So you’ve spent a bunch of time flying around and you’ve gotten yourself a freighter! Freighters open up a lot more things for you to do in the game as well as being a very nice mobile base (after upgrading and building).

The first thing that you’ll likely want to add to your freighter is the Matter Beam. This makes it so that you can access your freighter storage, or any other storage unit you’ve built on the freighter, from anywhere in the same solar system. Basically if you can manage this than you’ve essentially got an extra 200+ slots for items at all times (assuming you’ve built all the freighter storage units on your freighter). 

Sadly adding the matter beam is easier said than done. It’s going to require 5 salvage frigate modules to purchase the blueprints for it which are a pain in the behind to get. There’s a few ways to get them but none are going to make it a quick and easy goal to accomplish:

1. You can loot storage units on crashed freighters in hopes of finding one, but it is very rare.
2. Destroying NPC freighter cargo pods and pod ships. These options may land you a salvage freighter module but they will definitely cause a reduction in your standing with the race who pilots them.
3. Nexus missions can have salvage modules as a reward. The nice thing about this is that you can simply check them out first and see if that is the reward before investing a ton of time into it. 
4. Frigate mission can also reward you with salvage modules but again it’s a waiting game and you’re just hoping you’ll get one. You’re chances do increase with industrial missions at least.
5. Derelict freighters. Below is a video and explanation of the process in getting to a derelict freighter. The salvage module will be in a crate somewhere on the freighter so be sure to check every single place you can. 

The video is a little long but does show a full walkthrough of a derelict freighter. It that doesn’t interest you I can sum it up below in a few words. 

Check everything while avoiding the enemies!

One form of enemies are creatures that emerge from nests. The creatures that’ll emerge from the nests aren’t particularly difficult to kill on their own, aside from their speed. The real difficulty with them is the quantity. In the beginning I was attempting to kill all their nests and almost died myself. They also don’t give you much when you do kill them so in interest of time, and your life, I would suggest avoiding them. 

Enemies can also come in the form of a security system on the ship. This one is a lot more unavoidable than the nests so just be careful when attacking them and be sure to keep your weapons fully loaded.

Otherwise you just need to make sure you’re checking every storage container, briefcase and locker. It’s tedious but hey you already paid a ton of credits to find the freighter so you might as well get everything you can out of it. You’ll also want to find all the data devices scattered around the ship. They are pretty easy to spot once you know what they look like. 

Speaking of getting everything you can, derelict freighters are also where you’ll find freighter salvage modules. Looting through containers is one way to come across them but once you’ve checked every terminal and returned to the space station you can trade the data you’ve gathered to the junk dealer for tainted metal as well. 

At the end of the video you can see what the modules I got from the junk dealer turned into. Personally I don’t think they were worth all the effort that I put into them. Instead I would suggest donating the data to the guild envoy to increase your standing with the race in that system. 

TLDR

Derelict freighters are a tedious but reliable way to get freighter salvage data. This salvage data is what you need to upgrade your freighter making your life in the game significantly better.