[Yojinbo]

There are some good tips here. I support my capture teams with a repair ship. Also, you may want to include a lot of smaller weapons rather then one heavy mount to "snipe" one component at a time off an enemy until you get that self destruct device shut down.

If you can "hole up" at the end of a warp points and keep your ships in a loose formation (I don't use fleets when ambushing) you stand a good change of starting combat right on top of your prey.

Some advanced capture techniques:

Don't use shields (if combat Last THAT long you have failed).

Research Capture Teams and Shield Dep. Weps exclusively; steal all other ship tech (I save hundreds of thousands of RP every game by stealing Ice and Gas colony, all Ship construction and everything else that's not nailed down).

Add a Space Yard Ship to ambush area as soon as you can. Then, you can scrap, analyze or retrofit on the spot. One or two turn’s delay in deploying new tech can kill a space pirate. Keep the old repair unit around to speed up retrofits.

RETROFIT those captured hulks! NEVER build from scratch. Peasants build. Pirates take. It's fast but expensive.

Good capture like this is an exploit of the current AI - You can win every game under most any circumstances as the AI will TROW metal down a warp point and into your pocket. However, a human opponent will adapt and overcome with self-destruct charges on loaded, cheap, ramming ships.

Yojinbo