Hardspace: Shipbreaker – Guide to Gutting the Gecko

A guide for intermediate spaceboatbusters to streamline gutting the Gecko: civilian transport AND industrial cargo configurations.

Gutting the Gecko Guide

All credit goes to Shrinkshooter!

Foreword

This guide will cover dissection of both Gecko configurations as of the initial Early Access 0.1.0 release. It will not go over basics, tricks or techniques used in general shipbreaking; it will be assumed that you’re not a totally lobotomized drooling imbecile. As such this guide will only describe what to do and not specifically how to go about doing it in most cases.

This will describe the process of gutting a Gecko with certain work orders prioritized over others. Reactor is priority one; throwing seats or cargo crates into the barge is priority “who cares.” That being said, you can still use this guide to determine how to pick the ship apart, and then change the order/priority of some actions, if you’re just looking to salvage literally the entire thing.

This guide will assume you do not have access to all the top level stuff. Cutting through nano is too easy. Nothing will be reliant on high tier upgrades.

Early Note

In the interest in helping people early, I will be publishing this guide in its own “Early Access” state, and will not include images or a stepwise process on gutting a Gecko Class Industrial Cargo configuration. These will come soon after.

Gecko Class – Civilian Transport

Overview

Overall, you’re going to want to salvage the reactor, the power generator, the ECU (cooling unit), the nacelles (external thrusters), internal thrusters, and mechanical/electrical parts. Nano and metal material comes secondarily, along with coolant, seating, cargo and fuel, and chances are you’ll complete nano without trying, as you’re going to be moving tons of panels out of the way in order to access what you need.

Process

ECU and Pipes

The first thing we need to do is gain access to the ship. You can do this by any means you choose, airlock being the most obvious (located topside); there are some aluminum panels on the top side you can cut through to gain access faster, and can enter the back supply room quickly and directly. Your first goal is to deal with the ECU and, if you have a key, the fuel flush console next to the reactor. The ECU is located in a room to the back left (if you’re facing the ship from the spawn position) of the main, large central compartment with all the seats. When you’ve gotten to the ECU, pull off the front panel with your grapple. There will be 3 small coolant containers inside. Grapple these and the coolant system is dealt with (you can pick them up if you want). Then make sure to cut or destroy the small pipe on the back of the ECU so you can tether it later.

If you have a key: Go use it on the console next to the reactor. It’s in the back center room connected to the main seating compartment. This will flush the fuel from the lines and allow the internal thrusters to be disconnected with the grapple. If you’re in the campaign, please keep in mind that keys are permanent and persistent in your inventory; if you picked up some keys when salvaging a Mackerel, and used the shutoff valves instead of those keys, you still have those keys. Hit ESC and check your inventory; it will tell you how many repair kits and keys you possess.

If you do not have the key: See, in the Mackerel this isn’t a problem, because you shut off the fuel tank valves and it’s done. In a Gecko, the thrusters are powered by lines carrying fuel directly from the Class 2 reactor. Your options then would be to 1) find a key somewhere in the ship, which you can do with the Objects Scanner as the key will be pink, but it won’t always exist and it wastes lots of time trying to find and retrieve it even if it’s there; 2) shut off valves on the lines, but these don’t exist on the Gecko; 3) use the emergency flush system, which will just your day up harder than you’ve ever been justed. There are three emergency shutoffs, and at least one of them will rupture the pipes, causing a chain explosion. So what’s the solution? At the moment, it’s what I assume to be a bug. If you use the stinger default mode of the cutter, you can heat up and destroy a section of pipe on the purple fuel lines without causing any explosion. The thruster for that line will then be grapple-able once you safely use the emergency flush switch (if you don’t, the thruster will stay be connected to the pipe and it won’t fit out the back thruster hole). Do not use the splitsaw mode. Once the coolant and fuel lines are dealt with, it’s time to chop some weakpoints.

Internal Weakpoints

The next step is to cut the internal weakpoints. If you’re in the main central compartment with all the seats, there is an access supply closet to the back right; the ceiling has a hatch that opens into the maintenance area. You can choose to either cut every single yellow weakpoint you find, or surgically remove only the ones needed to get out of the reactor’s way. While you’re doing this, make sure to also cut the 2 weakpoints holding each external nacelle in place. Chances are at least one of them will drift slightly enough to give you quick access to outside. When cutting weakpoints, for the current version of the game, do not use the stinger. Use the splitsaw. It is much faster with a lot less heat and is able to cut multiple points if your angle and distance is right. It is for this reason far superior to not have an upgraded cutter; that way, only the points will be cut, and none of the titanium or nano paneling will be damaged. Because it can be easy to miss a single weakpoint, which will hold everything in place in one long chain, I suggest cutting every single one you see on the back half of the ship and sweeping a second time. Once you’re sure they’re all cut (use the scanner), get outside; you can go out either through one of the nacelle gaps or find one of the aluminum panels on the top side and cut through that. However, if you really did cut all weakpoints on the back half of the ship, some of the top panels should have drifted off.

Outer Panels, Nacelles, Thrusters

Once outside, use a tether on each nacelle to pull them to the barge. Get to the back of the ship and cut the weakpoints on the thruster caps. The caps aren’t worth much, so don’t bother wasting time salvaging them. Pull out the thrusters. If you want to beeline the reactor, only pull out the middle thruster, and punch that down at the barge. Once that’s cleared, use two tethers to pull the bottom central length of panels away from the ship. You won’t readily be able to get this to the processor, so just connect it to the back wall (or the barge and cancel the tethers with V once it’s moved enough). It will be heavy and move slowly, but if you didn’t cut all the points you needed to, it won’t budge at all, and you’ll need to re-enter the inside through the thruster hole to check the bottom connectivity. While I’m outside doing all of the above, I also slap tethers on each off-kilter outside panel to the processor. This is quick and easy for the middle of the ship. Once you’ve moved the bottom central panel underneath the reactor out of the way, and tethered any other outside panels you want, it’s time to get the reactor.

Small Note on Fuel and Coolant Work Orders

If you do not have a work order for fuel or coolant, don’t bother with them. They aren’t worth much money.

If you do, detach all the fuel canisters on the inside back nanopanels at the same time that you’re cutting all the weakpoints. Or leave them attached and just move the panels but don’t recycle the panels until you’ve deposited the canisters in the barge. The coolant order will only take one or two canisters to complete and can be done at any point after you’ve peeled off half the side panels on one side, so it’s not urgent at all.

Reactor, ECU, Power Generator

These are the most expensive objects. The Class 2 Reactor is housed in a large cylinder made of panels. First, you need to get the pipes underneath out of the way. Use the splitsaw to make three cuts, one for each 90 degree direction. One of those cuts should sever both a fuel line and coolant line at once. Then all you need to do is tether that down to the barge. It’s your choice at this point: you can either let it go all the way down on its own just like that, and gamble that the game will detect the reactor in the barge and complete the work order, or you can cancel the tether once the reactor is moved from its “sheath” and pull off the panels before grappling the reactor itself and shooting it down into the barge. If you go with option 1, there is a chance that the cylinder gets captured by the barge but the reactor inside isn’t far enough within the barge’s hitbox to register as being captured itself. If that happens you’ll need to go down there and fix it via option 2. Waste of time, but like I said, it’s a gamble.

You already know where the ECU is located, but to see it a bit better, flick on your Systems Scanner. The ECU is where the blue pipe ends. Now that the external panels are all out of the way, you can use the splitsaw to cut out the floor of its room. Make sure to do this along the inside edges of the panel so as not to cut through the center and hit the ECU itself. Alternatively you can use the stinger cutter to destroy all the aluminum bars keeping the bottom panel in place, but this is stupid and takes much longer. Once you’ve cut a hole in the floor, tether the ECU to the barge, and you’re done. If it isn’t moving, you failed reading comprehension and need to re-read the guide.

The last object here is the power generator, located between the top compartment panels and outer panels, forward center of the ship. Use the System Scanner to find a bright green triangle. You may need to cut more weakpoints to get those long connector bars out of the way. Then just look at the barge and push. There you go, three work orders done.

Electrical and Mechanical

Here’s where things get a bit more freeform. In the previous steps, you had to do things sequentially, in order to ensure either safety or that something was physically moved out of the way. At this point in the salvage, the back half of the ship’s outer panels have fragmented, exposing the internal aluminum paneling which is easily cuttable. Now, there is much less a stepwise process of doing things, and more a process of doing whatever work order you want as quickly as possible. Do note: at this stage you should also be done with or very close to complete on the nano salvage work order; many nanopanels should have been processed as a result of you shifting things out of the way for earlier steps.

Your “mechanical” work order is already partially complete because of the thrusters and nacelles you previously tethered into the barge. In order to complete this order, the fastest way is to snap up all the door levers and deposit those. For this reason, and to start working on the electrical work order simultaneously, you need to cut a panel or two out of the floor of the main seating compartment. Gather all the door levers you can find and shoot them down through the hole into the barge. Also whenever you’re ready, use Z to hold onto a surface near where you cut away the floor hole. You will then use the grapple to yank out all the box-shaped terminals in the main compartment and shoot them down through the hole as well. Directly behind the cockpit compartment is a small room with lots of terminals as well. Cut a hole in that floor and do the same thing. Note: make sure to salvage as many atmosphere controllers as you can if you care about money. They’re worth quite a bit and count as electrical. Make sure to use your Systems Scanner to easily find all the green items that count as electrical components.

Metal and Other Things

So we’ve already established that your nano work order should be done by now. After finishing electrical and mechanical, the work orders that may be left would include seating, cargo, fuel, coolant, and metal. We already discussed fuel and coolant (now would be a good time to complete the coolant if there’s an order for it). Whether to bother with seating and cargo is entirely up to you, and I don’t need to explain how to do this. The reason I’m mentioning it now is because seating may conflict somewhat with metal. If you don’t care about seating, you can just haphazardly chop up the internal panels and chuck them into the furnace. If you do care about seating, you’ll either need to shoot those into the barge one at a time or try and cut out the whole floor and tether it into the barge. Cutting out the whole floor is tricky; you have two options, you can either splitsaw the whole thing, or you can destroy the aluminum bars that hold all the panels together. The splitsaw is frustrating, because the cuts stop when encountering another panel or surface. You can rarely be sure that a cut you just made actually made the cut you wanted because of the bars. The stinger destruction of the bars is frustratingly slow but more reliable assuming you don’t miss some small block of it somewhere.

The point is that you need to throw metal panels into the furnace, and you want to do it fast. If you don’t care about seating, you can spam the splitsaw and tether chunks into the fire. If you do care about seating, it will take you some practice to cut out the entire floor with all the seats attached and then tether that to the barge (even then it may not register correctly). Once metal and seating is done it’s easy to do cargo containers if you wish. The fastest way for that is to pull out the cockpit storage bins while holding a nearby wall, and then finish up with whatever crates you find.

Miscellaneous Objects

The community at the moment is divided on fuses, but if for whatever reason you want to snag some safely, pull the fuse lever only once the red lights are off. If any lights are on when you do it you lose half your health.

On the topside of the Gecko is the sensor suite rather than an antenna. Pop that into the barge if you want.

Grab data slates if you spot them, decrypting them is worth 100 Lynx Tokens each.

Underneath the topside nanopanels near the power generator is a fume hood and a couple ship furnaces. Stinger-destroy the small vented panel on the top of that, then pull out the fume hood and push into the barge. It isn’t worth that much, and the furnaces are scrap.

Gecko Class – Civilian Transport Quicklist

• Get inside the ship and deal with the ECU. Cut the pipe section directly behind it. Use a key on the console next to the reactor if you have a key.
• Get into the back half of the ship’s guts. Cut all the weakpoints you find there, including the nacelle braces. If you didn’t use a key to flush the fuel for the thrusters, use the stinger to destroy a pipe section for each line.
• Get outside and tether down the nacelles, and perhaps some side panels while you’re there. Deal with the thrusters. Cut the pipes at the base of the reactor.
• Deal with the reactor; either tether the entire case down to the barge and hope for the best, or pull it down a bit, yank off three panels, then pull out the reactor core itself and throw into the barge.
• If you have a work order for fuel, deal with that before trying to move any of the back panels into the processor.
• Cut a hole into the floor of the ECU room, tether that to the barge.
• Go grab the power generator and chuck that into the barge. Deal with any panels or crossbars that get in your way.
• If you have a work order for coolant, you can deal with that now or at any point further from here.
• Cut a hole into the bottom of the main seating compartment and the computer compartment directly behind the cockpit. Use those holes to move all the terminals and atmosphere regulators into the barge, as well as whatever number of door levers you need to complete mechanical work order.
• Deal with the seats, if you want, in any way you see fit. It will be slow going no matter what. Tethering to the barge one large series of connected floor panels with all the seats attached is probably the best.
• Process whatever metal you need to complete the order by chopping up the internal panels and bars. Anything light blue on the scanner is fair game.
• Take care of the cargo containers if you like. Deposit the cockpit storage bins first, as that’s the fastest way to quickly fill up the work order.