Back in July, Star Citizen shared a prototype of how full ship salvaging, aka “munching,” was going. Several months later, the activity is back in the spotlight with this week’s Inside Star Citizen episode, showing how the activity has gotten a significant mechanical change as well as a projected arrival to alpha 3.22.
First off, CIG has scrapped the idea of breaking ships down into smaller individual entities because the game’s engine is incapable of rendering the large number of tiny chunks in real-time in a multiplayer-scale space. Instead, salvage will first ask players to scrape a ship’s hull, then engage a “fracture field” that will blast a ship apart into larger pieces, and then switch to a disintegration mode that will dissolve those pieces into dust that gets slurped up and broken down into crates of salable material.
Both the Vulture and the Reclaimer salvage ships will work in this way, as well as require players to manually move crates of material salvage into their cargo holds, though the Reclaimer has a couple of additional functions such as a large claw that makes it capable of breaking down craft of any size, additional tractor beams to move structure pieces into the claw’s disintegration field, and the ability to make much larger crates of material. As such, the Vulture is being designed for a one to two-person crew, while the Reclaimer will require more players and coordination.
As mentioned earlier, this update to salvaging will be live in alpha 3.22, which currently has no release date but is in testing in the experimental PTU. For now, followers of the alpha can see where the profession stands in the video below.
