Pretty new to the game so I’m still exploring the various functions of the game and realized that Salvage ships will basically dump any extra materials when they wrap up a salvage job. I’ve built up my cargo fleet to over 2,000,000 tons of cargo space and it is still filling the entire hold telling me that there was still more that got dumped.
How much (roughly) is enough for simple salvage jobs per 1,000 tons of wreckage should I plan on?
Just to be certain: Are your cargo ships in the same fleet as the salvagers?
Yes. I started off with about 200,000 tons of cargo space and when I saw that it was completely full (or within 1-2,000 tons) I started adding more freighters to the fleet. By the time I was in the 2m tons range I decided to ask.
I even tried stepping through a salvage mission hour by hour. Nothing would appear in the cargo holds until the orders were complete.
I’m pretty sure most of the ships I was salvaging were in the 10,000 ton range.
Right, so salvaged components do indeed only show up in your cargo holds once a salvage task is completed, and I’ve not experienced wrecks providing more salvage tonnage than the size of the wreck.
In my current game, I have a ship that salvaged a 10,000 ton wreck, and she’s now carrying 1,700 tons of cargo, so I’d say you need space about 1/5th of what you’re salvaging.
So here is an example. Empty freighters on a salvage mission for a nearly 7,000 ton ship. It basically filled the hold. In my last game I got up to 2m cargo hold size and was still filling everything up. I would empty it out, add a few more ships and repeat. I was beginning to wonder if I found an infinite mineral source if I could get enough cargo space on a fleet…
Unless I am completely mistaken on the cargo hold measurements…
I think the second number in brackets is the amount of free cargo capacity you have left. You can double check in the ‘Transported Items’ tab to make sure only a couple thousand tons of stuff is in there.
I’ve had wildly variable amounts of material salvaged. Sometimes 50% of the tonnage of the wreck or more.
Looks like confusion on my part explains it then. I was thinking the number in parathesis was cargo space used, not cargo space free.
Supernovy is correct.
I’ve made exactly the same mistake before.
My salvage ships are usually accompanied by two freighters with standard cargo holds, so 50,000 cargo points. If there are a lot of wrecks, I might add a third.
When I salvage components I won’t use, I scrap them within the cargo holds to convert them into minerals.
When a freighter gets full, I detach it and give it orders to move to a colony, unload and then return to the salvage fleet.
