Oh, good, you're back. Picked your jaw up off the floor yet? Great! Let's talk salvaging.
If you don't know me, I love me some salvaging. When I was carebearing in Lonetrek I looted and salvaged every mission I did. I salvaged every single one in a Catalyst, which I believe is the most efficient salvaging Destroyer:
[Catalyst, Salvalyst]
Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II
1MN MicroWarpdrive I
Cap Recharger II
Small Tractor Beam I
Small Tractor Beam I
Small Tractor Beam I
Small Tractor Beam I
Salvager I
Salvager I
Salvager I
Salvager I
Small Salvage Tackle I
Small Capacitor Control Circuit I
Small Capacitor Control Circuit I
The drawback to this ship is that it only carries 829m³. Level 4's can have upwards of a couple thousand m³ worth of loot, necessitating two trips. This caused me to look at larger ships. When I moved to nullsec I purchased a Hurricane devoted to salvaging:
[Hurricane, Salvacane]
Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II
10MN MicroWarpdrive I
Large Capacitor Battery II
Cap Recharger II
Cap Recharger II
Small Tractor Beam I
Small Tractor Beam I
Small Tractor Beam I
Small Tractor Beam I
Salvager I
Salvager I
Salvager I
Salvager I
Medium Salvage Tackle I
Medium Cargohold Optimization I
Medium Cargohold Optimization I
This loyal soldier has a respectable 2700m³ cargo hold - plenty for what I'm looting nowadays. However I always wondered about how viable a salvaging battleship would be, so I did a spreadsheet comparing them. Only four appear here - I ruled out the others for having inferior stats. I'll spare you the loadouts on them since they follow the same pattern as the Cane, but here are the capacities and speeds when microwarping at all level 5 skills:
Typhoon: 4527m³, 814m/s
Megathron: 4890m³, 677m/s
Armageddon: 5542m³, 652m/s
Apocalypse: 4890m³, 611m/s
So with those stats in mind, let's check out the Noctis.
Cargo
With a base cargo bay of 1460m³, three low slots, and three rig slots, we can do the math of adding in Expanded Cargohold IIs and Medium Cargohold Optimizations and come to a maximum cargo of 4602m³. Swap one rig for a Salvage Tackle and it's 4002m³. Blows the Hurricane out of the water and competes strongly with the capacity of the battleships.
Cost
Thankfully CCP showed us the blueprint and its Bill of Materials. If we do the math and add up the cost of the metal using average mineral indexes, we come to a price of approximately 37 million ISK. Surely it will be cheaper when you consider material research, so let's knock off 10% and call it 33 million. The price of a Hurricane, cheaper than all of the Battleship hulls mentioned above.
Speed
With the inherent bonuses in the new Ore Industrial skill being granted to us, the Noctis will salvage faster than any ship in the game. But how fast can it travel when chasing down faraway wrecks? The multiplier factor for a microwarp at all level 5 skills is roughly 6.33. Multiply that by its 155m/s base speed and you get 981m/sec. Even faster than the Hurricane, which clocks 925m/s at all level 5.
Usually a drawback to a speedy salvager is its tractor speed. Tractors only pull things in at 500m/sec, and your microwarp can easily outrun that amount. The Noctis compensates. With its inherent ship bonuses, at Ore Industrial V it will have a tractor range of 60km and a tractor speed of 1500m/sec. Thus you can microwarp with impunity, never worrying about outrunning your tractored wrecks.
CCP knocked it out of the park with this one. When Incursion arrives I will have a new ship order for my hangar:
[Noctis, Noc Kneed]
Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II
10MN MicroWarpdrive I
Cap Recharger II
Small Tractor Beam I
Small Tractor Beam I
Small Tractor Beam I
Small Tractor Beam I
Salvager I
Salvager I
Salvager I
Salvager I
Medium Salvage Tackle I
Medium Cargohold Optimization I
Medium Cargohold Optimization I
I'd go with 5 tractors and 3 salvagers, 2 tackles and 1 optmization and lose the recharger for an afterburner so you can use a speed bump in deadspace. Cargo is fine with 3 expanders and one optimization....and actually you could probably just drop the microwarp and put the cap recharger there since I hardly ever have to move in this thing to salvage and the limiting factors for me are me moving my mouse and the targeting time to target new wrecks, this thing eats wrecks for breakfast, lunch, and dinner all in one sitting.
ReplyDelete