Missions & Complexes

Simple, I salvage missions when I occasionally loot by dropping salvage drones. Though that is rare.

Chances are now days if I were to ever salvage a mission it's because I ran a bunch of them and want to go afk for awhile so I grab a BC with a full set of salvage drones, highs filled with drone link augmentors, and buffer tank. Warp in set drones to salvage and go afk with more isk in the cargo hold.

I gave up on the isk grind, i do what I want when I want in game now. It's why I no longer have any real hard numbers to say whether or not it's worth it anymore.

Why not turn that alt into another mission runner instead?

Personally i don't think its worth it as the actually salvage you get now is meh.

OP, you'll note that most of the posts don't have much in the way of data or research in them. Yes there are many variables. But beware the "blitz" mantra. Blitz makes a lot of sense, in a lot of ways. But it's almost never as fast as you think it will be. One poster said he didn't include travel time because "it screws up the stats." Well, the stats are incomplete without the jumps, and that means they're essentially useless.

This and the "how much isk/hr in L4s" threads are probably the two most common mission threads of all time. Do your own research; it's the only way to know how well it works for YOU. In some cases, you might be missioning in high traffic areas. If so, your agent is going to send you several jumps each and every mission. In a low traffic area, you might never leave the system (I have one of those agents atm). If you compared my blitz stats with someone in a high traffic area, mine will be much better than his. Or another way to look at it, I could use his travel time as my salvage time and still be making more than him overall. Then there is also a difference in "solo" meaning one character and "solo" meaning one player, possibly several characters. If you did nothing but finish a mission, fly your salvager alt into the mission and just tractor stuff to a single point (which is easy and low stress and therefore matches up nicely with the target management of your mission runner), and turn on the salvagers when you have a few seconds to spare, then you aren't really using non-mission time to get your salvaging done.

it can be lucrative. It can also be a pain in the ass. Just try the scenarios and see how it goes. Keep in mind also that the blitzers aren't mentioning who they're missioning for. LP isn't equally valuable for all corporations. That is a CRITICAL detail in your opportunity cost math.

Salvaging on the same character is absolutely worth it.

Trick is to just be smart about it and get to know your missions.
Yday I did "the assault" 17 mil in rewards/bounties, 32,5 in loot/salvage.
That is rattlesnake shoots, noctis cleans up.
Mission salvage/loot is usually pretty steady but once in a while they'll yield way more then mission rewards.

You don't salvage when you do a lower value mission 2 jumps out.
You salvage lower value missions once you did 3 in a row as to have as little jumps as possible.
Larger higher value missions typically allow you to do 2 of them to fill up a noctis hold with 2-3 cargo extenders.

Worthwhile missions are: The assault, gone berserk, damsel in distress, any missions with a decent amount of mercenaries, the blockade, Extravaganza missions (do not forget to kill the buildings), dread pirate scarlet.
Couple I forgot Im sure.
But smaller missions are totally worth it, taken you save them up to do all in one go later.
Just don't do drone missions.

You could never make as much money from missioning as you could from salvaging if you cherry pick, the problem is it takes way longer to run the missions than salvage them. It took 11 minutes the other day to make 53 mil salvaging 2 "gone berserks" back to back the other day. No amount of hisec bounty plus LP will net you that much ISK.

But thats the thing with mission runners, they don't count the time manufacturing or playing market PvP in the equation.

Let's not over-think a simple question... This thread has clearly distinguished three classes of players (much like is already known about Eve Players): 1) hard-core ISK/HR drivers, 2) casual gamers that enjoy their intense gameplay, and 3) the "meh" chaise lounge chair players.

Hard-core ISK/HR'ers, generally, don't salvage and don't want to be pissed about it.

Casual Players (like me) do salvage when we have found that FOR OURSELVES that it pays off...

"Meh" lounge chair gamers really don't give a crap, and probably aren't even bothered to read this thread.

OP, you need to decide what works for you. Al the math in the Universe, all the Noctis or Dessy fits tweaked within' a breadth of life for salvaging, and all the long-winded Forums warrior responses won't change the fact that YOU have do decide whether it's worth it for YOU to salvage.

It ain't rocket science. Literally.

Very true. As has been said already a couple of times above; like most things, you have to find out what works for you.

Also, wrecks last 2 hours in space so use that to your advantage. You don't have to salvage after each and every mission; bookmark a few as time permits, then trundle out in your Noctis, or whatever, and salvage them all at once. It will add efficiency to your procedure if you're looking for such, very much so if you're mission-sites are few systems away.

The mission isn't going to tell anyone whether to spend the time salvaging, then selling or using the stuff.

The ultimate answer is, "Can I be bothered enough to do this?"

I've done all these calculations for many missions long time ago (2 years) when I started Pro Synergy and put all the data into a spreadsheet. The data is now outdated as CCP have heavily nerfed the loot and added bounties to drones, but that should only serve to further prove the point here.
Keep in mind that this data was collected using a T2 fitted maxed skilled Nightmare and T2 fitted Noctis for salvaging.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AnebeCPrGmpndGVxcjRaaFNuU3ViekFuUzdEdzdyUVE#gid=1