Yeah, I think this is a good idea. Either allow salvagers to pick up loot clouds, so we can have our ship's inventory fill up instead of ours, or just make it so that if a ship flies through a loot cloud, it fills up the ship's inventory first, and the astronaut's inventory second.
10k? I've never even seen one that big, let alone built one. Powering it wouldn't be that much of a problem. I find it easier to power something large than it is to power small fighters. My biggest issue is trying to balance that power with the weapons and shields needed to defend it, and the thrusters to move it. Maybe I'll try that for my next project, if my computer doesn't crash...lol.
My current miner has 35K salvage modules in it's array (and an extra 35K cannon). Mind you, it is also a two million block battleship. It is however built to be quite nimble for it's size and flies much like a much smaller cruiser. It recharges it's jump drive in a mere twelve seconds. It's built to be used, frequently, and I could not abide flying a slugboat. (As a result of making it that nimble however, it cannot really go toe to toe with another two million block battleship purpose built solely for combat.) The one thing a ship of that mass cannot redress sadly is it's turn rate. It is a short, stubby ship so as to try to gain a slightly better turn rate, but it still turns like a lame whale.
At the base level of 50 blocks long (a 1 x 1 x 50 salvage is powerful enough to eat a block in one tic, and hence is the most efficient design), a 10k block salvage array would only be 200 individual array lines.
My biggest problem was always mining enough hylat for the cannons and sertise for the shields. Both are difficult to come by in early game.
I generally don't bother with either on my early miners. I just build straight for size. Salvage modules, power, thrusters. My early stuff generally doesn't even have a hull on it.
As Edymnion suggests, the cannons are unnecessary. The only reason to marry cannons to salvage beams is so that you can have a single continuous beam salvage array instead of two of them that alternate. The single array with cannon will weigh exactly as much as two salvage arrays without cannons. When using salvage arrays without cannons, you just cycle between them, switching to the one while the other recycles.
Usually you one to 500 of lots of stuff, usually only 1 or two of each, not like before, of course it might just be the server i use...
A nice trick for when you know you're going to be fighting pirates, put one of things you actually want in your inventory to fill it up. Like one block of each advanced armor, one of each computer, etc. That way those will be the only things you can pick up from loot clouds, and you won't have to worry about all the burnt soils and blue flowers.
Even if destroying pirates in the future will only give you credits, there are still other ways to encounter loot clouds and I think it would be beneficial to have items collected go to designated ship storage instead of your own inventory.
what else would give loot clouds besides mobs? i mean maybe the fauna will drop one item but i highly doubt anything in the future is going to drop 40 different items at one time which will make this a non issue.
There are stations and ships of other players that can drop items in combat, as well as your own storage that can be destroyed in combat.
granted the only source of loot clouds at the moment are pirates and soon not even they will drop loot clouds.
What makes you think this? What will happen when a packed storage gets shot, just delete all the items?
