Quellcrest

We only get money when completing missions and not relations? Odd...

Testing a few things on creative, I gave myself like 10 Avorion Cannons. I shot the whole volley, at beginner crappy iron ships, like 10 times...and they kept on coming. I disabled all but 1 cannon and then I was 1 hitting them.

If you have really good salvage lasers, probably hard to come by, you could get tens of thousands of materials as well as the upgrades. Other than that, no difference.

Do you know how to do that?

The efficiency of the lasers go up with the rarity. I had an exotic salvaging laser that had 48% efficiency. If I had a bunch of those I could be stripping wrecks and getting almost half the materials. So yes, that would be useful. On the other hand, when you have crappy efficiency lasers it might be faster to just destroy the wrecks and take the turrets/upgrades, sell them, and then buy minerals from depots when ever you need them. Another factor, you can craft turrets. Each Turret depot offers a slightly difference turret configuration. Some offer ones with increased range or efficiency or damage or some combination of 2+. That would probably be a really good way to outfit a bunch of salvaging lasers.

As far as I can tell, salvaging lasers cause the destruction of the wreck resulting in you gaining system upgrades and resources(titanium, etc). However, regular weapons will blast apart the wreck resulting in you gaining system upgrades, no resources. Also, much faster than salvaging.

Been looking for a while now. Can't seem to find anything except Conductor factories. Where are Compressors and Modulators and everything else?

Generators generate power...ie, Trinium Generator. Batteries store excess energy.

If you're hunting ships for Upgrades or Turrets, you don't need Salvage lasers. Just blast them to bits. It's tons faster, especially at the beginning when you lack a bunch of different lasers. True, you don't get materials, but you do get parts quite quickly.