Hardspace: Shipbreaker – Guide to Safely Salvage the ECU

This guide teaches how to flush the coolant pipes and break the ECU free with no explosion garanteed.

How to Flush Break the ECU Free

All credit goes to bookman!

What is the ECU

The Environment Control Unit is the source of larger ships coolant system, with a direct coolant pipeline to the reactor. The ECU is a valuable loot both because of its value – 240’000 $ and a work order of 300 LT – and because its deactivation will flush the coolant pipes, allowing for a safer salvage of the ship in general and of the reactor in particular.

How to Salvage It

The ECU is filled with three coolant canisters which powers it, removing those will flush the pipes. Those canisters are very fragile and any shock will make them provoke a coolant explosion.

To do that you need to first remove the access panel with the Grapple beam, and then carefully disloge the canisters. Once disloged, the canisters can be picked up by hand (109.33 $ each), or move the them elsewhere to use as portable coolants bombs. (to estiguish fires or break walls).

Once all that is done, the pipes are flushed and safely cuttable, and you only need to disloge the ECU to salvage it. To do that you need to cut the pipe that connects the back of the ECU to the wall be careful not to cut the wall itself.

Since the doorway is way too small for the thicc loot, you’ll need to cut an opening through one of the walls of the room. You should avoid cutting through the back wall as it is currently bugged, and cutting through to floor can lead to damaging the waste disposal unit if it’s situated under.

You can then send the ECU to the Barge in any way you see fit, but the absolute unit will move way faster with a Tether.

Addendum

As of Early Access intitial release, the ECU suffers from two separate bugs:

Display Bug

When viewed with the Scutrure Scanner the ECU backwall, the one traversed by the coolant pipe, is brighter than anything else.

Backwall Coolant Explosion

As the backwall is traversed by the coolant pipe, it is considered like a coolant reservoir and will provoke a coolant explosion if cut. But the wall is currently bugged and will continue to explode when cut even after the flushing of the pipes.