Salvage Gameplay is Coming to Star Citizen BUT What Are We Getting?
Salvage is one of the most anticipated and delayed gameplay loops for Star Citizen.
Salvage has 4 main types of gameplay planned for it:
Types Salvage
Hull Stripping – Removes valuable materials from the top layer of the hull of a ship.
Component Removal – Components and Weapons are valuable!
Maw OR BIG Chunk – Large Parts Broken, Ripped or Blown off and crushed into Cubes.
Syphoning – Liquids, Gases and Potentially Data
The start of the salvage mechanics (otherwise known as Tier 0) are expected in Alpha 3.15 End of Sept/Mid October with the inclusion of the FPS Salvage & Repair Multi-Tool Attachment.
This will allow you to hull strip the outer hull of a ship and store that in a canister.
Those canisters I believe can be sold and have value.
You can also use that canister to repair your ship.
Will T0 Salvage have any other gameplay at this stage… Well it’s possible…
The picture CI have used on the Roadmap for the feature is of the Reclaimer… which I highly doubt will have extra mechanics in T0.
It’s expected that Salvage will get the same sort of treatment that mining has, with a lot of focus on expanding out the mechanics further through iteration in the next few patches after it’s initial release.
What is likely to be next is:
In the future Physicalized Components & Weapons will be able to be removed or cut from Ships by hand or using Tractor Beams and then sold or otherwise salvaged to and we are getting and updated cutting tool planned in Alpha 3.15 as well potentially partly for this.
Tractor Beams for ships are also a big part of salvage, allowing you to maneuver bits, ships and chunks into optimum positions.
Salvage Ships
The Vulture is a small salvage ship that specializes in hull stipping and currently not on the roadmap.
The Reclaimer is a big salvage ship that specializes in Big Chunk Salvage. We already have it in the game, just with none of it’s mechanics.
You could argue that the Harvesting of Gas like from the Starfarer makes it a Syphoning Salvager BUT it’s possible we will see some focused ships for this in the future.
This isn’t much in the way of salvage ships… so we could see some more in the future.
What don’t we know?
Could we get salvage modules for ships allowing a Caterpillar to be a salvage ship maybe?
Will there be ground vehicles for salvage?
Will we be able to salvage all wrecks? OR are POI on the ground and certain wrecks unsalvageable.
I personally think the Vulture will be in game pretty soon after T0 salvage is released… ship salvage for hull stripping is just on a bigger scale.
Will salvage and repair be closely linked? Will Drones be able to do salvage tasks?
I am looking forward to treasure hunting around trying to find valuable components and wreck sights. I suspect that tracking down wrecks, POI and scanning for valuables will be a big part of ship salvage BUT CI have yet to go into any details about that.
CI are prioritizing the salvage feature as well at the moment and some other features may get pushed or delayed if necessary for it to get in the game as soon as sensible.
Boom… a quick and simple look at the Salvage Mechanics.