Player Features and Ideas Discussion

With the advent of Salvage Drones and MTUs, the advantages that the Noctis brought to a salvage operation have been significantly diminished.

In most situations, a destroyer will get the job faster than a Noctis by having the mission runner deploy a few ''Magpie'' MTUs and blaze through the salvage just as fast while having faster align and travel times.

Not to mention that a Destroyer is far easier to transport logistically and is rigged for far less.

Considering that the Rorqal, a ship with similar issues, is getting a major rework, it's time we take a look at the issues with the other forsaken ORE child.

Lets break it down:


Assuming level 5 skills, a Noctis can salvage 25% faster and has essentially unlimited tractor beam range if you can lock the target.

• The 25% cycle time is rather lackluster when you consider the Noctis takes an inordinate amount of time to target lock a wreck.


• Being able to tractor as far as the eye can see is nice, but largely pointless due to the hull's sensor range and the fact that most MTUs will tractor the biggest sleeper and mission sites even when poorly positioned.


• 1460 m3 cargo is larger than what destroyers can carry. However, due to how slow the Noctis is, it is rarely deployed far from its staging system while destroyers can run off and come back by the time the typical mission runner has completed another Level IV.


• Destroyers are fast, agile and have a small sig radius. The Noctis is large, aligns like a T1 industrial and has a tank like one too.

Now, I'm no genius when it comes to new ideas for how to rebalance ships, but here's a few ideas I could come up with:

• Make the Noctis into a ninja-salvaging ship worthy of its name by giving it massive signal strength in addition to a scanning bonus (or at least a fitting bonus like T3 detroyers have). A Nestor-like mass reduction would also be nice, considering how little cargo space is actually in the Noctis.


• Give the Noctis a specialized AoE tractor. (A similar module could be given to the Rorqal too.)


• Give the Noctis significantly faster lock times.


• Increase wreck access difficulty across the board, giving bonused hulls like the exploration frigates and the Noctis a relative advantage. (May require additional salvage drone balancing)


• Give the Noctis and T1 Exploration Frigates significant access difficulty bonuses to make their salvage time much better.


• Allow the Noctis to fit Link modules?


• Give the Noctis the additional role of it's Primae predecessor as a PI ship with a large planetary materials bay.


• Make the Noctis into an on-grid salvager by increasing its tank to Battlecruiser levels and giving it remote sensor/tracking link bonuses or repair drone bonuses. Again, very Nestor-like.


• Create a ''Salvage bay'' for the Noctis, turning it into a true industrial.


• Give the Noctis a refitting bay like the Nestor? (Now I'm just outright stealing from SoE)

Last but not least, what I personally would do to the Noctis:



Anyways, that's my 5 cents.

I agree the Noctis needs help, not sure your ideas are what it needs but I will not comment on any of them.

For now you get this.

An unscripted sebo will solve both the lock time and target range problem.
A single cargo expander will solve the bay space problem as long as you dock and empty every couple of missions.

I can't really see how the noctis needs help (no offense intended). It still salvages 10 times faster than an MTU with salvage drones, given piloted actively.


MTU + Salvage drones takes AGES compared to a 5-3 noctis with an active pilot behind it.

Didn't read past your first sentence. As wrong as that sentence, nothing that followed it would be good.

Salvage drones are garbage, plain and simple. They have absolutely no redeeming qualities if you can use the salvager module, because it's faster and more profitable to bring in an unbonused salvage destroyer than it is to use salvage drones.

MTU used in conjunction with a Noctis is pure gold. Drop the MTU at the beginning of each mission room. Depending on how fast you clear the rooms, the MTU will have most of the wrecks already gathered. You can also bookmark the MTU, leave it there, and salvage several rooms at a run. It's even possible, if you use an alt for salvaging, to put that alt in a fast aligning frigate, and have it drop off MTUs.

The slow movement and align speed of the Noctis is my bottleneck when doing multiple rooms or following a roaming gang. It's pretty bad when the DST transporting ammunition and jump fuel is more agile than you are.

I disagree with you and will use the reverse of the one of Iain Cariaba favorite posts. Because it is good does not mean that it could not or should not be better.


No you cannot get the job done faster with an MTU and a destroyer, at least not if you know how to fit and how to use your Noctis properly. Even if you leave MTU's behind to collect the stuff and then come back later the reduced cycle times for salvage and tractor beams offered by the Noctis boosted with an intelligent placement of your MTU and you can clear a pocket considerably faster than a salvage destroyer can. One of the keys is moving while you salvage using the boosted range of the tractors on the Noctis.

Worm holes are an entirely different situation compared to normal salvaging of PvE content, yet even there the Noctis is the superior tool for the job provided you are willing to take the risks. And as Iain Cariaba points out your refusal to accept the risks associated with the use of a Noctis does not mean the ship is not the best for the job. And yes I did live worms holes for several years and yes we did use a Noctis instead of destroyers because they were the superior tool, and yes we did loose a few of them in the process but you simply build more and move on.

Going back to my original post and having had some time to actually think about this there are a couple of changes I think the Noctis needs. We will start with increased bonuses to all aspects of the tractor and salvage beams here are my thoughts with numbers based on an all applicable skills 5 pilot.
Tractor beam duration 7.5% per level up from the current 5% drops cycle time from 3.75 sec. to 3.125 sec.
Tractor beam range 70% per level up from the current 60% boost range from 96k to 108k.
Salvage beam duration 7.5% per level up from the current 5% reduces cycle time from 7.5 sec to 6.25 sec. OR an increase of 7.5% per level to salvage beam range which would increase it from 6k for the T2 to 8.25k.

Align time is another point made by the OP so let us take a look at that. If we use pilots with the minimum skills to fly the empty hull for determining the align time, and then divide the ships mass by it's align time to get a figure that makes comparisons of the ship easy we get these numbers.
Iteron V align - 15 sec, mass - 13.5 million kilos, 0.9 sec per million kilos
Bestower align - 16.71 sec, mass - 13.5 million kilos, 0.81 sec per million kilos
Badger align - 12.39 sec, mass - 10.65 million kilos, 0.86 sec per million kilos
Hoarder - align 11.77 sec, mass 10.65 million kilos, 0.90 sec per million kilos
Notcits align - 19.08 sec, mass - 14.64 million kilos, .77 sec per million kilos
Seems to me the Noctis in a speedy beast when looking at align time versus mass.
I sure do not want to see them slow the align time on the Noctis but making it align faster is not justified based on these numbers. And you are correct Scuzzy Logic I did not compare it to the DST why you may ask. Because the Noctis is technically a T1 ship while the DST are T2 and alone that makes a comparison between them ridiculous.

I think part of the problem with the Noctis is how easy it is to get along without it. Nerf MTUs, then buff the Noctis. I'd reduce MTU range and towing speed, and increase Noctis scan resolution. The Noctis moves and aligns like a mining barge, and it is a gathering-type industrial, so it might as well have mining barge scan resolution. Could also allow it to fit MMJD. That will let it get to the opposite end of a large site, and it can also be used defensively.

Don't fix the Noctis - keep people dropping MTUs all over the place. After all, what will I do all the live long day if I can't go floating around blowing them up?

Enquiring minds want to know!

I don't think making the Noctis popular will make people stop dropping MTUs everywhere. Heck, I bet if MTUs were nerfed into the ground to the point nobody wanted to use them to tractor stuff, they'd still get deployed everywhere because people just like dropping deployables everywhere.

Make the Noctis a TIII like the TIII Destroyers with the ability to have bonuses for salvaging, hacking and probe launching based on the mode that is selected.

Maybe make it be able to warp while cloaked as well and immune to all W-Space effects as well.