Ships & Modules

So it was brought up by Xenuria at the CSM, but the small cargo hold and general sluggishness of the Noctis has made it less and kless favored by players over deployable tractors and salvage destroyers.

Kyle also pointed out that the Noctis has not had an uptick in use in-between summits since its release.

So, here I am pondering: Would just giving the Noctis a salvage bay (think about the size of the Porpoise's ore hold) make it rise from the ashes?

If not, what do you think could be the Noctis' saving grace?

Personally I would like the Noctis to essentially have a crazy bonus to salvage drones' access difficulty (to reach tackled T2 salvagers' level at skill level 5) instead of salvager cycle time.

I mean the damn thing has a giant drone bay on the front of it for crying out loud!

Same here. Land in pocket, drop MTU, start killing. The moment I don't need my Hobgoblins out to kill small ships that are close, the Salvagers come out. Between the MTU and mostly killing stuff within 47k, by the time I clear the pocket there's typically only a one or two wrecks left to tractor in, and then I manually send a salvage drone to each remaining wreck.

The idea of going back to station, re-shipping to a Noctis, and flying back out to the mission, then warping to and clearing out multiple pockets and going back is just laughable.

That's actually not a half bad idea. You could also give it a bonus to salvage drones - but I'm not sure it's really worthwhile (even with T2 salvage drones...). Maybe a +2 to warp core strength?

100m3 is a TON of salvage. I didn't consider the Noctis much more than a really expensive salvage destroyer and I think that's still true, with salvaging V you're not losing any cargo by using the destroyer. My question would be, why don't we get rid of an 80mil salvaging hull entirely?

I think we were talking about how to make the Noctis great again...

Chainsaw, I can't disagree with any of your points. Salvage has been literally nerfed into the ground to the point where you can make more mining. That speaks volumes...

But such ships cannot scan for WRECKS and that was the fundamental point for the bonus to scanning was to allow it to scan wrecks.

In a typical moment where they allowed those with no brain cells to decide what would be best for the game CCP released the MTU and that is what killed the usefulness of the Noctis. On a side note, after the MTU's they turned this same group of brainless people free to mess up the game again and they unleashed the T3D class, which for all practical purposes made the entire AF class useless in the process.

The Nocis is a bit of an oddity. For those who use two characters one combat, one salvage and run them at the same time the Noctis is significantly faster than the MTU / salvage drone option. For those who only run one character I cannot see anyway to change the Noctis that would make it preferable to the MTU / salvage drone combo because no warping back to station to change ships.

What follows is not a unified idea on changes to the Noctis, it is simply a collection of ideas that have been discussed on the corp TS channel.

Range and speed bonus changed on the tractors from the current 60% to about 70% to 75%. With an all skills 5 pilot and T2 beams this would give the Noctis approximately the same range or slightly longer range than the MTU tractors. Most would be glad to give up some or all of the salvage beam bonus to get this.

Since it is a dedicated salvage vessel adding a more sophisticated drones control system to it that linked into the what the pilot was doing with the salvage beams. Essentially if you had a wreck targeted the drones would ignore it.

Better bonus to the drones so they have the same access chance as the T2 beams, and make that a role bonus please.

Decrease align time please, most people I talk to would gladly sacrifice some cargo space to get this.

Increase sensor strength, give it a bonus to targeting speed or bonus the use of Sebo, the lock times for frigate wrecks are stupid crazy slow even with a sebo and script. This is a salvage ship so there cannot be any worries about breaking game balance if this is done.

I like the idea of a bonus that allows the Noctis and the Noctis only to scan for wrecks both NPC and player. I would gladly sacrifice one of my high slots for this capability, although I cannot see how or why adding a 9th high slot that was dedicate to this role would break the game.

An alternative to the last would be to restrict the current high slots to tractor and salvage beams only then add a 9th high slot that could fit a probe launcher or a cov ops cloak.

You're never going to see removal of the mobile tractor unit. It might get tweaked, but that's about it. And while the mobile tractor unit may have been the stake in the heart of the Noctis, it already had variousnails in its coffin in the form of a vulnerable role and
the numerous salvage nerfs.

Truthfully, it you want to make the Noctis viable again you need to expand its role and turn it into a combat-salvager that can actually contribute to missions. Expand the number of slots, increase the tank, give it some drone bonuses and watch it carve out a niche again.

If you really want to be blown away - train into a Marauder sometime...