-usually-not. At least with the mine-sell-buy approach I know what I'm getting for my time investment.

I've taken to independently targeting salvage lasers so I can go make coffee while the turret eats the wreck, but when I come back the stupid thing is shooting off into space. It just sits there, forever, wasting my time, shooting its worthless little self into space, missing the target and doing nothing to correct itself.

As a piece of Early Access summary feedback: Salvaging mechanics are garbage right now. Garbage. With a capital GARBAGE.

As a side note, maybe this is also a problem with independent targeting? If it can't hit a stationary target 0.8km away, how accurate are the combat turrets? I rather like the autofire combat turrets except they keep shooting (and killing >:( ) my allies.

(see what I did there? salvage? garbage? ... eh, nvm)

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Salvaging most parts of a wreck is slow and not rewarding.. The best way to salvage is to focus on valuable components like generators. They are usually surrounded by armored boxes, but are otherwise very easy to salvage considering how much they are worth.

If you want to cut wrecks apart for drops you're gonna want more than one salvage laser.

[Chaoslink]

Eh, salvaging ships is weak. Salvaging stations can yield more than 10 million of a resource in salvage in the same time mining can yield 500k. They also don't suffer from rotations due to their large mass and all that. Just avoid salvaging ships and only salvage the glowy bits you find behind armor. That is where 97% of the material is.

[BaileyLemons]

It sounds like you're near the beginning of your game - ships are small and therefore not worth many resources, compared to asteroids. But later on, it is worth it to use your salvaging lasers to cut out the generators, shields, and other valuable blocks. Pirates and Xsotan are rarely big enough to be worth it, even in late-game, but some faction ships and boss ships have big blocks worth tens of thousands of scrap.

Sometimes, if I destroy a ship that has thousands of tiny blocks, I'll shoot at it with my main weapons. Not to drop scrap, but to destroy as many blocks as possible quickly to try to get turrets and systems to drop.

The other time it can be worth it is with fighters. Set a carrier with 120 salvage fighters in a scrapyard, or have it follow one jump behind your main ship. In this case the objective is the loot drops, since mining fighters are a faster way to get resources.

[TadaceAce]

I do agree all mining and salvage turrets should always have independent targeting. There's nothing fun about manually doing it.

But also just automate your salvage ship. They're not perfect but it's way better than doing it yourself. It's downright satisfying with a large carrier.

[Chaoslink]

Originally posted by TadaceAce:

I do agree all mining and salvage turrets should always have independent targeting. There's nothing fun about manually doing it.

But also just automate your salvage ship. They're not perfect but it's way better to do it yourself. It's downright satisfying with a large carrier.

Eh, salvaging is best done manually, but it is really only worth it on large ships and stations. You just target the glowy bits.

[EnVenta]

Originally posted by TheDeadlyShoe:

Salvaging most parts of a wreck is slow and not rewarding.. The best way to salvage is to focus on valuable components like generators. They are usually surrounded by armored boxes, but are otherwise very easy to salvage considering how much they are worth.

If you want to cut wrecks apart for drops you're gonna want more than one salvage laser.

Awesome name, btw...

Are you saying it's worthwhile, material-wise (given that salvaged material is twice as voluminous as mined material) to equip a high power direct fire salvage turret and look for the armored spots? I have noticed that certain parts of a craft yield a lot of scrap while others... don't. What you're describing sounds like a surgical removal of high value areas identified by armor plating and ignoring the rest (making direct fire salvage turrets the way to go in lieu of autofire).

How do you tell which parts are armored? On my own ship, the armor has a sort of camouflage pattern to it, but this isn't immediately apparent on the wrecks (maybe because the camo makes it hard to see? >:D). Target the bulkier spots? I'll try that

[Darenkel]

If you really don't want to salvage manually, I made an alternative. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1829065768

[EnVenta]

For ♥♥♥♥'s sake the salvaging autofire turrets are worthless! Guess I knew as much... going to play something else until 'they' fix this. What a lopsided steaming pile of ♥♥♥♥.

Going to use my server hardware for a mature game. Ergo, not Avorion

[Gollgo]

My flagship is loaded down with salvage fighters to clean the mess I make.
You could go even more automation and captain a salvage based ship and direct it to battlefields once the fighting dies down.

I tried manually salvaging once but lost interest, just like mining having a captain ship do it for me feels "right".

[LORDSOL]

there are wrecks with millions,when i first got to the rift i found a 16 million og wreck

[EnVenta]

Salvaging fighters do seem to be effective. Don't have xanion yet but can park near a wreck and let the little buggers do their thing. Disappointed that autofire salvaging turrets are a dud, but w/e, chalk it up to early access.

[Chaoslink]

Originally posted by tigris:

Salvaging fighters do seem to be effective. Don't have xanion yet but can park near a wreck and let the little buggers do their thing. Disappointed that autofire salvaging turrets are a dud, but w/e, chalk it up to early access.

Any automatic salvage method is inefficient since it will salvage all blocks. A vast majority of blocks aren't worth salvaging at all, offering 10 material for a lot of damage. All the valuable parts have very little health. Once you know what to look for, you can do it manually much faster than any current automated method until you have something like 120 salvage fighters or so.

[Gollgo]

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

until you have something like 120 salvage fighters or so.

People ever carry less than that? ;P

[hermes]

I’m going to be the guy who necro’s this thread because it’s where I ended up after doing a web search… in the interest of helping out others who arrive here: I recommend having some salvage lasers in your ship, and after combat just set your ship to Autopilot—> salvage sector, and go clean the house for 10-15mins! Admittedly I’m early game on my first run through so ymmv.

[rickcarson]

I don't think you should have necroed the thread, because carrying a ♥♥♥♥-ton of salvaging fighters _is_ the correct answer, even if it's not strictly canonical.

If for nothing else than with thousands of fragments you want hundreds of things shooting, not two or three. So once you get to the point where you have a ship with a complement of salvage fighters you'll see the difference. Even with as little as 2-3 rows of fighters you'll clear out sectors really fast. Which shouldn't be surprising - 36 guns vs 2 is 18x faster ...

¯\_(ツ)_/¯


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To build lots of fighters quickly, claim an asteroid in the trinium/xanion regions* make a station and then just have ONE row building at a time. There's a minimum time to construct a fighter (probably around 2-2.5 mins for most xanion regions fighters), so crank it to that and no further.

You can also have each ship that is going to have them building the fighters, and not bother cranking up their production rate. (Assuming you have lots of the available material and don't mind tying up 200+k of it in something that's going to take 2-3 hours to complete.)

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NB: if the ~25 minute time it takes to build a whole row is too fast (you have to cycle through all the stations clearing that row out by moving them to another row to continue, or have to bring in a ship to take them off, which is itself time consuming), feel free to add a second row of production to slow things down to a more manageable pace.

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If you need lots of a particular mineral for the fighters, note that map-mining missions allow you to select the mineral type(s) they focus on. So this can be a good way to get lots of xanion in a hurry (for instance) (though for most large ship designs on the workshop you'll want more trinium than you currently have (no matter how much you have).

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*NPC ships are smaller in iron/titanium areas than trinium/xanion - it's baked into the game (and is part of why/how pirates get tougher as you get closer to the centre), what this means for stations is that on the outer rims traders have really small cargo bays, which means that when they do turn up they hardly make any dents into your inventory (if you're trying to sell to NPCs).

Hence there's a strong argument to be made for building any station that you want to trade with NPCs in closer to the centre.