Best way to salvage and gather materials

[Arcane]

I am wondering what is the best way to gather materials. I can disassemble a destroyed ship and gather junk using the crew. This works ok for a single ship.

Now I have two ships now: one fighter and one utility ship. Utility ship has a lot of storage. What is the best way to gather stuff from space on the utility ship? I can put 50 crew on the utility ship ofc but crew is an important resource. I want to put my crew on the fighting ships as much as possible.

I know I can transfer crew from fighter ship to utility ship. However doing it manually after each combat is very tedious. Any advice?

[⇧⇨⇩⇩⇩]

You could make your utility ship capable of executong a quick hyperjump and give it enough armor and point defence so it wont immediately die to an ambush,

Then you can leave your utility ship with a smaller crew behind to salvage stuff while your fighting ship goes ahead to fight new battles. After a battle, just leave a marker on wrecked ships for the utility ship to clean up later.
If the utility ship is ambushed, just jump it to the safety of a station. :)

[Bad4ssJC]

Perhaps someone should make mod for a tractor beam that can gather the stuff

[Bobucles]

Honestly, I've gone a long way just stuffing storage on my main battleship.
Salvaging takes a ton of crew labor, and combat takes a ton of crew labor. The majority of crew are on your main ship, so they're the only ship with enough crew to go salvaging.

I build a gigantic storage box and park it near NPC stations for defense. The NPCs act as a jump beacon, and the warehouse needs less than a crew quarters to stay functional.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by Arcane:

..
I know I can transfer crew from fighter ship to utility ship. However doing it manually after each combat is very tedious. Any advice?

When it comes down to distributing Crew and ways to compensate for low Crew numbers... there isn't any way around that mechanic. :)

What I do is clear a quadrant of the current Sector by doing all the missions for that area before moving on to others. Then, I let my miner/freighter go into that area and clear out the wreckage. BUT - I do not let it go too much further, by itself, than the system's asteroid belt. There can be enemies further out that don't have associated missions.

Since you can be completing other missions and just checking in on your utility ship from time to time, it's not a big deal to have a bit lower Crew numbers on that ship than you'd like. Be sure you have enough to run a Mining Laser, though - It speeds up the process of salvaging a great deal.

In the Early game, I really just directed my miner/freighter/salvage utility ship to salvage wrecks and didn't bother myself about how long it took it to do that due to low Crew numbers. Just keep plugging along and you'll be able to slowly add Crew to that ship to speed things up. Go finish some missions while it works, just as long as the area its in is relatively "safe." (Don't ever use it to go into unexplored areas unless it's got stellar Hyperjump rating and enough armor to take some hits while those Hyperdrives are spooling up.)

[Arcane]

Originally posted by Bobucles:

Honestly, I've gone a long way just stuffing storage on my main battleship.
Salvaging takes a ton of crew labor, and combat takes a ton of crew labor. The majority of crew are on your main ship, so they're the only ship with enough crew to go salvaging

This makes sense. It looks like going the way of a "Mothership" with a ton of firepower and a ton of storage is the way to go. I thought maybe I missed some mechanic that would allow to salvage with another ship with no crew.

I was hoping to maybe have a fleet of capable fighters instead.

[umop-apisdn]

My current tactics are to have a "combat ship" with 24 crew and a "salvage boat" that follows along behind with mining lasers and... everyone else.

30 or so crew can gather materials and components at an astounding rate, when assisted by mining lasers.

I'm starting to lean toward a more surgical combat style, and will be adding a couple smaller combat ships to take apart the tender bits from the enemy's sides and back while the "brawler" stands toe-to-toe, keeping "aggro". It appears as though leaving the airlocks intact and "capturing" via crew transfer means better salvage.

That being said, simply blowing every enemy to bits at first contact works quite well and the increased rate of ship destruction makes up for the lower-value loot tables. One of the things I love about this game is that there's not "one true answer" for anything.

[⇧⇨⇩⇩⇩]

Salvage is better with surgical strike combat... but its also veeery satisfying to ram someone and then fire your deck cannons oblitterating them in a single volley. :)