NPC crew abandon ship

[flu007]

I'm wondering if there are certain parameters which influence whether an enemy crew bails out or fights til the death?

Been playing fairly peacefully so far, but I got a few SCA fighters along the way, and I just experimented a little with 3 "visitor" medium freighters. One crew bailed almost immediately, the other two stayed on board all the way even while toying with them for minutes with their hull almost completely gone.
The ship that bailed had a crew of 4, the ones that didn't a crew of 5 and 17 respectively (all service crew + pilot.) Was that one less crewmember what made the difference, or is it just random?

[Belteguesian]

It is "random" as it depends on the morale of the crew, which you can not see...
I usually have good results by getting the ships shields down and the hull to about 25%, then follow behind it and as the shields regenerate to about 10% and starts increasing speed (entering travel drive) I shoot the shields down again, maybe 1-2% of the hull too just to stop it.
Rinse and repeat till they bail out or you get clumsy or bored and blow them to smithereens

[Set-115689]

Bailing apparently depends on the ship you fly. An s ship vs an s ship will cause more bails than an m player ship vs an s enemy ship.