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[ayckoster]

What factors are involved into salvaging enemy / allied ships after battle without story points?

I've noticed that salvaging ships becomes easier later in the game. It seems the first Falcon (P) is the most difficult to salvage and later on you get them on a regular basis from pirates.

I tried to observe the probability of a successful salvage (without SP) and have a few hypothesis:

• The higher the level the higher the probability to salvage a ship.
• Using a lot of missiles to destroy the ship lowers the probability.
• Destroying the ship while it's "red" due to a flameout etc. lowers the probability to salvage it. Waiting for it to "cool down" neutralizes this effect.
• Dealing a lot of damage at once lowers the probability. For example when your fleet surrounds this ship.
• Distributing the damage to multiple sides of the ship increases the probability.
• Adding salvage rigs seems to have no effect.
• Many D-mods on the ship before the fight lower the probability. I assume because it becomes unsalvageable once it goes  above the max D-mod threshold after the battle.
• Using laser weapons to take down a ship increases the probability.
• "Destroying" (hull breaking apart) the enemy ship lowers the probability.

How accurate are those points? Is it possible to quantify them? Which ones are real factors and which are causations?

It might be that level is not a factor, as with higher level the D-mods tend to go down for enemy ships.

What is the best strategy to salvage a specific ship from the enemy fleet?

[Worldtraveller]

Good questions and points. I know Hull Restoration applies to your ships lost in combat, but I don't think it affects the recovery chances of enemy ships.

I know I have often gone after bounty fleets because I wanted one or more of the ships to recover, only to have none of them recoverable after the fact.

[SafariJohn]

I am pretty sure it is just if disabled X chance, if destroyed Y chance.

[SteelHeart]

Straight from the wiki:

After a battle, if the player does not retreat or leave prematurely, some disabled or destroyed ships can be recovered at no cost (beyond the supplies needed to repair them). Ships have a random chance to be recoverable; this is higher for the player's own ships, and can be increased to effectively 100% with certain skills or hullmods.

Ships count as "almost always recoverable" if they either:

Are piloted by the player.
Are piloted by an officer. AI Cores fulfill this condition for automated ships.
Have at least one S-mod (including S-mod of a built in hullmod).
Have the Reinforced Bulkheads hullmod. This also applies to enemy ships.
Have the special built-in Rugged Construction hullmod. This also applies to enemy ships.
Player has the Hull Restoration skill.


Looking at it, it seems that if these conditions are met, then the ship is more likely to be in a recoverable state with the odds being higher for player ships.

[SafariJohn]

"almost always recoverable" is code for "always, but sometimes the limit on how many ships can be recovered might prevent it"

[ayckoster]

Straight from the wiki:

After a battle, if the player does not retreat or leave prematurely, some disabled or destroyed ships can be recovered at no cost (beyond the supplies needed to repair them). Ships have a random chance to be recoverable; this is higher for the player's own ships, and can be increased to effectively 100% with certain skills or hullmods.

Ships count as "almost always recoverable" if they either:

Are piloted by the player.
Are piloted by an officer. AI Cores fulfill this condition for automated ships.
Have at least one S-mod (including S-mod of a built in hullmod).
Have the Reinforced Bulkheads hullmod. This also applies to enemy ships.
Have the special built-in Rugged Construction hullmod. This also applies to enemy ships.
Player has the Hull Restoration skill.


Looking at it, it seems that if these conditions are met, then the ship is more likely to be in a recoverable state with the odds being higher for player ships.

As far as I understand reinforced bulkheads and rugged construction hullmods are a big factor to salvage enemy ships. The rest don't specify "enemy ships". Does this imply they are not used in the calculation?

[Worldtraveller]

"almost always recoverable" is code for "always, but sometimes the limit on how many ships can be recovered might prevent it"

Anyone know how the order of recoverable ships is determined? Is it made as they are destroyed? If so, that would explain why there tend to be lots of small ships that are recoverable after a big battle, and we're lucky to get a cruiser or capital, even if numerically, the odds should be about the same.

[Daynen]

Given that ships don't always break apart when disabled and this seems to affect the salvage chance, it would be cool if we could prune the salvage lists by purposely breaking up disabled ship hulks we don't want.

Deterministic gameplay is always pretty cool.  Take Battletech, for example.  If you just blast a mech, destroying weapons and knocking off limbs until its engine explodes, you get scraps.  On the other hand, if you knock its legs out and disable it, you get more choices from its parts or equipped weapons.  If you headshot it and kill the pilot directly, you can salvage pretty much the whole mech.

It's trickier in a real-time battle system with dozens of ships, but being able to directly influence our salvage by our combat methods would be cool.

[FooF]

Given that ships don't always break apart when disabled and this seems to affect the salvage chance, it would be cool if we could prune the salvage lists by purposely breaking up disabled ship hulks we don't want.

Deterministic gameplay is always pretty cool.  Take Battletech, for example.  If you just blast a mech, destroying weapons and knocking off limbs until its engine explodes, you get scraps.  On the other hand, if you knock its legs out and disable it, you get more choices from its parts or equipped weapons.  If you headshot it and kill the pilot directly, you can salvage pretty much the whole mech.

It's trickier in a real-time battle system with dozens of ships, but being able to directly influence our salvage by our combat methods would be cool.

This has been brought up many times in the past. IIRC, it is explicitly avoided because it would lead to players save scumming and repeatedly replaying battles in order to get the salvage result they want. In addition, because you have such little direct control over your allied ships, it would be extremely frustrating to have them undermine your salvage strategy over and over again. Optimal behavior would be likely to only deploy a flagship, cripple the desired ship, and then bring in the fleet (praying they don’t do additional damage to the husk you want!).

I believe whether a ship is disabled (high chance of recovery) or destroyed (rarely recoverable) is predetermined at the start of the battle. It’s pure RNG, with the caveats about officers, hullmods, etc. listed a few posts above.

[ayckoster]

After some investigation and research I came to the following conclusions. Take them with a grain of salt, as they might still be wrong, but they are good enough for me to change my strategy to the one listed below.

• There is a clear differentiation between recovering your own ships versus enemy ships. Your own benefit from officers and skills, while enemy ships ignore this.
• Recoverability of a ship is usually up to chance. The main factors are: size of a ship, modifiers (D-mods / S-mods) and its status (disabled / destroyed). In general repeating the encounter yields different results. Very few ships have flags that change the probability to always (Ziggurat) or never ([Redacted]).
• As far as I understand, the bigger the ship the less likely the recovery. The size of a ship is dependent on the DP in relation to the type (frigate, destroyer, carrier etc.) This is why it's easier to recover an Onslaught versus a Paragon.
• The more D-mods the less likely the recovery. The status of the ship after the encounter is relevant, so after potential new D-mods. A ship can get 0-3 new D-mods per encounter.
• A destroyed ship halves the probability of recovery compared to a disabled ship.
• Ships usually get disabled if they are killed, but can receive additional damage. This "overkill" triggers the destruction. Overkill is 2-3 times the ships HP but without armor / shield bonuses.
• The probability of ship recovery is proportional to participation rate of the payer.
• There is an upper limit of recoverable ships which is around 20ish

In summary the best strategy seems to be:

Save before the fight. Fight the enemy alone (100% participation) and control the takedown of a ship. Don't use huge burst damage in the final attacks. Use the "claim victory" option when there are many ships in the encounter. Retry the fight if the ship you wanted is not recoverable.

There are two strategies with very big fights to increase the chance of getting the ship you want.

1. Kill the ship in the main encounter, claim victory early and don't pursue to limit the amount of ships disabled or destroyed.
2. Let the ship you want retreat and take down as many remaining ships, but don't pursue. Try to get the ship you want in a second encounter with a reduced enemy fleet.

Additionally, check the "salvage" as a ship might be recovered in this interaction as well. More fights mean more salvage opportunities.

Let your allies / other parties kill your enemies if your fleet is not good enough to contribute to a fight significantly. Don't participate in the fight as this seems to reduce the chance for recovery due to low participation.