i know people have said the issue with salv having a shuttle on start was that people would just fly off and work on their ship, thus not interacting with the station. but isnt FORCING people to create a shuttle from scratch going to make them WANT to upgrade it like, 10x more then before? personally if i created a ship from scratch i would feel way more inclined to have it reach its full potential, compared to if i was just given one off start. i like the fact you have the option to build a shuttle, but forcing people to interact with that side of the game (especially if you dont know how to make one) seems kinda silly imo, i only recently learned ship building from Frontier Station, but if you havent played that and just wanna mine, you’re gonna be completely in the dark on how to even begin mining in the first place. maybe there could be some sort of ship thruster fuel system? like you only get a certain amount of minutes away from the station before you have to “refuel”. that would force miners to interact with the station again, and make the mining experience more new player friendly
YOU DO NOT NEED TO MAKE A SHUTTLE
THE MAGNET AND MASS SCANNER IS RIGHT THERE
damn, i asked like 10 people what to do now that its gone and they all told me “just make a shuttle” so i wasnt sure. i guess yeah you can still use the ore magnet, just is unfortunate you cant do expeditions or interact with the randomly spawning space debris unless you basically learn most of engineering. imo removing it kinda changed my favorite job into a shiftlong slog
you do, in fact, not need to make a shittle unless you want to do exps (and tbh you ONLY will do them for clonning so is not worth it until the rework comes out). You can literally just buy minijetpacks and use the space friction for save a shitton of fuel and go anywhere you want, if you have a handheld scanner you can’t even get lost and the grappling hook is a amazing tool if you need to poke hostile creatures from outside the wrecks/debris.
When i play cargo i mostly only play salv and let me tell you at seeing salv ignore they work only for make a shittle for a minimun of 20 minutes is annoying, specially when i have to do all the work alone and end up getting a more big amount of loot at the rest of the salv team will ever get on the shift even if they use the shittle.
Hell i even saw admins pull out the meteor rpg for bombard the salv shittle sometimes , not even god likes them and yet salv is stubborn in getting they shittle…
at that point you should just remove expeditions if the admins are bombing people who even try to do them lmao. exploring planets was what made salvage unique, and now that its nearly impossible to be able to create a ship and do expeditions before a round ends (and from what it sounds like, even IF you get a shuttle, the admins will bomb you anyway??) it sucks because this used to be my favorite job to do but now the entire job feels kinda pointless and boring imo. like even the mining on ss13 had you going down to planets killing aliens and bringing back loot. why would the sequel purposefully be a downgrade?
i would assume admins bombing salv’s shittle is due to them only focusing on that since the beginning of the shift rather than getting the station materials before starting shittle construction.
though i havn’t played salv, or even wizden in a while (nor am i an admin so i don’t have as much overview as them) so i could be wrong
Sadly that is EXACTLY the main reason why shittles for salv are a problem. Salv ignores they job and only focuses on making the shittle…
With reclaimer: Salvagers steal vends and salvage the station to have coolest reclaimer ever instead of early resources for station.
Without reclaimer: Salvagers focus on shittle instead of early resources of station.
All in all, I think it was improvement as I do not recall any medivends stolen since removal. 
What is the OOC incentive for salvage players to bring materials to station?
If it’s fear of punishment (IC or OOC) then it’s bad game design.
On some SS13 servers they had access ore processor that gave out tokens, which they could use to buy strong gear from salvage vendors. There was a clear pipeline for players: help station → you get things based on your output.
On wizden the interaction seems one-sided: help station → beg station to help you and wait for the help. It may be intentional design but there’s no guarantee for time spent playing that part of the game.
i 100% agree, there needs to be a rework from the old way, but i dont think removing shuttle (the core thing that made the salvager gameplay fun/unique) was the solution. not sure if its the exact one you’re talking about, but there was a old ss13 fork (yogstation i think?) i used to play where upon delivering ores, if you swiped your ID card on the ore refinery it would reward you with a separate miner currency you could use at the vending machine to purchase hard to get mining equipment. (plus some exclusive stuff, like improved armor, better fulton packs, mining drones, etc) maybe something like that could be better to more encourage players to bring back ores, and stop people from abandoning the station. opposed to removing the cool atmosphere of mining alien-infested asteroids and exploring/looting abandoned wrecks with your small crew in your tiny starship.
wouldnt have happened if reclaimer wasnt removed with the promise of a buff coming out (its been two months and salv is the exact same as when the reclaimer has been removed.)
Salvage shuttle could be a purchase for mining / salvaging x points worth of materials. So instead of salvagers spending time building a shuttle, they would spend time helping station for the same result.