Ship Salvage Help

[Liberty Or Death]

I bought the arm to salvage derelict ships. How does one salvage a ship without causing a potential disaster? I have tried it three times and all three attempts almost resulted in a catastrophe. The first attempt: The arm reaches out and grabs the ship and I am able to bring the whole mess to a complete stop. Great I think to myself, just run this thing home for some payola. My ship needed to do a 90 degree turn to initiate the jump engine and my salvage goes flying off into space before I jump. Second attempt: I grab hold of the derelict while I have it targeted and both ships go into a "death spiral" because my auto pilot apparently does not know I am doing a ship retrieval. The derelict went flying deep into the rings and I went home empty handed again with a busted thruster. The third attempt was similar to the second but there was a life pod nearby that seems to only go in your ship from one direction and apparently the arm is useless in the help of it's retrieval. Can someone please tel me how to get the salvage arm to work correctly...

[Koder]

Salvaging derelicts is tricky and requires some serious piloting skills. Here is what I like to do:

- You'll notice that your forward thrust hits the derelict and pushes it away, giving you near-zero braking power. I just disable my forward thrusters completely when approaching derelict.
- I use either NDVTT or NAGHET 5020 for thrust. Both have variable thrust which is important for final approach. VTT offers much more thrust, but 5020's have gimbals which allow you to slow down using your side thrusters.
- Tune your autopilot rotation velocity to low value, so you won't loose ship with a miss-click.
- I approach manually to have full control over thrust.
- Don't ever try to to brake after you connect your arm - it won't work in any meaningful way.
- Allow your momentum to carry you around the ship after you connect (or add a bit of rotation thrust), get on the other side of it and then hit autopilot stop to get your ships to full stop.
- Align to exit vector manually before engaging astrogation.

[Liberty Or Death]

Thank you for the advice here and on your discord. I did some searching on discord and saw your past postings on salvage advice. After reading them I have had 3 successful salvages and accomplished the job of threading the needle, retrieving two life pods. I look forward to more additions to this game.

[doxie]

Ok, I'm late to this part, but what arm did you use? I have an arm, and I can't seem to collect anything but ore.

[SirusTheMadDJ]

Originally posted by doxie:

Ok, I'm late to this part, but what arm did you use? I have an arm, and I can't seem to collect anything but ore.

The manipulator arm. High stress hardpoint. I believe you need to make sure it can grab "unmarked" in the geologist's screen, which is what it's set to by default. If it's grabbing solid ringoids, it'll grab the ship.

If it's stationary or slow moving, I tend to try and grab it facing left as slow as I can. Otherwise, spin with it, using the main torch as the brake if needed, and if you have to turn when hooked on, keep a very close eye on it's reactor. Very short bursts, and wait a few seconds afterwards.

[doxie]

Woot! That was it, the unmarked was deselected because I was tired of all the visual clutter. Now not only did I score a ship, bu I found 3 dead bodies and scary music on a dive and brought them back with me. Thanks! I'm rich now!

[The River Acis]

Unforutnately I've yet to successfully salvage anything that isn't 100% stationary when I approach. And even then, it's only with about a 25% success rate.
The requirement to fully stop before I can fast-travel seems impossible to counter. All I get is a ton of damage, for no real gain.

Has anyone found a reliable way to either circumvent the requirement for 0 velocity before fast travel, or perhaps stop without the movements of your arm causing enough to screw the thing up? Even with front thrusters off, it doesn't do much of anything.

[Dr Whom]

If you have the arm - all you need to do is fly up to it, grab it and then plot a course home.

you'll get a message saying you've acquired the ship.

If you have the arm and it tries to get you to play a text-based event where you choose options, always choose "It's too dangerous, we have to tow this piece of junk"
If you don't have the arm, then the only way to acquire the wreck is to take your chances with the (pretty cool) scenarios.

Happy hunting.

[Singularity Compond]

the few times ive attempted this. the ship comes alive after seeming dead for the whole slowing and grappling process. or with a similar situation i manage to pull it home but i get nothing for it.

[hev]

Originally posted by Singularity Compond:

the few times ive attempted this. the ship comes alive after seeming dead for the whole slowing and grappling process. or with a similar situation i manage to pull it home but i get nothing for it.

sounds like you're trying to grab a live ship, and a majority of them you won't be able to get anyway, as any ship registered to a resident of Enceladus Prime (ordinary miners, Vilcy, racers, etc) will be returned to them, and you'll be given a reward worth 10% of the ship's value at the time you brought it back, with damage taken into account.

if you want to get a ship for yourself, it has to be classified as a derelict (hail error from the get go and causes the mystery music), or it to have an invalid transponder (pirates and pirate-related hardware)

[Singularity Compond]

ty hev thats kinda what i figured was happening. thought maybe becuase its a pirate vessal id be able to claim it. but guess not. however if they open fire at me, they lose their right to there stuff if they were willing to turn mine into shrapnal. ill turn theirs into scrap xD