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[RawCode]

building relays everywhere to get constant stream of quests is win button.
but without relying on quests, exploring is not profitable by itself, you have chance to get rare loot, but you not going to sell pforge or score, as it will give much more money if installed on colony.

[Thaago]

building relays everywhere to get constant stream of quests is win button.
but without relying on quests, exploring is not profitable by itself, you have chance to get rare loot, but you not going to sell pforge or score, as it will give much more money if installed on colony.

: shrug : Then you are doing it wrong. Sorry, but I make decent money with no-mission exploration/salvage without selling anything rare other than unwanted blueprints. Without any industry skills either.

I can certainly make money faster by doing other things, but thats not really what we are talking about. My main activity is exploration for a good planet and blueprints, and I happen to see cool things and make a lot of money along the way.

[Morgan Rue]

I like exploring with a smaller fleet and marking research stations etc. for looting once I get more cargo space. The main problem I tend to have with salvaging is that I cannot get enough cargo space to carry all of the not very valuable stuff.

I also like to stick to burn 10 when possible. The Colossus can reach burn 10 with Mil Systems and Aug Drive Field.

[Zapier]

My method has to take the skills to lower overall maintenance of ships as they have more defects, then get the skill that lowers those effects too. Then I start to use salvage rigs and transports that might have 3 or 4 negative hull mods on them and they become super cheap to lug around. It allows me a lot of room to carry fuel and supplies and then bring back whatever I find. I even use a lot of my combat ships with a few hull mods as long as their burn drives aren't affected or I can get a tug or two later to help offset it.

[Serenitis]

I make decent money with no-mission exploration/salvage without selling anything rare other than unwanted blueprints.

Same.
While salvage runs won't make you a huge pile of money right now, they do make money. And a decent amount of it. It's just delayed compared to how missions work.

But the major draw of taking a huge salvage fleet out is that once you have enough support from your fleet/skills, it becomes self-sustaining. You can stay out on the fringe indefinitely just by sucking up debris, wrecks and derelicts. And beacon systems, pirate lairs, and pather haunts become valuable supply depots. Suppiles and fuel become essentially free (so long as you can fight), and the only real constraints you have are crew, cargo space, and patience.

Honestly, I usually start a game doing transport missions in the core, and once I feel like I have enough money just go and do my own thing and forget missions even exist for the rest of the game.
Stripping the sector bare like a swarm of space locusts is plenty profitable.

[Ragni]

Month into the game i found 3 fuel-thingie-things each costing 400k,
So far it seems salvage/survey expeditions are the most profitable thing ever.

You have to plan your survey trips in clusters or you will waste a ton of money on fuel.
Make sure you have survey modules on your ships so you reduce price of machinery and supplies to minimum.
Gantries kinda succ.
Use (D) ships as much as you can with the skill that reduces maintenance cost of (D) ships (as a scav you should have that skill tree anyway).


P.S.
I've never bothered focusing on "survey missions" as such however, they are always on the edge of space (that means you will waste stupid amounts of fuel and supplies) and usually its [REDACTED]

[Embercloud]

I once made 1.6 million credits in a single run, git good, OP, and don't bring unnecessary ships.

[Hrothgar]

Lol Salvage Gantry users...

You use not Salvage Gantrys, but 6 or 8 Shepherds for it. Or Katrina or others small Salvage Gantry ships... to this you take a one or two tankers, one or two militarised Collosus and Voila. You have fleet to reach everywhere.

Few ships for battle to fend off smaller fleets of Remnants or other *** and you have everything you need.

[RawCode]

Month into the game i found 3 fuel-thingie-things each costing 400k,
So far it seems salvage/survey expeditions are the most profitable thing ever.

You have to plan your survey trips in clusters or you will waste a ton of money on fuel.
Make sure you have survey modules on your ships so you reduce price of machinery and supplies to minimum.
Gantries kinda succ.
Use (D) ships as much as you can with the skill that reduces maintenance cost of (D) ships (as a scav you should have that skill tree anyway).


P.S.
I've never bothered focusing on "survey missions" as such however, they are always on the edge of space (that means you will waste stupid amounts of fuel and supplies) and usually its [REDACTED]

you do not need ships for rare loot......

it's possible to get multiple millions from single run, but all this money come from blueprints and forges\scores, not "loot" itself.

[ChaseBears]

Lol Salvage Gantry users...

You use not Salvage Gantrys, but 6 or 8 Shepherds for it. Or Katrina or others small Salvage Gantry ships... to this you take a one or two tankers, one or two militarised Collosus and Voila. You have fleet to reach everywhere.

Few ships for battle to fend off smaller fleets of Remnants or other *** and you have everything you need.

there's a stacking penalty, 8 shepherds is pointless in terms of the gantry.  A few shepherds + 1 gantry is a good combo though.

[Soychi]

there's a stacking penalty, 8 shepherds is pointless in terms of the gantry.  A few shepherds + 1 gantry is a good combo though.

What's this? What is the stacking penalty, or the correct number of shepherds? I've used multiple shepherds before and did not notice a stacking penalty.

[Tempest]

there's a stacking penalty, 8 shepherds is pointless in terms of the gantry.  A few shepherds + 1 gantry is a good combo though.

What's this? What is the stacking penalty, or the correct number of shepherds? I've used multiple shepherds before and did not notice a stacking penalty.

If you mouse over the hullmod in the refit screen, it'll tell you how your current ships stack. After 4-5 Shepherds, each ship adds maybe 1-2% to the salvage chance.

[RawCode]

this called "diminishing returns" and spamming salvage ships is waste of ship slots after 3 such ships, as addition of new ship, decrease eff of ALL ships, and keeping gantry for 1% of vendor trash is just waste.

[Plantissue]

Stacking Shepards has a pretty strange diminishing returns for total resource recovery bonus. It goes like this:

1 Shepherd = 10%
2 Shepherd = 18%
3 Shepherd = 22%
4 Shepherd = 25%
5 Shepherd = 28%
6 Shepherd = 30%
7 Shepherd = 31%
8 Shepherd = 33%

Fleetwide Post battle salvage probably diminishes too but the bonus is miniscule anyways so that it doesn't matter. I don't know why diminishing returns exist anyways, since if someone wants to get 10 Salvage Gantries for +250% resource recovery that doesn't sound like much of a problem to me.

Salvage Gantries are more ship slot, supply and fuel efficient, but I've never seen the point of getting Salvage Gantries since I get Shepherds for their Surveying Equipment, or for combat, or for Cargo, or otherwise not care that much for increasing normal salvaging. If you care you can choose 3 ranks of Salvaging skill, and get +50% resource recovery from debris which is merely stacked, not multiplied by Salvage Gantries anyways.

[intrinsic_parity]

I take shepherds for surveying, the salvage is just a nice bonus. Once I get a bigger fleet, I phase them out since I can survey for minimum supplies anyway. By that point, the income from salvage is minuscule compared to colonies anyway.