Star Citizen 4.10.3 PTU: Bigger Salvage Buffers for Five Ships
The MOTH and Reclaimer lead a salvage buffer increase in the 4.10.3 PTU. Compare all five changes and see how internal storage differs from cargo capacity.
The latest 4.10.3 PTU build gives salvage crews more room in their ships’ internal buffers, with the biggest increases going to the MOTH and Reclaimer. The change affects five vessels, from the Salvation’s small buffer to the Reclaimer’s much larger industrial system.
These are test-server values from build 13107423, released on 4 November. The patch was made available to all waves on US PTU servers. They should not be treated as changes already present on Live.
The new buffer capacities
| Ship | Previous buffer | PTU buffer | Largest box |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vulture | 13 SCU | 16 SCU | 1 SCU |
| Reclaimer | 240 SCU | 448 SCU | 16 SCU |
| MOTH | 64 SCU | 240 SCU | 8 SCU |
| Fortune | 13 SCU | 14 SCU | 1 SCU |
| Salvation | 6 SCU | 8 SCU | 1 SCU |
The MOTH gains 176 SCU, taking its buffer to 3.75 times its previous size. The Reclaimer gains the greatest absolute capacity, adding 208 SCU. The smaller ships receive more modest increases: three SCU for the Vulture, two for the Salvation and one for the Fortune.
Buffer space is not a larger cargo grid
The buffer holds material internally before it is output into containers. Cargo capacity describes the physical space for those containers aboard the ship. Increasing one does not automatically enlarge the other.
That matters when reading the Reclaimer’s 448 SCU figure or the MOTH’s 240 SCU figure. Those numbers describe their revised buffers, not newly announced cargo-grid sizes. The patch also lists the largest box each ship can produce; it does not say those box sizes have increased.
Where crews gain flexibility
More internal storage gives a salvage operation greater room to accumulate material before the buffer fills. How useful that is depends on the rest of the job: processing, producing containers, moving them into available space and eventually selling the load.
The MOTH receives the most dramatic proportional change. Its previous 64 SCU limit becomes 240 SCU, giving considerably more internal capacity before the crew needs to address a full buffer. The Reclaimer’s expansion is also substantial, although container handling and physical storage remain separate parts of its operation.
For a Vulture pilot, the increase is smaller but still concrete: 16 SCU instead of 13. The Fortune and Salvation changes should be judged on their own scale rather than compared with the industrial vessels purely by the headline number.
A related structural-salvage fix
The same build includes a potential fix for destroyed power plants still counting as powered on and preventing structural salvage. It addresses a different obstacle from storage capacity: whether a wreck is recognised as ready for that stage of salvage.
The notes label it a potential fix, so crews should not assume every affected wreck will now behave correctly. Together, the buffer pass and the power-plant change make this a useful build for salvage players to follow as testing continues towards release.
Source: Alpha 4.10.3 PTU build 13107423. Artwork: CIG/RSI.