Ai keeps destroying pirate ships I'm trying to capture

[Tooshar]

so I've got a shuttle, with 12 crew slots and full weapons, but whenever I go to board the ship, the ai will peel off of it for a second, then nuke it right before I board, what am I doing wrong here, I heard boarding was a viable way to play but I'm just not seeing it, and its driving me up the wall

[Zarinthal]

I had an issue with this too, big time. It took me a long time to "git gud" at capturing because I was being a stubborn ass (not saying you are, it just takes a combination of knowledge, skill and patience I wasn't expecting)

So one big factor is the system you are in. You need a system that gets hit by pirates enough but also has a comparably weak military response. You have to be able to survive the attacks yourself. Different system authorities respond with different weapons and in different force. Anywhere you go where there is a quick, heavy response of missile barrages to any pirate attack will NOT be a good system to capture in. There is still possibilites in those systems, but you end up "fishing" a lot and getting little in return trying to lure pirates away from the middle where authorities jump in to kill them, hoping they arent chasing. Authorities WILL still blast a ship you are near even if the explosion may destroy you. This doesn't change until after the capturing takes place. This didn't make much sense to me until I saw a pirate ship beat me to a disabled pirate ship, repair it and jump out of the system, so the insanely murderous behavior kind fo started to make sense. System authorities will usually stop firing at a disabled ship IF there is an active pirate nearby them, but if they use a lot of cannon type weapons or missile weapons, they don't stop firing until it's disabled, leaving a lot of blaster fire or issiles in the air towards that ship well after its disabled, which will almost always overkill it. Sometimes they dont even care if theres another ship nearby, they just keep blasting. This is keep the capturing aspect of the game balanced without becoming insanely complicated economically. So find a system overrun with pirate attacks, but not so much that you cant survive, and also in an area where system authorities dont use missiles, or at least less missiles, and then learn to lurk closely to targets without getting too close to the business end of things. I am trying to be careful not to make a how-to guide so you will still have some learning and trial-and-error to do, because those guides exist, but it's much more rewarding to learn the finer points yourself, and I wish you luck. For reference, >99% of my cashflow in the game is from capturing/looting hostiles, and there are tons of videos and guides out there plus people like me who occasionally stream gameplay, but again, avoid that until you feel like you have it down already, just to see if there is anything you can do to get better. It is more fun to learn this part the hard way because it is such an integral part of the game throughout all the stories, if you want, though technically it is possible to do "everything" in this game without doing any non-mission capturing.On the flip side, I tend to capture pretty much every ship I use throughout the campaigns and in everything I do. There is one exotic lineup of ships that I don't steal so I can stay friends with the people who make them, but you can skip those entirely and get comparable ships from enemy factions around the same time in the story. So yeah, You can pretty much capture and loot your way through the whole game, but it's not necessary and maybe even not recommended for first timers because it gets a lot more complex and hectic later in the game. Maybe you will develop a knack for it, but don't shy away from earning money with regular jobs now and then when you want to upgrade. Then again, capturing is kind of addictive too haha

[Tooshar]

Funny thing is I finally got a capture about 5 minutes after I posted this, I think your right, I'm in the wrong systems, Im in a couple of systems that were recommended on a guide I found, but when you have 20 ai fighting pirates, stuff just dies too quick, need to find a system with only a few pirates and a few ai fighting it.

[Death Approaches]

The best advice I can tell you is 1) disable fast forward (capslock off), it's really hard to control that last 30% between disabled and destroyed when you have 10 milliseconds to do so, and 2) start spamming B as soon as the shields go down, if you send them "hey knock it off I'm boarding here!" even if you're off the screen, they'll stop firing the moment the ship is disabled. Then the only worry is, another baddie will take off or warp in and the about-to-be-boarded ship gets hit in the crossfire. Whoops!

PS: If you didn't know about the capslock thing, now you know how to speed through the tedious long trekking parts, just remember it's not very boarding friendly.

[pepoluan]

By "AI" do you mean other ships in the vicinity?

It's a bit hard; they are usually trigger-happy.

Pirates tend to not kill a ship outright, though. Because they want to loot the goods. You'll just have to be near enough to board the ship before the pirates send some "bye bye" shots to the disabled ship. You do have to bribe them so they leave you alone and focus on the enemy instead, though.

Or, if you're strong enough and have a quite high combat reputation, you'll start seeing "bounty" missions. The other ships will still fight alongside yours, but they will stop before killing the bounty ship(s), giving you enough time to skedaddle and loot.