Salvaging

Collecting salvage is one way to make credits in Starsector, by cutting up unwilling or indifferent things into little pieces to be sold. Salvaging after battles is also a good way to get back some of the supplies/fuel spent.

Salvaging a derelict probe

Basic Mechanics

Many different things can be salvaged for resources, from debris fields created after battles to ruins on surveyed planets. Increasing salvaging effectiveness will affect the drop rate of commodities(i.e. supplies, fuel, metals, weapons) but not "special items" such as blueprints or colony items.

Salvaging effectiveness

• Base effectiveness of 25%
• Up to 75% from Heavy Machinery required(see below)
• Bonus from Salvaging skill(+50%)
• Bonus from fleetwide Salvaging(Salvage Gantry, works at 20% effectiveness when doing post-battle salvage)
• Crew multiplier, up to 1x(see below)
• Debris field multiplier, in case of debris fields
• Fuel salvaged multiplier: +50% from Containment Procedures skill
• Easy difficulty: 1.5x multiplier

The amount of crew and Heavy Machinery required for salvaging varies depending on the target. Example values(Crew, Heavy Machinery):

• Derelict ship: 30, 10
• Debris Field(unstable, created after combat): 30, 10
• Debris Field(stable): 30-150, 10-50 depending on size
• Supply Cache: 30, 10
• Minor Weapons Cache: 30, 10
• Domain-era Probe: 100, 30
• Orbital Habitat: 100, 30
• Research Station: 300, 100
• Scattered Ruins: 100, 30
• Widespread Ruins: 170, 60
• Extensive Ruins: 230, 80
• Vast Ruins: 300, 100

Additional Modifiers

See also Salvage Generation and Drop Groups page.

The following values in settings.json determine the value of the randomly generated loot for post-battle salvage:

"salvageValuePerFP":300,
"salvageFractionCreditsMin":0.1,
"salvageFractionCreditsMax":0.25,
"salvageCargoFraction":0.75,
"salvageDebrisFieldFraction":0.25,
"minSalvageValueForDebrisField":1000,

Weapons and hullmods have their own salvage probability multipliers:

"salvageOwnWeaponProb":1;
"salvageOwnWingProb":1;
"salvageWeaponProb":0.25;
"salvageWingProb":0.25;
"salvageHullmodProb":0.02;

Notably, weapons and fighter wings from own ships are always 100% recoverable.

Change History

0.9

• Reworked Salvaging mechanics:
  • "Salvage rating" no longer a player-facing stat; still affects crew/machinery needed
  • Removed "blow it up" option as it's no longer relevant
  • Salvaging skill provides up to a 50% bonus to finding resources and rare items
  • Recovery of resources is affected by:
    • Having enough crew (multiplier, 0 to 1)
    • Having enough heavy machinery (+0 to +100%)
    • Salvaging skill (up to +50%)
    • Salvage Rigs / other ships with salvaging capacity; diminishing returns for more ships
      • Ships must be at at least 10% combat readiness for bonus to apply
    • A fraction of the total bonus also applies to post-combat salvage
  • Recovery of rare items is only affected by the Salvaging skill
    • Not affected by not having enough crew, machinery, or any other modifiers
  • Goals are:
    • Clean up the flow by removing the "blow up then scavenge" option
    • Allow player to specialize in getting a lot more value out of it
    • Ensure that salvaging something will not feel like a wasted opportunity due to missing out on likely-otherwise-inaccessible items such as blueprints
    • Give Salvaging skill long-term value - it grants access to 50% more stuff that would otherwise be hard or impossible to get
    • Make salvaging without the skill but with Salvage Rigs a viable option, both in terms of rare items and resources gained
    • When exploring a ship wreck, added notification when there's cargo on board
  • During salvage, when finding information about the location of another entity of interest nearby:
    • Will no longer point to small derelict ships, only cruisers and larger
    • This also means that more of these will point to other, larger structures
    • (Since no longer diluting the pool of potential targets with larger number of chaff)
• Increased number of crew recovered from "cryopods with crew" exploration special

At least two versions out of date. Last verified for version 0.9. Please refer to Version History and update this page.