Trying to make sense of the Salvaging skill as seen in the game... I do not know if I can. The way the skill works seems bizarre and hard to evaluate. Anytime I find something that looks good, I save, then compare the results with varying Salvaging levels. The results vary by skill level. Sometimes, more Salvaging is better quality and quantity, sometimes not. That last loot I did from a research station would have made Salvaging 3 look terrible.
All I care to get from abandoned stations, ruins, and the like are blueprints and other exotic items like nanoforge. I could not care less about the items I can buy or loot from yet another fight elsewhere.
Aside, I am sick of seeing lots of Pirate and Ludd blueprints. I would like to see more baseline blueprints, either basic, non-affiliated pack or more rare blueprints. The pirate pack at least has some useful and unique hulls (Colossus 3 has Ground Support hullmod for raiding stations), but the Pather pack is useless by the time I get one (don't need SO Lashers by that point), and the Church pack can probably be replicated and more by the basic low-tech pack.