One area of the ED spectrum that is currently lacking as a career is salvage. With all the combat and bad piloting that goes on around the game you would think that there would be plenty of opportunity to go into the scrap trade.
At the moment there are no true reclamation ships that would allow such a career, maybe a Python or Anaconda would serve as a start for bigger stuff whilst smaller ships could just collect scraps.
There would need to be a shift in the way the game works ship-wise for salvage to be a viable opportunity. I would like to see salvage from the smallest chunks of metal to whole components up to recoverable hulls.
I was pondering how this could work, at least for whole ships. At the moment if a ship is destroyed in combat it is completely annihilated and the player is 'magically' transported back to their last station location.
A much cleaner solution would be for ships to have ejectable cockpits that allow the player to retain all their hard earned combat vouchers, exploration data, kill bounties (and of course any fines and bounties on the ejected player), so long as they eject before their ship is vapourised. The cockpit would then automatically catapult them in the direction of the nearest system station whilst being subject to the time limit for the life support system. If they happen to eject in an uninhabited system it's death by asphyxiation.
Firing on a helpless ejected cockpit would still be possible but hard to target due to a massively reduced heat signature so those still wanting a kill bounty would have to work a bit harder for it...what? is the ship not enough compensation for your troubles already?
In this context, should a player be interdicted by nefarious parties, instead of dropping cargo as an incentive they could drop their entire ship which could then be 'claimed' by anybody with a salvage drone (if a hull isn't immediately salvageable there could be an option to 'tag' it and come back later for it, subject to no-one else finding it in the mean time).
The drone would assume control of all ships systems (repairing anything if needed to get the ship moving) and fly the hull either locally or a limited jump range (tied to the amount of fuel available in the ships tanks and whether the ship has a fuel scoop or not) to the closest station where the hull would be registered to the player claiming it and could then be repaired or sold off as the player sees fit.
Similarly, whole recovered components and weapons systems could be sold off at stations in the outfitting section. Any ship salvaging components would of course require enough cargo capacity to transport it back.
Finally, for all that small debris it could be scooped as raw metals of various qualities and values and sold on the commodity market of a station.
This would work well for USS's too...instead of finding a bunch of cargo canisters there would be opportunities to salvage debris and components. Maybe even whole ships...what a nice find for the so far 'ignored' explorer community. How cool would it be if you came across something like a derelict Anaconda way out in the black...do you tag it and come back for it, hoping its still going to be there or were you savvy enough to pack a salvage drone before you set off exploring???
With all the work that went into both Wings and Power Play it would be nice to see something aimed at the explorer community within the game and the option for another career would be most welcome.
Cy
At the moment there are no true reclamation ships that would allow such a career, maybe a Python or Anaconda would serve as a start for bigger stuff whilst smaller ships could just collect scraps.
There would need to be a shift in the way the game works ship-wise for salvage to be a viable opportunity. I would like to see salvage from the smallest chunks of metal to whole components up to recoverable hulls.
I was pondering how this could work, at least for whole ships. At the moment if a ship is destroyed in combat it is completely annihilated and the player is 'magically' transported back to their last station location.
A much cleaner solution would be for ships to have ejectable cockpits that allow the player to retain all their hard earned combat vouchers, exploration data, kill bounties (and of course any fines and bounties on the ejected player), so long as they eject before their ship is vapourised. The cockpit would then automatically catapult them in the direction of the nearest system station whilst being subject to the time limit for the life support system. If they happen to eject in an uninhabited system it's death by asphyxiation.
Firing on a helpless ejected cockpit would still be possible but hard to target due to a massively reduced heat signature so those still wanting a kill bounty would have to work a bit harder for it...what? is the ship not enough compensation for your troubles already?
In this context, should a player be interdicted by nefarious parties, instead of dropping cargo as an incentive they could drop their entire ship which could then be 'claimed' by anybody with a salvage drone (if a hull isn't immediately salvageable there could be an option to 'tag' it and come back later for it, subject to no-one else finding it in the mean time).
The drone would assume control of all ships systems (repairing anything if needed to get the ship moving) and fly the hull either locally or a limited jump range (tied to the amount of fuel available in the ships tanks and whether the ship has a fuel scoop or not) to the closest station where the hull would be registered to the player claiming it and could then be repaired or sold off as the player sees fit.
Similarly, whole recovered components and weapons systems could be sold off at stations in the outfitting section. Any ship salvaging components would of course require enough cargo capacity to transport it back.
Finally, for all that small debris it could be scooped as raw metals of various qualities and values and sold on the commodity market of a station.
This would work well for USS's too...instead of finding a bunch of cargo canisters there would be opportunities to salvage debris and components. Maybe even whole ships...what a nice find for the so far 'ignored' explorer community. How cool would it be if you came across something like a derelict Anaconda way out in the black...do you tag it and come back for it, hoping its still going to be there or were you savvy enough to pack a salvage drone before you set off exploring???
With all the work that went into both Wings and Power Play it would be nice to see something aimed at the explorer community within the game and the option for another career would be most welcome.
Cy
This would also let the Fdevs plant easter-eggs around the galaxy.
