I’ve been doing a lot of mission runs lately in order to get my faction up for R&D agents (so I can purchase those all important datacores if you recall). It’s very relaxing and low stress which I know is rare in EVE Online. One thing I always dislike about running missions is the clean up process that I have to do after each one. Now I know you don’t HAVE to loot and salvage wrecks, and in most cases you may not even want to because the items are not ‘that’ valuable – but I loot everything I can and I salvage for parts afterward. Unless you’re running a second account with a salvage fit, this can be incredibly time consuming and boring. You have to be within range of each wreck, so you typically need to either beam it all in closer to you (which of course takes up a precious slot on your ship, multiples if you’re trying to go even faster) and you’ll also need a salvager of some sort so you can scan the wreck for parts after you take the loot.
Then some friends told me about mobile tractor units, which I had never heard of before. These are little stations you can drop out in space and they act exactly as a tractor beam would. They pull all the wrecks to the unit, and then they loot everything off of it so that you can just fly up and open the cargo hold and collect your spoils. Since it also moves all the wrecks together on its own you’re also able to salvage everything MUCH easier without requiring a brand new fit for your ship. I recently replaced on missile launcher (so I’m down to 5) with a salvager instead just for this purpose.
You should have seen the smile on my face. I’m much happier not needing a brand new ship or fit in order to loot after a hefty mission run, and my second account (which I did activate) can go about her way without needing to come to the beck and call of my main account who has completed a mission. Over all, this is probably the best bit of information I learned this week.
You don’t like going back afterward in a Noctis, eh?
I stopped playing before Noctis’s were in the game, so my salvager of choice was a Hurricane with a 4/4 tractor/salvager split, and a full rack of Cargo Expander II’s in the low slots. It worked, but as you say… kinda boring to have to go back to salvage everything, so I can easily imagine the MTU’s being a godsend over and above the Noctis salvaging ship.
If you get a Mobile Depot and store it in your cargo hold you can launch it. After it is deployed it allows you to change your ship fit. This would allow you to have 6 launchers during the mission and Salvagers for salvaging.
The only drawback to this is that the Depots are fairly large, 50 cubic meters.
This tactic can be used for many things: refitting for scanning in a Wormhole, adding/dropping warp scramblers etc.