How to Scrap Vehicle Hulls in Star Citizen – Salvage Guide

Spaceships, at least based on our hypothetical understanding of them in science fiction, are really gosh-darned big and are made of a lot of stuff. I’m talking scores of metals, plastics, and all sorts of other materials. Now, if a spaceship goes dark in the middle of the vacuum, all those materials are just going to waste, and frankly, that’s just criminal. You can put those resources toward much better uses in Star Citizen with a bit of elbow grease. Here’s how to scrap vehicle hulls in Star Citizen.

How to Scrap Vehicle Hulls in Star Citizen – Salvage Guide

In Star Citizen, you have the ability to search out derelict vehicles floating out in the deep dark and, using special tools equipped to your ship, scrape and scrap their hulls to collect valuable resources. These resources can be sold to traders for a tidy profit or used to fuel your Multitool’s repair functions.

Related: Where to Find Race Tracks and Time Trials in Star Citizen

The first thing you need to know is that not all ships are capable of salvage work. At the moment, the only ships that have salvage modes are the Drake Vulture and the Aegis Reclaimer. These two ships have special turret stations with Salvage Lasers, which can be used to scrape the sides of ships and harvest their resources. The Vulture is easier to use, but can’t hold as much stuff, while the Reclaimer has a greater capacity.

Scrapping a Hull

If you come across a dead ship in space, press the M key to hop into your salvage turret and prepare to scrape. You can right-click to switch between your scrapper modules and press the G key to switch to Gimbal mode, allowing you to manipulate the scrapper heads directly. Once you’re maneuvered into place, you can set the distance of the heads to the target by holding left Alt and using the mouse wheel. After that, just hold the left mouse button to fire the salvage lasers and begin the scrapping process.

Carefully drag the lasers across the hull of the ship; you’ll automatically collect resources as you go. Use the Cinch Module to focus your beam and cut through the hull, then the Abrade Module to collect stuff in a wider area. Mind the colored lines separating the different parts of the hull; they indicate how dense that chunk of it is. Red lines are the weakest density, followed by yellow, blue, and green.

Any salvaged resources you obtain will be automatically boxed up and placed into your hold. You will need to manually get out of the cab to arrange everything in the hold using your Multitool’s Tractor Beam attachment, though you can also have a friend on standby to help you with this. If you harvest more resources than your hold can carry, the excess will be automatically ejected.

That’s pretty much the long and short of it; just keep on scrapping until you’ve got all the junk you can carry, then ferry it all to the nearest major planet or commerce hub and use the TDD terminal to offload your cargo. Easy money! One man’s trash truly is another man’s treasure.

For more games with mining and salvage operations, check out our guides on getting minerals in Industries of Titan and the Salvager Missions in Warzone 2.0 DMZ. Visit our Facebook page as well for the latest news and guides.