Autons would need a reasonably large wreck chance for this to be useful, but it would provide a source of Lumiere autons for Constellation players. (See CC Add Lumiere Autons to Lumiere loot table.)

johnbwatson 7 Jan 2016:

Lumiere autons will eventually be added to the drop table for their faction's stations, I believe.

nms 7 Jan 2016:

Yes, but you might not get enough, or any, that way. This would provide a renewable source.

nms 8 Jan 2016:

Presumably they would have no devices or armor installed when salvaged. Any items on them would go into your hold and you'd have to install armor, at minimum, before they could be launched.

If that's still potentially overpowered, it could require some kind of resources to repair them. Maybe chosen randomly from things like tritium propulsion upgrades, armor segments of the type they would normally use, starship component commodities, optical knowledge arrays...

the_shrike 10 Jan 2016:

....all of which would render it useless because they're too rare. But a good idea in principle.

I'd suggest instead having you be able to either scrap dead autons for parts, scrap live autons for more parts, or repair a dead auton with parts. So you can cannibalise autons you can't/won't use to fix the ones you do. Alternatively, have an (expensive-ish) option to repair the wrecks at an auton dealer.

This would also make putting valuable gear on autons more worthwhile if there's a reasonable chance you can get it back again later.

nms 11 Jan 2016:

Well, the armor segments would be farmable. And starship parts aren't that rare. In one of my vanilla games I'm saving the lightweight ones for the fabricator. I've almost cleared the Ungoverned Territories and I have 26 cerium electrodes, 27 neodymium magnet arrays, and 62 disks of lanthanum glass.

johnbwatson 16 Jan 2016:

I'd do it much simpler, and just have a certain percentage of Auton wrecks be salvageable with the help of the bay. Clean, balanced, and easier to implement.

Percentage should probably be much lower for autons not owned by the player.

nms 19 Jan 2016:

Currently, non-Mule autons don't leave wrecks unless destroyed by radiation. They may become immune to radiation, so the number you can salvage could just be adjusted by changing the wreck chance.

But I'd rather have to spend credits at an auton dealer (or consume items if necessary) than have to spend a long time tediously grinding station reinforcements until I find enough.

george moromisato 8 Sep 2020:

Implemented in 1.9 Beta 2. See: Salvaging Autons