What would make for interesting ways to search for good salvage?
Encounters: Simple and easy looting of recent battles. Easy to find and easy to retrieve. Larger quantity with a lower chance of high quality

Random- This includes coming across random bodies and vehicle wrecks that when accessed contain components, scrap, ammunition and usable gear. Wrecks should be random and scattered around. They stay in one place until looted then eventually respawn with new stuff in another location at a later time.

Intentional- Scanners or salvage drones could be used to find larger looting sites with a higher concentration of stuff. Things like the site of a skirmish between two forces which would have many corpses and wrecks to loot. Or larger vehicle wrecks. Sizes could range from relatively small to fairly large sites. The quantity of loot would be higher but there would be more risk because such places tend to draw other would be looters.

Underground: Hard to find and difficult to retrieve. Basically it is stuff forgotten about or overlooked that gets buried. Player must locate the underground anomaly and dig it out using drones or a tool of some kind. The process takes a while during which the player is at risk. However the rewards are better. Either it is damaged beyond repair from being underground or it has been preserved. Could be old weapons, dropsuits, or whole vehicles Small quantity with a higher chance of quality

The actual salvage process
Each body or wreck must be hacked by the player. This should take some time depending on the actual size of the wreck. Once hacked, the items would then be moved from the wreck to the players inventory or storage vehicle. It should not be as simple as just hacking it then its yours. Salvage should have to be transported around and be a physical thing. To be taken into orbit when the merc leaves the surface

Just so you know, I'm still alive and reading. Just been a bit busy. Will catch up on this thread soon.

We're thinking there will be a limit yes, I think it's important to maintain that feeling of risk and loss. We've not designed it yet though so feel free to toss ideas about.

We're also still discussing if we will put limitations on gear as well i.e. you can only take x much stuff with you. No solid design there yet either so any ideas would be cool.

This is a great idea, but I have some concerns. Dust514, which I presume Legion will be at least something like given that its using all of its code, is a team based game. Perhaps one of the most team oriented games on the market. Given this the introduction of a free for all mode will be challenging for a number of reasons.

1. Vehicles already need at least two people working in coordination to take them down. Using an AV weapon in a free for all mode will make you ripe for ganking, so no one will use them. This means that Vehicles will reign supreme unless they are specifically forbidden in this gamemode.

2. Even with that, dedicated Logis will be essentially left out of this gamemode as they will be useless. CCP has stated that it wants to favor increased specialization with its new progression system and developing an entire gamemode that excludes a large number of roles is not a good idea.

3. Heavies too will be at a disadvantage in a speed-based race against the clock gamemode. I can see them still being used sparingly depending on map size but overall they will probably take a backseat as well.

This leaves scouts and assaults as viable options in this gamemode assuming vehicles are prohibited. Of these two, even if assaults as significantly buffed from where they are now, I see scouts as the true champions of this gamemode because of their speed and their ability to cloak, which allows them to avoid engagements other classes would be forced into. While the others are fighting scouts could safely sneak past them and get the goods or easily stealth kill the survivors of other engagements.

This gamemode, as I see it now, is much too limiting in terms of which classes would dominate it. You need to find a way to make every role competitive.

As a side note, while free-for-all is good, I would also love to see a team based salvage gamemode, even one where eve pilots can orbital and also scan down the planet for enemies, being attacked of course, periodically by NPCs in league with the drones.

my main question about this is why in gods name is nobody making weapons for the legion users....

is their a fluff reason nobody in eve's industrial focused economy wants to make weapons for these planet battles.

Good point. When an MCC is blown up at the end of a Skirmish match, it is not just the gear lost during the battle that would be salvageable. All of the Infantry gear and vehicles that were in the MCC would get scattered across the landscape when it blows up. Although only some of it would be in usable condition.

Sansha Kuvakei was a wealthy Caldari industrial mogul whose family had made its fortune in armament manufacturing during the Gallente-Caldari War.

As soon as my EVE chars can make weapons and equip for Legion, i hope nobody else does it too so i can be like Sansha =p

I don't know if it's been mentioned on how exactly we will be salvaging. But here's my two cents:

I don't want to run around with a salvaging laser shooting at the ground. That to me is just silly, and boring. What I would love is to deploy to a salvage site, find a good area, and then call in a "Terrestrial Salvager". This would be a large vehicle that I need to defend while it salvages the immediate area. Ratshate it - and thus try to destroy it - so they would be my main adversary, but enemy players can also try to capture it (very hard) or destroy it to ruin my day. They could also call in their own Salvager nearby and we could work together to defend the area...

This makes salvaging more defense based. I deploy, find a good salvage site, call in a Salavger, defend it for the X minutes it takes to salvage the area, then it takes off with the salvage loot and I either undeploy or do it all again at another salvage site.

The lower the sec status, and the more rats in the area, equals much better salvage and much stronger Rats.

@Severus Smith
Agreed. I do not want to revisit the days of sweating in Entropia Universe.

That looks god awful (never played, and now I don't want to )

The thing about Entropia universe is the creators of the game allow player to turn in-game currency (PEDs) into real world cash. You are also able to purchase in-game land and essentially make money off collecting rent from players who use the land. Sweating is the very basic component of the game, which also allows you to make money. People who are very poor in RL have actually made enough to get by through sweating in a video game.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/123163-Virtual-Moon-Over-Entropia-Universe-Sells-For-150-000

Fixed. There shouldn't only be one enemy NPC type; that would get boring.

Oh, I agree. Truthfully, I think that CCP should really use human NPC's for us to fight against. They already have some art assets (our dropsuits) and great lore for who we would be fighting. Guristas, Angels, etc pirates in higher security level 1 - 3 contracts. Sansha in lower security level 3 - 4 contracts. And the original Gen 1 DUST mercenaries being the hardest in nullsec level 4+ contracts.

Just reskin the dropsuits, alter the HP / damage / aim stats and you have a wide range of enemies for us to fight from low easily killed pirates to insanely hard Gen 1 mercenaries. Drones just seem very limited (but cool). They're cool, but the idea of them being such a huge nuisance that are all over the galaxy (and not just the drone regions) is a bit far fetched to me. Plus, it's hard to differentiate them. You can make three skins for a dropsuit and suddenly I can fight the Guristas OR the Sansha OR the Angels. With drones, I am always fighting drones - they really don't have factions or anything to add lore flavor. And with human NPC's they can have a wide range of motives for conflict - Gurista salvage teams, Sansha soldiers kidnapping colonists, Angel raiders.. raiding. Drones just do what drones do. And while cool, it's going to get kinda boring...

That's not how missions rats work, and we are the gen 1 mercs, but I think you get the gist of what I want: variation in security mission rats.

We're Gen 2 clones. Created after Mordu's Private Trials. Else we'd all be going crazy, scrawling 514 across walls with our own blood, and trying to kill everyone.

my main question about this is why in gods name is nobody making weapons for the legion users....

is their a fluff reason nobody in eve's industrial focused economy wants to make weapons for these planet battles.