How to Capture Ship in Early Game

This is a detailed guide on how to get started ASAP on the "capture ship" money making strategy in Starpoint Gemini 2.

Purpose

One of the buzzword on how to get out of early game grind in Starpoint Gemini 2 (SPG2) is to "capture ships", but I have yet to find a detailed guide or instruction on how to accomplish this feat in a tiny gunship with meager 15,000 credits in the bank account. Hopefully this guide will rectify this information gap.

Why Capture Ships?

One of my major gripe with SPG2 is that earning money vs. leveling progress is really skewed. It may take less than an hour to shoot from level 1 to level 10 by doing legit missions, but the same amount of mission will rarely, if ever allow people to afford a 300 thousand credit turret, let alone a 2 million credit frigate. And it also down right sucks that at level 10, enemies will upgrade to Frigates and Destroyers and swat my gunship like a fly in a moment's notice.

The picture changes, however, if a player start to capture ships as main source of income. While doing a level 10 missions can yield ~25,000 credits per success, capturing an enemy gunship at level 1 can earn ~100,000 per scrap sale. Conversely, while a level 10 mission will earn me ~800 experiences per success, I have yet to see capturing enemy ship alone will net any experience. Hence in my opinion, this is the reason why capturing ship for income is such an overpowered strategy in SPG2.

Disclaimer

First, let's get few things out of the way so people can stop reading if this is not the guide for them.

Q1: I heard there is an much easier way to make money than capturing ships.
A1: I believe you are looking for this guide.

Q2: Your strategy is basically farming over and over, which is not fun at all.
A2: What I am aiming for is to help players to get out of early game grind, not to make early game fun. In my opinion SPG2 is not really a fun game until I have 10 million credits in the bank account, so I can't really do anything about that.

Q3: You only offered one early game strategy under one game setting, what about others?
A3: Regrettably, I currently don't have the spare time to test out other strategies. If you have one, make a suggestion in the comment section below or create another guide.

Q4: How much time did this strategy took before the grind is over?
A4: ~8 hours, after I purchased an Apollo Destroyer and reached level 20.

Q5: Your strategy does not work in game version (insert number here).
A5: This guide is written based on game version 1.0004 1.3001. I cannot promise updates in the future.

The Humble Beginning

You started the game in Freeroam mode, with your gunship and 15,000 credits in the bank. So where to begin?

The Setup

Ship: I choose Taurus gunship as the default starter ship, since it has the highest trooper capacity when compared with with Pegasus and Squire. More troopers mean easier to capture ships.

Class: I choose Gunner since I want to operate a badass dreadnought in the end game. But if you want to have an easier time in early game capture ship actions, you can choose Engineer and dump all skill points into Life Support Hack.

Difficulty Setting: Normal. But during my test I have not seen capturing ship difficultly changes between Extreme and Normal difficulty.

The Prerequisite

Bear in mind that the below table is based on the assumption that player will not travel very far away from the original starting location in the early game. I am sure you can find lower price item if you are willing to travel.

Essential:

Item	Location	Cost	Notes
22 Troopers	Anywhere	5,500	No troopers, no boarding actions
Officer Angel Palomo	Planet Trinity	5,580	+10% Trooper Strength
Officer Brent Dubiel	Planet Trinity	5,400	+15% Transporter Capacity
Loctus I Transporter Enhancement	Planet Trinity/Vigo Station	15,000	+15% Transporter Capacity
Total:		31,480

Nice to have:

Item	Location	Cost	Notes
Loctus II Transporter Enhancement	Planet Trinity/Vigo Station	30,000	+30% Transporter Capacity

The Target

The ship you are hunting for as the main source of income is the Lyra gunship, shown in the screenshots below. The reason why this ship is easy to capture is because it only has 12 crews, so your trooper almost outnumber it 2 to 1.


Capturing Shanghai and Pegasus gunships are also technically possible if you want to roll the dice. However, your odds of capturing will be around 50% unless you either get a perk in Fleet Commander (at level 5) or upgrade to another ship (which outside of the scope of this section).

The Hunting Ground

The map below is the hunting ground I used for this strategy, since most of the enemy spawn tend to be Lyra gunships from factions such as MultiOps, Anarchist and Frontier, and higher level mission rarely spawn units more powerful than Adhara Corvettes.

The Strategy

1) Do around four odd jobs and earn the extra 16,380 credits needed to get the essential gears.
2) Grab a mission that is either Assassination or Capture in the hunting ground (or get lucky and bump into a target in the hunting ground).
3) Go to the mission point and ensure there is a Lyra gunship present, or if you are level 5 with Fleet Commander perk and the nice to have gears, you can try to cap a Shanghai or Pegasus gunship instead.
4) Capture the ship and kill the rest. Just make sure you send in all troopers on the second wave during your capture, and you are all set. If you don't know how to send more troopers on the second wave (or how capture ships works in general), read this guide[starpoint-gemini-2.wikia.com].
5) Sell the ship at the nearest station and refill your troopers.
6) Repeat step 2) to 5) and profit.

Okay, So Now What?

The above strategy is only a stop gap measure and not very efficient, given that the starter gunship lack the punch to finish off a mission, player always getting shot at on the way to capture, and the odds of capturing ships other than Lyra is not 100%. Sooner or later an upgrade to the above strategy is required...

The Upgrade

After you reach level 5 (and very likely with several millions in the bank), it will be an good idea to upgrade your ship to make the strategy more easy to execute.

The New Gears

Ship: I would heartily recommend the Wolverine Corvette for its price, low level requirement, 36 trooper capacity and stealth capability. The fact that the purchase location is right next to the hunting ground (see below screenshot) makes things a lot simpler.

Guns: Since you now have the money, it wouldn't hurt to go straight for tier 3 weapons with long range so that you can conduct hit-n-run attacks. I personally purchased the Barracuda Mk III light gun and the Jackrabbit heavy gun from Planet Baeldor (see below screenshot) for the longer range and decent punch.


Enhancements: For your transporter, Watanabe III is a nice upgrade with +50% transporter capacity. One such location to purchase this enhancements is Plymouth Station (see below screenshot) in the middle of the hunting ground.


Since the money is not a major problem anymore, upgrades to other systems, especially cloak, shield, officers and scavenger drones, are also good ideas.

The New Targets

With the new ships and new gears, pretty much all gunship class vessels (except Luna and Ra'Qaan, the Brotherhood gunships) are fair targets. You may also consider hijacking Corvette class vessels such as Adhara class (see screenshot below) that often prowling the hunting ground, but be warned that towing Corvette with a Corvette can result in grappling hook break when using PTE travel.

The New Strategy...

...well, it is still the old strategy in the same hunting ground, except now you can cloak before running into enemy gun range while trying to capture a ship, so enemies won't know what hit them until the ship is towed to the scrap yard. Other than that, just rinse and repeat until you reach level 20 and can buy a destroyer.

The End

In my opinion, buying a destroyer with 10 million credits in the bank will allow players to do whatever they want while still allowing their wealth to grow exponentially. So say good bye to early game hell if you manage to get that far.

If you stayed this long to read the guide, this is pretty much the end of the guide. Thank you for reading and I hope it will make your life a lot easier next time you start a new game in SPG2.

[Felixite]

The advanced version of this strategy is to go after a much more valuable ship with more crew, say a ship with 40 crew members, but pick a spot that's near a friendly Station or planet. Throw all your troopers at the ship, they will all die but take a considerable portion with them. Break combat through PTE long enough to board the station and pick up more troopers. Even with the inefficiencies, 40 troops won't survive the onslaught of 72 (22 starting + 50 from the Station).

Next contemplate why so many people keep signing up to be on your ship when you keep returning with empty bunks 5 minutes later as you sit among your pool of blood diamonds.

[Demiurge]

you said you chose gunner because you wanted a badass dreadnaught, my question is are they locked to the gunner class

[Shelshocker]

played the game b4 in 2016 capturing n selling enemy ships then stop playin cuz kinda lazy grinding... playing back since i dnt hve any game that relate to commanding your own fleet ship... doin the thing above again then came here just to check it was the gud way to make money.. welp gud thing is u ned to be patient n now i did get like around 4 mil so now i knw wht to get next since im still usin tht squire gunship xD

[Zlorfik [CH/BY]]

A piece of advice: If you bring down the enemy ships' shields prior to boarding, you will loose a lot less troopers while they are fighting. Shields have incursion resistance. Use a laser to shoot it down to around 75% at least and then board. Like this, you can easily also start taking down shanghai and pegasus ships right from the start (Officers as described required).

If you picked engineer, putting a rough 7 points into Life support damage will make this really easy. You can capture destroyers with your wolverine (36 troops vs. 40 of e.g. a Ronin). This strategy usually leaves you with too much money and not enough to spend it on.

[Derachi]

Had problems finding enough pirates until extending the "hunting ground" to the anarchist starbase region. Then it was stealthy approach and picking a single corvette from them. Had up to 1m per run. Very nice guide on how to get started. Thanks a lot!

[Vanacutt]

Thanks to your guide, I was able to get some Eldorado, Nibiru and Neptune
Now I'm using a Neptune. Awesome!

[TheDoctor]

good guide help me a lot to figure out how to make tons of money. I love how people are asking how to board, jesus man, the game literally say it to you on the first 5 minutes LuL

[Saiph]

There are two slightly confusing mistakes in the guide:
(1) The perk which helps you for boarding is called "Field Commander", not "Fleet Commander".
(2) The transporter upgrades are called "Locust" (after the insect), not "Loctus".

Good guide overall though.

[Lhetre]

Nice guide, well written and purposefully illustrated, thanks.

[Mush]

Thanks for this, though after I got the wolverine I ended up in a scrap with Nyxia and got my hands on a Neptune Class frigate at level 10, which was pretty much a direct upgrade and has seen me through to level 30 without much trouble.