Looting Heroes and Other Questions

[Mituna]

I saw a hero and tried to capture their ship, since I read that they had rare weapons. After I realized it was impossible to board them, I killed them and tried to salvage the derelict with nanobots. I didn't get any special weapon, so I reloaded and tried again. I did that something like 20 times, and always got some random weapon. Is it then not possible to loot a hero's weapons in any way?
I know they have them as I see damage reports for those weapons come from their ship when I hit them - or does the weapon given as loot not actually correspond to anything on the ship? Does this mean that looting a derelict from a hero is exactly the same as looting any random derelict?

Also, I noticed that there are items like biometric shields, as well as enhancements that reduce the effectiveness of enemy boarding and hacking. However, I have never seen this happen, and I've been playing for a while. I have been ignoring the main storyline though - does enemy boarding/hacking happen there? Because if not, then biometric shields and some of the enhancements are totally useless, which seems strange to have in the game.

[Geek]

In spg2, looted weapons have nothing to do with what the enemy use.
Only SoA heroes drop uniques when killed.

You will not be boarded. NPC use skill like you however, so it is possible (although rare) to encounter a pirate using Hack. Quite scary when you lose all energy, or shields, at the start of a battle.

[Mituna]

Okay, that makes sense then - is there a list of which heroes are SoA and which are not? The only list I found is this, which seems outdated: http://starpoint-gemini-2.wikia.com/wiki/Heroes

Also, I guess biometric shields really are completely useless then?

As for hacking, I noticed that some systems/enhancements also have a chance of hacking feedback value - does this do anything? I've hacked enemy ships a lot, but never got any negative effects from it as far as I could see - can enemy hacking be affected by this feedback?

[Geek]

SoA heroes have a higher level iirc.
NPCs do not use enhancements, so your hacks can not turn against you.

[Mituna]

I just ran into a level 80 hero that gave me a SHREDDER, so it looks like that is a good way to recognize them.

That leads me to another thing though - I've been looking up weapon statistics here: http://www.cshake.net/SPG2/lwlist.php?type=ALL
It looks like the most powerful weapons, like the STRYKER and TENANT, consume much more energy than anything else, more so than their improvement in damage. Is this inefficiency worth it? I actually got a STRYKER blueprint assembled, and found that while it does a lot of damage as expected, it can only fire in short bursts before depleting the battery (this is with all power on weapons and the Syntha III enhancement). Compared to that, the SHREDDER can fire continuously for a long time, even though it has a bit less than half the DPS.

Also another thing I haven't really been able to tell from testing - do all turrets on a section share the battery, or does each one have its own?

[Geek]

Indeed, STRYKER and TENANT are special, high damage, high energy guns. It is better to use more energy efficient weapons, unless you find a creative way to supply that much energy.

All turets of one side use the same battery, while you have four sides, each with its own energy.

[Mituna]

I see - in that case, I guess a good way to use those weapons is to put them on the back/sides where there are fewer turrets so they won't burn through the energy as fast. The only other option I see for supplying the energy is to use power packs, but I'm wary of relying on consumable items regularly like that...
There isn't any enhancement/officer/etc. that makes weapons use less energy per shot is there? I've already maxed battery regen with synthas...

[Geek]

Power packs only supply skill energy.

As I said, there are unusual ways to do it, but it is part of game discovery, so I will not tell.
You do not need those weapons to do any of the content.

[Mituna]

Hmm, I guess something to do with side missions probably - I'll keep looking.

One other thing I noticed on that list though - there is a minimum damage listed that is not shown in-game, and what is shown as average damage is listed as maximum. What exactly affects how damage is applied? Is it completely random between the 2 values with each shot? Does range affect it?

[Geek]

It is not random (except crits)
light weapons average dmg = min + max / 2
heavy weapons direct hit is max dmg, blast radius takes min, max and weapon type.