Salvaging in Star Citizen might not be as profitable as it used to be back in Alpha 3.20 when you could gain a lot of RMC from ships while stealing their abandoned cargo and earning huge amounts of aUEC.
That being said, with Alpha 3.23 and the increased price of RMC, you can now earn good money off salvaging again if you focus on hull-scraping metal panels and sheets rather than ships. You will soon find out how to do it, but if you don’t like reading a long guide, check out the video at the end of the article then!
Look For Metal Panels In Lagrange Points
Your first task is to pick up your Vulture and head to any Lagrange Point in the PU. In case you don’t know, Lagrange Points are all the space stations that end with an L in their name, such as MIC-L1, ARC-L3, CRU-L2, HUR-L4, and so on. Regardless of the number appearing at the end, all of them are applicable to this guide.
So, once you travel to a Lagrange Point, get yourself into its space station zone, and you will realize there is an asteroid field around. That’s what we need. Metal Panels can be found in the asteroid fields around Lagrange Points.
Now, take a look at the asteroid field and try to move in the direction with the most asteroids, as we want to get deep inside the field. While moving in, press V to activate scan mode and set the focus rate at zero. Meanwhile, hit “Tab” continuously to send out ping. At one point, your pings will recognize some targets, highlighted by blue teardrop icons.
If you move the crosshair over a target, it will reveal an RS Signature on the right side of the Scanner UI. The RS Signature for a Metal Panel is 2,000. So, we are looking for any RS Signature that is either 2,000 or a multiplication of it such as 8,000 or 10,000. Just keep in mind that 6,000 is an exception here and it doesn’t count.
So, look for any of these RS Signatures and move towards it. As you get closer, increase your scan focus gradually and keep sending out pings. If the teardrop icon branches out into multiple teardrops, that means you are closing in on a series of metal panels.
To ensure that they are metal panels, reduce your speed, and hover your crosshair just beneath the teardrop icon’s sharp point on the bottom, hold down LMB (Left Mouse Button), and wait until the Scan Progress Bar turns fully white. After that, if the teardrop icon turns into a white arrow icon, that means your target is not a metal panel, but rather a mineable rock. However, if the teardrop icon remains as it is or disappears, then you have 100% found a metal panel.
The most important part comes next. Once you are within 5km of the teardrop icon, you must slow down your speed to below 100 m/s. You will reach a point where your focus rate is 97% but sending out scans does not find anything and the existing teardrop icons disappear. That means you are pretty close to the metal sheets, but they have not just spawned in the world. This is where you slow down further to below 50 m/s. To better maintain your speed, you can simply deploy your landing gear to make sure you will not pass 30 m/s.
Now, as you move slowly ahead, you will suddenly see one of the metal panels spawn. Halt your speed and stop there, and after a few seconds, you will see other panels spawn too. Even if they don’t spawn fast, you can start salvaging the first metal panel, and by the time you fully peel it off, the others will spawn.
Why Panels Are Better Than Ships?
As soon as you begin salvaging a metal panel, you will realize that the gain from salvaging a panel is up to 3 times more than the gain from salvaging a ship. If you pay attention to the cSCU/s number on your HUD, the gain from metal panels reach up to 12, while the max gain you usually get from a ship is around 4.
This means you can fill up your Vulture up to 3 times faster when salvaging a metal sheet, which is why it is a way better method of salvaging. Also, a single medium-size panel can fill up 80% of your Filler Station in a Vulture. So, you simply need 2 and a half metal sheets to gain 26 SCU of RMC.
Just for the sake of comparison, if you fully hull a Constellation Andromeda, you will roughly get 13 SCU of RMC, but will also take a pretty long time.
Best Modules For Salvaging Panels
Based on a test I ran on all possible combinations of salvage modules, I concluded that using Abrade modules on both arms is the best configuration, as it guarantees a high enough scraping speed, as well as acceptable efficiency.
You can buy an extra Abrade module to replace the Cinch or the Tractor Beam on the left arm from the Platinum Bay store in Port Tressler.
