how to salvage?

[mattig]

hello all,

i'm trying to understand this salvage system. I just completed a missing with a griffin intact enough to salvage. And its 22 shares. but my salvage, with the salvage maxed out at 4 boxes, is 15 shares (couldn't go any higher). And this is like the third time its happened to me. How does this salvage system work? What am I missing to be able to salvage mechs like this?

[Toki]

Do missions which allow you to allocate more salvage points.
Improve your reputation to get more points to allocate.
I'd also recommend one of the mods which lets you get 5 salvage points per 1 negotiation point used.

[Capt.EO]

imo youre better off just maxing out the cash if you can keep your damage to a minimum , salvage is usually low tier junk , mechs too. use one or two shares for damage insurance if you want to but again if you can keep your team mech damage low enough its better just to take the $$ most times . then go take the cash and buy the good stuff .

[Sentient_Toaster]

High reputation can get you up to +5 points to allocate. If it's that the mission itself had low caps per category, would suspect that this is based on mission difficulty rating.

If you blow away more of the mech, it might affect the odds of the mech being salvagable but it'll also reduce the required shares should it actually be salvagable. At the other end, higher difficulty missions and multi-mission operations net you more salvage (unused salvage points carry over between the missions in multi-mission ops, so this is great if the last mission is likely to have some nice juicy 'mechs; not so great if it's Demolition and your game plan is to ignore the enemies as much as possible and just run around spraying machine guns at buildings).

https://www.nexusmods.com/mechwarrior5mercenaries/mods/543
Haven't personally tried that mod, but it's supposed to let you outright purchase salvage items, going over your allocated salvage points at a cost of C-bills.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2516303017
goes in the other direction, making each negotiation point give 5 salvage instead of 3 as the previous response recommended.

[MAD-3R_Marauder]

Was about to mention that mod (yes, I'm using the BetterSalvageShares mod), because, let's face it, a salvage system that punishes you for head-shots is pretty stupid.

[necro55]

Yeah, I got it too after a mission where ill say dumb luck had me head cap an atlas, marauder mk2 and one other assault in one mission with a twin gauss shot, and with every point in salvage and high rep with the faction so i had a lot of points and i couldn't get a single one of them.

Yes i did get 3 assaults and yes it was dumb luck to headcap 3 all in a single shot each.

But yeah that mod is really helpful.

[Bovril Brigadier]

Originally posted by Sentient_Toaster:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2516303017

I really should get round to publicly releasing a copy of that which works in campaign.
Though I should note even with increased salvage shares you can find that you are still locked out early game of obtaining salvage so its not a perfect fix.
A better fix would if PGI change the salvage mechanics to be a lot more like HBS Battletech.

[Valen]

Do not rely only on salvage to improve your Lance strength.

[Bovril Brigadier]

Originally posted by Valen:

Do not rely only on salvage to improve your Lance strength.

It is canon that if you worked for the Capellans around this time period you wouldn't get any salvage. They'd pinch it all for themselves.

[Thermal Lance]

Originally posted by Valen:

Do not rely only on salvage to improve your Lance strength.

Heh. Still nice for a challenge run. :)

[Cpl.Facehugger]

Originally posted by mattig89ch:

hello all,

i'm trying to understand this salvage system. I just completed a missing with a griffin intact enough to salvage. And its 22 shares. but my salvage, with the salvage maxed out at 4 boxes, is 15 shares (couldn't go any higher). And this is like the third time its happened to me. How does this salvage system work? What am I missing to be able to salvage mechs like this?

So, there's two options here. First, download mods to change this, because the salvage system we have is hot garbage. People have already linked to some that do a lot to make it less awful, and I know YAML has a salvage system that works a lot more like the HBS BT salvage system with you collecting parts of mechs and assembling them. I imagine merctech does too, but I don't know if merctech is updated for the melee DLC or no, and either way I've never used it so I can't say.

Or, you can game the salvage system.

See, the game's salvage system works like this:

Headshots have a high chance for the mech to appear in the salvage list, followed by leg shots, followed by coring the mech. I don't recall the specific numbers offhand, but you're a lot more likely (70% maybe?) to get the mech showing up in your salvage list if you pop its head. This means that if you want a mech, the best chance to get it is to headshot it.

However, how much a salvagable mech costs in terms of salvage points is dependent on how damaged it is when it comes in.

What this means is that you can artificially lower how many points it costs by crippling it beforehand. Tear off the arms, pop one of the legs, then go in for the head to maximize your chance of getting it in the salvage list and possibly being able to afford it.

If it sounds like a lot of work and munchkin nonsense just to get a mech, it is. It's a travesty that a mercenary in 3015 who dumped all his negotiating talent into salvage has to play silly games like this in order to salvage a damn mech.

[cszolee79]

Originally posted by Strayed:

A better fix would if PGI change the salvage mechanics to be a lot more like HBS Battletech.

While PGI sometimes adds stuff that mods already have, this would be too big of a change for the base game.