Salvage — your thoughts?

In its current form, Salvage returns 100% of the resources used by a building, a process which takes 3 seconds and cannot be canceled. At the moment, only the Bunker can utilize this ability. What are your overall thoughts on this ability? Do you think it is all that useful? Have you used or seen anyone use it to great effect? Should it be added to other buildings? Should it be scrapped? Any additional thoughts?

I'd like to see Salvage added to the Missile Turret and Sensor Tower. They, like the Bunker, are fairly low-profile buildings that would make Salvage a bit more useful but not overly useful. I would also reduce the return to 75% of the minerals and 50% of the gas. A return of 100% goes against the spirit of salvage imho. I could probably see the Tech-Lab and Reactor add-ons with this as well, but that might be overkill, and I don't think anyone in their right mind would salvage those buildings — unless they got really desperate (in which case they'd most likely be dead already).


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I think it's imbalanced. I abuse bunker leap frog, by using salvage I don't really lose any $.

The time to salvage the bunker should take longer AND/OR the return % should be maybe at 75%.


Should it be scrapped? No.
Should it be added to other buildings? No.
If I was going to lose an expansion or my main base, I could just quickly salvage the entire thing and just proceed with a counter-attack. Pretty imbalanced IMO..
Unlike WC3, this game is very base orientated. You can lose basically your entire tech tree so long as you had your heros and squad, the buildings/resources were dirt cheap.
In 1v1's, salvage can make or break games...it has for me..salvaged some bunekrs and made a new CC...


Maybe add to missile turret. I haven't tried this, but it should work in theory.
Make a sensor tower and a bunker or two at the edge of the choke, so it looks like a legit base. They will move in units to crush the expo, then you can flank and salvage the whole thing =P.
I think salvage will make sensor towers imbalanced, they cost 100 gas for a reason.
I think "carefully" when I place my sensor towers because of that.

I take it that salvage was added to the bunker because people had little reason to use them otherwise. As it is, I still don't see bunkers put to much use, even with salvage. I think that sensor towers and especially missile turrets are too useful to merit an additional buff. Missile turrets are incredible against air, particularly if you upgrade their range; giving them salvage would be too much.

An extremely handy ability, although the 100% return rate is a bit much. As hyde stated, a 75% rate would be preferable.

It could also be expanded to other defensive structures, as this would increase the Terran's overall flexibility and mobility.

I admit that I always found the 100% return odd. It goes against the nature of salvage imho. Something like 75% of the minerals and 50% of the gas would probably be good. Edited OP on that note.

It's just a forcefield that costs 100 minerals, in my opinion.

I love it, especially for TvT. I like to build one behind my minerals in case of Reaper rush, but if I scanner sweep and see my opponent isn't bothering with Reapers then it's nice to get it back. It would be super imbalanced for most other things though. You already mentioned the exceptions of missile turrets and scanner towers, but I can't see it being useful that often. When would you ever not want a turret or a scanner?

I don't think salvage is particularly useful. I've never used it much myself. I only recall using it once in a game so far. But that might change.

Salvage is only worth value if you actually utilize bunkers and integrate them as part of your play style. If you went and got the bunker upgrade, along with the building armor upgrade, then yeah, I can see it being more useful. As it is, it's never a good idea to turtle so I don't see much use in upgrading either of those aspects.

As for adding it to other buildings, I would definitely support that.

100 Minerals at the time you're building the Bunker is often more worth than the 100 Minerals you get after salvaging because your income rate has increased, so in a certain sense Salvage doesn't give 100% back.
Giving Salvage also to stand-alone building like Turrets could be overpowered because you can relatively cheaply protect your base with them, tech up, then salvage them and build an army.

What about, rather than a set refund,you get back 20% base, plus a bonus of up to 80% depending on how many hp it has left, ie, for full hp you get back 100%, but if you only have say 60% of you hp left you only get back 68% of the original price.