Here There be Salvage

EVE Online is complicated.

Even killing people and taking their stuff is complicated.

Checkit; first, you gotta kit out appropriate weapons and defences for the upcoming battle. This ain't one of those things where all you do is grab your armour and weapons and walk out the door. Each mission requires a specific set of defences and ammunition type. Ship choices, fittings, security status considerations, need for salvage, mission-specific tactics, aggro control, mission guides, potential loot, destination distance and penalties of declining over acceptance.

Then you leave the hangar.

Once the enemies are dead and whatever objectives are achieved, you can go on and loot/salvage.

See, this isn't one of those games where you can just walk over and click on the corpse for stuff. Battles take place over distances of dozens of kilometers and you don't know what's in the wreck until you get to within 2.5 kilos and open up the cargo.

Then the salvaging begins.

Cleaning up your mess is divided into loot and salvage. Loot is just opening the cargo and looking for intact modules/people/commodities. Basically taking whatever they were equipped with/carrying at the time.

Salvaging is using a special device to comb through the wreck for any leftover bits of crap that can be recycled for later use. Problem is, you need special equipment to do this. Special equipment you probably can't fit onto your normal ship. So if you wanna get anywhere with salvage (which you do), you need another ship just to salvage. So you kill everything, leave, pick up your other ship and come back for Part 2.

This sounds like a whole lot of work for a bunch of broken crap (salvage is always broken, no intact stuff when salvaging). Problem is, salvaging makes up literally 70% of my income, the other being loot and mission rewards. So you're stuck going through the extra effort or losing a good chunk of income.

Players tend to use destroyers when starting their salvaging careers. They're fast enough and have plenty of space for the required equipment.

Even with a dedicated salvaging destroyer, it's still freakin' slow. Main reason being there was no dedicated salvager and the destroyer was just us players improvising. So basically we de-fanged a capable warship and turned it into a space combat equivalent of the janitor.

Recently, CCP came up with the bright idea of giving us players a ship only good for salvaging. In walks the Noctis. Plenty of space for equipment and high powergrid and capacitor, so your equipment doesn't fizzle out because your battery ran out of juice.

I run missions as my main source of income, so getting one of these would speed the process up tremendously. Thing is, they're expensive and in my entire corporation of 20 people or so, there was only 1 person who regularly used a Noctis. This corporation runs missions almost exclusively, so that's a bit discouraging.

Me being me, I kicked common sense in the balls and bought a Noctis.

The hull itself with fittings costs more than twice as much as 3 battlecruiser hulls, so it was a bit worrying, but I could handle it. The Noctis, with fittings set me back 54 million (compare and contrast; my entire wallet prior to the purchase: 81 million).

Best. Decision. Ever.

The Noctis costs so much because it's incredibly awesome. The ship is top-of-the line, the only one in it's class and the best of its kind. So despite costing a third of my total wealth, I'll never have to worry about that ever again.

Now I have to contend with the fact that I set myself even further back on my goal of 340 million isk in 1.5 months.

Also amusing, I was salvaging earlier and left a trail of cargo containers as I finished salvaging each wreck. The trail was formed by wrecks moving with me via tractor beam and following my flight path whilst each salvaged wreck spawned a container of leftover loot.



Regards, IVIilitarus