How to capture ships

[PDMKO]

i havent fully understood how to capture a ship , i know that by shooting it until its hp quite low and then comm it and etc but i ; either ; end up destroying the ship or they jsut dont want to open a comm with me , is their a method to it? like do i need for example a M ship to capture a S ship and not the other way round ? or is the hole boarding thing done on a dice role because if it is done on a dice role then im never going to be able to board a ship since they never want to surrender and if that is the case is that because of a update or a bug or what ? just need some clarification on this subject please

[Andros]

You need a ship with the smallest max hull hp that will increase your odds. You can only comm once every 20ish seconds this timer resets if you shoot them. I can fly around and comm ships under 20 percent and get them to bail randomly it’s great.

But yeah get them to below 60-70 percent hull and use weak guns and shoot them repeatedly every 20 seconds after you comm them

[zpc]

It's RNG based. The lower the hull and the higher your speed while attacking the ship, the higher the chance for the pilot to bail. You can make every pilot bail - it might just take a while.

Or in other words - it's a high risk [of destroying the target], high reward system. Shooting the hull down to 1% and go in guns blazing while boosting (or travel driving) with 5000+m/s towards the target gives a very high bailing chance. Of course, you have to be very experienced to know when to stop shooting

The trigger point for the die role for the game to decide if the pilot looses moral / bails is around 10% of shield. So the main method is to let the shield regenerate and up all other factors described above while shooting the shield away.

@Andros

Yip, good point - the own ship also plays a role here.

[conrado.lacerda]

For a S/M ship, you attack it and, once its hull gets sufficiently low, each subsequent attack has a chance to cause the crew and captain to bail. You can then claim the ship for yourself.

For L/XL ships, you need marines and set up a boarding operation (take out engines/turrets, send out drop pods etc).

These are quite a few guides for these actions on Youtube, you may want to watch some.

[Azunai]

I did some piracy in one of my last runs and i used the starting scout to capture a few medium traders and miners. I didn't even know you van comm them to make them bail. I was simply keeping their shields down and their HP low for a few minutes and kept shooting them occasionally twhen their shields got back up a bit.

If you scan them, you see the number of crew they have. After harassing them for a while, the first few will bail and the crew counter goes down. Continue until the last one bails, then jump in the spacesuit, spacewalk over, scan the anomaly next to their spacesuit docking port and its yours.

You can then either sell it to a wharf right away or transfer crew to fly it or dock abd fly ut yourself. Fly to next wharf/service dock to repair it and put it to use or downgrade/sell equipment first before selling the ship. you get more money this way - NPC transports often have mk2 engines and thrusters, switching them down to the cheapest mk1 and removing shields, guns and consumables gives a few 100k and lowers the sell value of the ship by less than what you get for separately selling the pieces.

[Ryno]

Capturing ships requires patience and understanding of the mechanics of how it works.

S/M sized ships will bail over time if hull is below 74% and shield is lower than 20%. These will bail crew to the point even the pilot will eventually bail and the ship can be claimed by you.

L and XL ships are slightly different. The same mechanic will work for crew to bail over time if you keep the Hull below 74% and Shield below 20%. However, the Captain of the ship with never leave so you need marines to capture the ship. If you're patient, you can capture just about any L and XL ship with nearly no marine losses if you get the crew to bail but this can take literally hours if the crew number is high (in the hundreds) and the Captain has a high star/moral count.

I hope this helps.