When burning through the Black, you will occasionally flip over a Salvage Op card, that will give you the option to either keep flying or full stop and pick up some goodies. It is tempting sometimes to ignore the loot and keep flying onto your destination. After all, there is crime to be done and every turn you spend stopped in the black is another turn you are not getting paid for working.
Salvage Ops (Normally, Ops stands for "operations", but I like to call them "opportunities") can be highly profitable, especially with the right crew and ship upgrades.
What are the rewards?
Without any Ship Upgrades or special crew, the cards will usually provide either 1 to 2 Contraband / Cargo, 1 or 2 Fuel / Parts, or possibly a free ship upgrade. However, you can augment your ship and crew to gain additional materials.
One of the reasons most players will blow past these opportunities is because they fail to see the value or profit of it. However, this is because they are too focused on Mission Rewards. Do you view that cargo or contraband with a dollar sign attached to it?
If you draw a Derelict Ship navigation card, you can choose to "Load 2 Cargo and Full Stop" or "Keep Flying". If you stop and load the cargo, you have 2 Cargo that you can sell to a Solid Contact. If you are Solid with Amnon Duul, you can sell those cargo to him for $600 apiece. That is a nice $1200 without being taxed by your crew taking a cut.
So if you chose to "Keep Flying", you passed up as much as $1200 that would only cost you a single action and ZERO risk.
How to maximize your profit:
If you are looking to make a nice side hustle with Salvage Ops, you will need to equip your ship with some upgrades and crew.
The first upgrade to get would be the Onboard Chop Shop.
As you can see from the image above, the Onboard Chop Shop allows you to Load 1 Contraband and collect $500 after any successful salvage operation. You can get this from Regina. As you can see, the Chop Shop costs a whopping $1600 but you will make that investment back very quickly. After two salvage operations (if you sell the contraband to Niska) you will make $1000 and two contraband, worth a maximum of $700 apiece. This will net you $1100 profit after just TWO salvage operations.
The Sky Hook and the 4WD Mule do not give you anything for Salvage Operations, however, if you are doing crime jobs, you'll get extra Contraband and Cargo when performing these missions. So I include them in my upgrades.
The next thing that you can do to increase the amount of profit that you can obtain from Salvage Ops is crew.
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| Jesse and Billy get bonus during Salvage Ops, Bree lets you sell parts. |
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| Low Level Scrappers will provide Fuel and Parts from Salvage Ops |
These are not all of the crew that is available and gives a bonus for doing salvage ops. Generic "Scrappers" can be found in the Space Bazaar, along with Jesse and Billy. If you want to maximize your earning potential, I would get Jesse and Billy at the very least. Not only will this allow you to get one 1 Contraband and 1 Cargo at each salvage event; you will have a Pilot and a Mechanic, which will allow you to escape the Reavers.
This fact leads us into the final point:
The vast majority of Salvage Opportunities is in Border Space
I may have miscounted but I found only one salvage card in the Alliance Deck. There are six of them in the Border Space Deck.
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| While most Salvage Ops use a tech roll, some of them require a high Fight Skill. |
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| Sorry for the fuzziness... these are supposed to be the easiest Salvage Ops |
The only card in Alliance Space yields two contraband with no skill roll. However, you are six times more likely to get a Salvage Op in Border Space, and those require Tech and Gun rolls. So always make sure that you have a Pilot and a Mechanic before running out into the Black to pilfer some sweet left-overs. If you get Jesse and Billy, you will meet that need and get awesome bonuses.
Thanks for reading, everybody! I hope you enjoyed the tips. If you enjoy reading the blog, feel free to promote the crap out of it for me. :-)
Stay Shiny,
~ Captain Paddy Bardic
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