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[Ad Astra]

What's up space fellows, how's everyone doing?

So I was having some emotional conflict regarding the drop frequency of colony items, and I came to the conclusion that ever since Orbital Habitats no longer drop any rare tech, it feels like getting one of everything can be quite tricky depending on the seed. I went into dev mode and combed through a few sectors, every ruin, every mining and research station, every survey ship and mothership, sometimes no pristine nanoforge would drop.

My solution was simple, give the colony item drop chance that mining stations have, to orbital habitats, since making the loot sources more numerous greatly diminishes bad RNG. It also makes habitats fun to find again, since just getting commodities feels a bit on the boring side.

The bad side to this fix is that there might be too many colony items for your taste, the good side of this fix, is that you can do it yourself by changing a few lines in the game files with a text editor in around 5 minutes.

What are your thoughts about this? Has anyone else been just as unlucky?
Or do pristine nanoforges drop actually drop like rain and I keep winning the backwards lottery?

Also if anyone wants to know how to do this change I can teach you, but maybe this topic would have to change to the modding section instead, I'm not sure.

[SafariJohn]

I don't think orbital habitats have ever dropped special items.

[Ad Astra]

I don't think orbital habitats have ever dropped special items.

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if I was remembering incorrectly lol.

[Wyvern]

Once upon a time, the Domain Explorarium Mothership was a nearly-guaranteed source for a Pristine Nanoforge. Which, given the time and effort involved in tracking clues across multiple systems, seemed fairly reasonable.

...Nowadays they tend to drop mere Corrupted Nanoforges. Or, occasionally, one of the other colony items (but this is annoyingly rare, and occasionally verisimilitude-breaking; why would an explorarium mothership have a dealmaker holosuite?)

I feel like I should get a t-shirt with that: "I tracked down and salvaged an Explorarium Mothership and the most useful thing I got from it was this stupid t-shirt!"

[Ad Astra]

Once upon a time, the Domain Explorarium Mothership was a nearly-guaranteed source for a Pristine Nanoforge. Which, given the time and effort involved in tracking clues across multiple systems, seemed fairly reasonable.

...Nowadays they tend to drop mere Corrupted Nanoforges. Or, occasionally, one of the other colony items (but this is annoyingly rare, and occasionally verisimilitude-breaking; why would an explorarium mothership have a dealmaker holosuite?)

I feel like I should get a t-shirt with that: "I tracked down and salvaged an Explorarium Mothership and the most useful thing I got from it was this stupid t-shirt!"

  I agree entirely, they should drop a guaranteed pristine nanoforge, even if it means they are the only two in the entire sector, it would make them feel important and like a real treasure hunt.

In my dev mode experiments, out of around 8-10 motherships, 3 dropped things, a corrupted nanoforge, a holosuite and a biofactory embryo...yep. Again, might be incredibly unlucky, but that's the whole point of unique encounters, making luck unimportant.

Having that treasure hunt would be more fun. If possible, item rarity and quantity would scale with distance from the core, to simulate salvaging frequency. But having at least one guaranteed salvaging instance that doesn't involve conjuring one through story points would still suffice, maybe through intel trails like the motherships have.

[Wyvern]

I mean, I'd be happy if even just one of the two motherships had a pristine nanoforge. Give the other one a synchrotron core maybe?

[Ad Astra]

I mean, I'd be happy if even just one of the two motherships had a pristine nanoforge. Give the other one a synchrotron core maybe?

One could be corrupted, so you have a 50% of getting the good one.
Another way the loot variation could be narrowed down could be making the lists specific.
Like: Orbital Habitat- holosuite, biofactory embryo, soil nanites.
        Research Station- Arithmetic engine, drone replicator, catalytic core.
        mining station- mantle bore, plasma dynamo, synchrotron core.
        explorarium ships- Nanoforges, coronal hypershunts and orbital lamps

Ruins could hold any of them.
That way you'd know where to look for whatever you are missing and numbers spawned per sector could be fine tuned a bit better.
Also....Ehmmmershon babeh.

[Ad Astra]

So after looking around the drop tables, it turns out that the mothership used to have an equal chance of dropping either nanoforge, and thus they could drop two pristine, two corrupted or one of each with equal chance.
With a simple fix in the salvageable objects file it can be reverted, should it be of your interest.

You'd only need to go to starsector-core, data, campaign, procgen, salvage_entity_gen_data.csv and open it with a text editor.

And below where it says derelict_mothership, replace:
rare_tech:1",derelict,1,1,45,60,,3,1,derelictMothership
with
nanoforge_always:1",derelict,1,1,45,60,,3,1,derelictMothership

It will work even in an already created seed, salvage drops are determined by the seed, but the parameters applied to those drops can be changed at any time before interacting with the objects.
Already tried it with an ongoing save file and modifications would apply every time, so if you have a save ongoing and you want those rules to apply, you can probably do it safely as long as no mod you have affects motherships' drop tables.

[Lawrence Master-blaster]

If you're missing a specific colony item or two, use the Historian. That's kind of what the option is for.

[Lullabison]

Or raid a faction for it, if we're talking about a pristine nanoforge.

I don't know - I don't mind some slot machine scarcity. If you've gotta find different ways to get what you need from run to run, or even change your colony setup a little to compensate for items your game seed didn't provide you, it adds a little variation.

[MuleDriver]

Don't know, maybe you should just explore more?
In my current playthrough (normal sized mixed sector), I have collected:
1x Orbital Fusion Lamp
1x Hypershunt Tap
4x Corrupted Nanoforge (sold a 5th)
1x Pristine Nanoforge
3x Synchroton Core
2x Biofactory Embryo
1x Fullerene Spool
3x Plasma Dynamo
2x Cryoarithmetic Engine
3x Combat Drone Replicator (sold 4th)
2x Dealmaker Holosuite
Was I extremely lucky? Are you all playing in small sectors, does that make that much of a difference?

[Wyvern]

Was I extremely lucky?

Yes.

[SafariJohn]

I think there should only be a chance for 1 Pristine Nanoforge loot drop in the whole Sector and otherwise raiding one of the heavy industry worlds should be blindingly hard. Same for Synchrotron Core. Corrupted Nanoforge OTOH should be a guaranteed drop.

So one mothership gives Pristine or Corrupted Nanoforge, other gives Synchrotron Core or Corrupted Nanoforge. Guaranteed Nanoforge no matter what.

Only other industry item I could see sharply limiting would be Cryoarithmetic Engine.

[Ad Astra]

Don't know, maybe you should just explore more?

Nah, I'm telling you I went into dev mode and combed through several sectors, the conclusion is that the loot system has a lot of variability involved so you can get extremely different drops in type and quantity each playthrough.

That's why we were talking about our opinions on either changing that to have guaranteed drops or leaving it just like that.

The reason why I don't like a loot list so variable is that lore wise there should be certain items in relative abundance while others would be extremely rare. And it also gives a more fulfilling purpose to salvaging thoroughly. The nanoforge thing on domain motherships would be an interesting way to display the notion that more was lost in the fringes of the sector than kept in the core after the collapse. It fuels that sense of wonder about the treasures there might be in unknown places, just like the red planet, adds a lot of spice and worldbuilding in my opinion.

Since the meat of the gameplay is combat, salvage should always involve the promise of shiny things you can't easily get elsewhere, otherwise you'd prefer to never leave the core and just raid and invade everything using the money from your smuggling.
Go outside, get shiny thing you can use to get better pew pew, come back with the better pew pew and get into a scuffle or two.
If I go outside and come back with 5 orbital lamps I'd much rather stay around the fun part of the sector lol.
Remnant systems are perfectly fine though, if you don't consider the fact that destroying a remnant nexus is outright a net loss of profit.

[Ad Astra]

I think there should only be a chance for 1 Pristine Nanoforge loot drop in the whole Sector and otherwise raiding one of the heavy industry worlds should be blindingly hard. Same for Synchrotron Core. Corrupted Nanoforge OTOH should be a guaranteed drop.

So one mothership gives Pristine or Corrupted Nanoforge, other gives Synchrotron Core or Corrupted Nanoforge. Guaranteed Nanoforge no matter what.

Only other industry item I could see sharply limiting would be Cryoarithmetic Engine.

The reason I think its a good place for a pristine drop is gameplay, since its always located in a literal corner of the sector and involves a decent fight so you can't just stumble upon it. 
But also lore wise a nanoforge kept deep in the bowels of a giant and heavily armored ship in the void of space after being disabled for ages has the highest chances of not having its components degrade, and never being used in incorrect manner, since the machines only activate after detecting you in their vicinity. Considering how lacking in excitement getting one from the historian is, having the chance to either fight the undead legion of space robots or raid the biggest forge worlds in the sector makes for the best options you could ever ask for.
Exploration or expropriation, violence non negociable.

Regarding the cryoarithmetic engine I also agree, considering how paranoid the domain was regarding far away sectors having any military power, I doubt they'd even allow such a thing to be brought to the boonies. It's also extremely powerful campaign wise. I'd love a mission to obtain a single one per playthrough, no other drops. It could even nullify the hazard effect from extreme heat if people felt like having a single one is too heavy of a nerf, that way you get an excellent forgeworld with cheap maintenance fees.