So bear with me here as I’ve had this idea pop into my head just prior to typing so my train of thought may be a little ….. complex. I’ll do my best to streamline the point.

I’ve personally not played the latest patches but have stayed tapped into the progress and changes via random YouTube videos, ISC and SCL. One of the things I’ve seen mentioned was the lack of complexity with structural salvage (in the reclaimer in particular). Even with the addition of the sweet spot, it’s obvious more needs to be done to make the reclaimer an actual multicrew ship. My idea is for the co-pilot in particular or the role could be swapped between the pilot and the co-pilot in exchange for control of the salvage “claw”.

I propose a type of material based field management. This would require a person to actively adjust the potential of the salvaging disintegration field based off of available resources to be collected from the target instead of just “construction material”. In doing so, the efficiency of salvaging would be increased as well as a possible minor collection buff. Thinking of this in a “sciency” way, changing the focus of the field would allow the break down of complex alloys into their base materials. If you try to just salvage without focusing, then this would make your yield smaller from damaging or even destroying the very material your trying to collect. Using modern “examples”, most metal vehicles aren’t just made of one type of metal, but multiple types, as well as alloys that will be a blend of multiple metals and other non metal materials. If you were to throw the body of a car in a massive melting pot, you’d mostly likely destroy 80% of the vehicle leaving a small amount of material actually salvaged and the remainder being a material that would only melt at a much higher temperature than what the pot was.

This opens up gameplay for salvaging certain ships for certain materials or concentrations of a particular material I.e, Origin ships have a higher concentration of titanium and Drake ship have a higher concentration of duct tape….

That’s the basis of my idea though and I feel like this would add needed complexity and open up other possibilities.