[Bluewind5]

The major highlight of EVN, besides it's plot and storyline, is that you can actaully board the ships once you disbale them. Once a ship is boarded, a new screen pops up with options to do the following:

Steal Energy
Steal Ammo
Steal credits
Steal Cargo

And my FAVORITE. CAPTURE SHIP. If successful, you can use it as YOUR NEW ship or as an Escort which will help you to fight or carry cargo with it's cargo hold. If you use it as your ship or escort, you keep the ships inventory and weapons and your old ship becomes one of your escorts.

Of course, each time you click on one of the options the chances of the ship auto-destructing. And the success of Capturing a ship depends on your number of crew versus the number of crew on the disabled ship. And sometimes, the disable ship with auto distruct when you are trying to board it before the options window comes up. And there's also a chance to fail to board. You can only try to board once. If you failed, you can't try again.

My favorite thing to do is to watch warring factions fight and try to board any disabled ships before that ship gets destroyed by their enemy. The chances of a shuttle craft capturing a Carrier or any larger ships are slim to none. But it's PURE HEAVEN when it does finally succeed. Instant ship upgrade for free! You can sell it for millions and buy a new ship or keep it and just gloat all the other tiny shuttle craft captains.

I've played Pirateer 1 and 2, Freelancer, one of the old Space empire games, and even Hardwar but NONE of them offered the ability to capture disabled ships.

I like Starfury too because it is new, has alot of potential, and I love the fact that ships that are blowing up sometimes will try to ram you and take you with them. I don't recall any other games of this genre doing something like that. In most games, ships just blow up and don't throw their whole hull at you.