Salvage combinations?

[gobmaster2]

So I was watching a video and saw that the salvage computer was linked to a cannon computer. Why is this? Does linking other computers to salvage do anything? I've never tried it before or even heard of linking to salvage.

 

[Nauvran]

it's just as combining other weapons. same effects and all but with salvage beams

 

[Az14el]

support effects modify the refiring rate, range & salv power, there is an "ideal" somewhere just under 200 salvage power per salvage beam due to its 10 initial ticks on contact with a new block (can check your salvage power per group in weapons menu), but im not sure exactly what that number is so i just use 200 to avoid having to math too hard

Cannons increase the group size required to hit this point, but at the same time increase firing rate, a good cannon slaved salvager is honestly HUGE relative to other salvagers, but obviously the fastest due to the refire rate. My personal favorite is just 2 set ups of pure salvage running in checkerboard to save money & space, pulse slave salvage can be super useful on smaller salvagers or for a small grid on a larger combat ship.

Personally wouldn't use the others but seen em all

 

[DrTarDIS]

Use the details option in the g-menu to see what your damage/tick is for a salvage group of any one size&support. Default every block has 200 salvage-hp that you can attack when it's in a salvageable state, weather rock, ice, or shipcores. Some servers may have modified this base number, but it's unlikely.(The {delete} menu has the same info, and some other useful things like your current power and capacity values to help with balancing a build.)
As long as the damage/tick is at or over 200 your array is working optimally. If you're below 200/tick it's best to go as close as possible to a whole-number division; 100, 67, 50, 34, and 25. This minimizes "waste" of time and energy.(2 ticks of 100 will salvage a full block, 2 ticks of 180 will salvage a full block wasting 160, 3 ticks of 67 will salvage a full block wasting 2)

No matter how awesome your array is, the server itself will determine what "maximum" salvage power is. Going past this will result in some rubber-banding in the engine as the target "catches up" to what you've done in chunk-updates.

Using missile-slave gives you an extra sweep of beams to salvage a wider area, like a planet plate.

I think the update to the basic salvage beam made cannon-slave kinda nerfed. they already have a default 0.03 refire un-enhanced last I checked.

Beam-slave is good for if you're fat-and-slow. letting you harvest stuff from a distance without having to maneuver much. or to keep it outside a gravity-well.

Pulse lets you have smaller arrays that "burst" a bit better, but have long cooldown in-between shots. I'd only use it on a ship that can't afford to be a main-line salvager. something like a skirmish-and-salvage ship, fighter or whatnot.

 

[Edymnion]

The "there's no carry over of salvage power" has already been hit on, but there is also a server side maximum to how many blocks it can process at once. Don't remember how much it was exactly, but pretend it was 1,000 blocks per tic. You could do an array that eats 10,000 blocks per tic, but every time you fired it the server would take 10 tics to process it all, meaning you'd still be wasting time waiting for the server to catch up with you.

So there really is a maximum useful size to a salvaging array.