So, I just got 27k ore from salvaging mining station with no salvage bonuses. That was amusing, but it also made me stop and gather my thoughts about salvage in new patch.
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I think easiest way to make them useful again would be just increasing post-battle salvage bonus. Maybe increasing fleet repair speed and cost discount on top.
I have also gotten 20K+ ore from salvaging a mining station (although I did have salvage bonus, dunno why you got more without bonus), and to say it was amusing is somewhat of an understatement. Nor was I even using any sort of ship for some salvaging bonus (shepard, salvage rig).
But it does raise some clear issues with salvaging, and also how the game even bothers to count resources (1 at a time, even after 20K, takes like 5 minutes just to determine how much salvage exists now from those lucky mining stations). Adding some script so the game counts faster (ie, by 1000 at a time once over like 3K or something) shouldn't be too difficult, but it definitely begs the question as to what utility a player now gains from adding a salvage rig to player fleet (shepards at least have some combat use, so less of an issue there).
Making the salvage rig reduce supply recovery cost from battle and/or increase fleet recovery speed are definitely excellent suggestions, but it also kind of raises further issues, mostly related to the arbitrary 30 ship fleet cap, and how it relates to all ships in any given fleet and not just combat ships. Since this game is prolly not going the direction of adding/changing/requiring support ships to normally be also deployed in battle due to additional time/game changes (which would be dope, gives an entire reason to bother to defend your side of the arbitrary space combat chessboard), a more reasonable suggestion would be to allow any given fleet to get one free non-combat/support ship for every five ships in any given fleet (therefore total of five or six additional support ships for a 30 ship fleet, depending on whether you count first additional ship if less than five ships or starting after five ships). Whether a player would still want more additional support ships to take up a slot that a combat ship could otherwise use would be up to the player (ie, like a shepard), but the freely additional support ships wouldn't normally be deployable in any given battle (ie, only shows up when trying to run away). Such a solution frees up slots for bashing more ships together in battle while allowing a player to also still have some tankers and freighters, maybe a mule or a civilian transport, plus whatever other support ships the player desires (adding some more support ships couldn't hurt, although dunno what additional bonuses haven't already been added).
In any case, something gotta be done about salvage rig...
