What a Wreck Is Worth
Every hull pays out three ways. Master RMC first — it's the fast, simple baseline — then add the rest as you get comfortable.
RMC
Recycled Material Composite — peeled off the outer hull with your salvage beams. Fast, consistent, and sold directly with no refining. Your bread-and-butter income.
Construction Materials
Fracture the stripped hull and grind the chunks into CM. Worth more per SCU than RMC, but it needs refining first (~15–30% yield) and more steps. The industrial play.
Parts
Detach intact power plants, shields, coolers, and quantum drives with a tractor tool. Often the single most valuable thing on a wreck — pull these before you fracture.
The Salvage Loop
Treat it as a checklist, not a single action: arrive, strip, scrape, package, sell, repeat. The order matters — skip a step and you torch profit.
Find a wreck
Pull salvage contracts from your mobiGlas — the General tab is legal work, the Personal tab is illegal (and riskier). Or free-roam for derelicts and salvage panels in space; thanks to Soft Death, ships aren't always fully destroyed and stay scrapable.
Prep the hull
On a non-destroyed ship you must drop its shields to scrape and its engines/power to fracture — board it and toggle them (default Right Alt + R). Ships handed to you by a salvage mission come pre-prepped.
Strip components first
Detach anything valuable — power plants, shields, coolers, quantum drives — with a multi-tool tractor or ship tractor before you fracture. Fracturing destroys every component still attached, so this is the step people most regret skipping.
Scrape the hull (RMC)
Switch to salvage mode (M), pick a scraper module with RMB, and fire with LMB. Work the beam steadily across the plating: blue sections are rich, yellow are thin, red are spent. The buffer fills, then packs into SCU canisters.
Fracture & disintegrate (CM)
Optional, bigger payoff. Once the hull is scraped, fracture it into chunks, then switch to Disintegrate mode to grind those chunks into Construction Material crates. Confirm power is off and the wreck is empty first — fracturing is lethal to anyone aboard.
Package & haul
Tractor filled canisters and crates into your hold. On a Vulture, enable Auto-Eject on the salvage device — and if a container jams the bay, hop out and clear it with your multi-tool tractor or you can't keep scraping.
Sell
Run RMC and refined CM to a Trade & Development Division or scrapyard; sell detached components where components are bought. Then turn around and do it again.
Reading the Hull
The beam tells you everything. Most of your scrape speed comes from technique, not gear — smooth hands beat expensive modules.
Beam Color
Blue = excellent material, yellow = mediocre, red = depleted. Chase blue, leave red — don't waste passes on spent plating.
Scraper Modules
Salvage ships carry two scraper slots. Cycle modules (Abrade, Cinch) with the right mouse button to match width vs. speed for the panel you're on.
Gimbal
Beams sit on gimballed mounts — toggle gimbal (G) to fine-aim onto awkward sections without repositioning the whole ship.
Technique
Hold a stable distance and angle, work in zones so you don't leave patches, and avoid chaotic boosting. Control over speed — speed comes on its own.
Gear & Ships
A multi-tool gets you scraping for repairs; a real ship gets you scraping for profit. Pick the hull that matches how you like to play.
| Ship | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Drake Vulture | Solo daily-driver | ~1.2M aUEC. Two pivoting arms, Abrade modules, small but agile. The best practical solo loop — scrape, package, sell, repeat. |
| Aegis Reclaimer | Capital / crew | The king. Its claw fractures any size hull; two fillers pack RMC and CM into 2/8/16 SCU boxes. Runs best with crew — thin crews are easy prey. Trawler modules make it the fastest solo RMC farmer. |
| MISC Fortune | Relaxed solo | Automated scraping, comfortable, but slower. Good for low-stress sessions and high-density CMR. |
| Greycat Salvation | Light solo | Small entry salvager; fractures only up to Freelancer size. |
| Hand tools | Repairs only | Multi-tool + Cambio-Lite SRT (short range) or Cambio SRT (longer). Scrapes RMC for patching hulls only — hand-scraped canisters sell for nothing. |
| Fracture limit | Can break up to… |
|---|---|
| Greycat Salvation | Freelancer-class and smaller |
| Drake Vulture | Mercury Star Runner and smaller |
| Aegis Reclaimer | Any size hull in the 'verse |
The Legal Line
Scraping a hull is fine. Fracturing one is treated exactly like blowing a ship up with guns — and that's where salvagers catch a CrimeStat by accident.
Mission targets handle this for you: General salvage contracts are legal and pre-cleared. Personal-tab contracts are illegal jobs — good money, but you accept the heat that comes with them.
Selling & Reputation
Know where each product moves, and build the one reputation that unlocks the big contracts.
| Product | Where to sell |
|---|---|
| RMC | Sells raw at a TDD in any major hub (Area18, New Babbage, Lorville), or at scrapyards. |
| Construction Materials | Refine first for full value, then sell at a TDD. Refined CM out-earns raw RMC per SCU. |
| Components | Sell where components are bought — landing zones and stations. Note: stock/default parts off player ships can't currently be sold. |
| Grim HEX / scrapyards | Will buy salvage too, but they're not armistice zones — convenient and risky. Treat as higher-threat selling. |
SALCOM Trades
Salvage doesn't stand alone — it feeds the rest of the industrial chain.
Mining
The other half of industry. Same patience, same payoff — crack rock for refined metal instead of stripping hulls for RMC.
Open the mining manual → DownstreamCrafting
Where your haul goes to work. RMC and Construction Materials feed repairs and the crafting bench — stockpile the good stuff.
Open crafting →Zero to Salvager
The cleanest bootstrap in the 'verse — a Vulture and a routine are all it takes to start printing UEC.
Get into a Vulture
Rent or buy a Drake Vulture — check Ship Sales & Rentals for current pricing. It's solo-friendly and you'll be competent within a few sessions.
Farm RMC
Run lower-tier salvage contracts or scrape derelicts. Focus purely on hull scraping until the loop is second nature — control before speed.
Build a buffer, hit Senior
Stack RMC sales into a credit cushion and grind Adagio rep to Senior Contractor for the 100K contracts. Don't gamble your last credits on big missions that can fail.
Add CM & components
Once RMC is easy, start stripping components and running structural salvage for Construction Materials — or crew a Reclaimer with the org and tackle whole fleets.