Ship capture

[TurinTurambar]

Is anybody any good at creating ships especially for ship capture? I thought perhaps it would be another way to level the playing field when you have to deal with the talisman, but so far in the simulator... no luck.

Thoughts?

Turin

[Evil_Duckie]

There's some 'rules' that I use for designing such a ship.
- make it small (harder to hit)
- no shields (they'll be dropped as soon as you attempt to board anyway)
- maybe one weapon for self-defense
- load up with boarding parties

Always make sure to have some support ships ready. At the very least some regular warships to destroy any shields on the target vessel and defend the boarding ship. Also have a repair bay available in one of your ship.

As soon as you start running into self-destruct components, you're in trouble. There's no way to specificall destroy that component, so you're just going to have to shoot at it until you hit it, often destroying most of the other ship in the process.

[ZeroAdunn]

Something to destroy shields would be good too.

[Starhawk]

Well it depends entirely on how your planning on capturing ships and what the purpose is for example in my current game i have a Light raider (Hunt) and Heavy Raider (Artemis)

The Light raider is armed with two I-Lasers and an engine destroyer, their sole purpose is to steal colony ships and lightly armored cruisers.

The Heavy raider is MUCH tougher with more guns but also heavy armor, shields a few massive shield depleters and a boatlaod of boarding parties. They are designed to operate for long periods of time on their own so they have repair bays and they are used almost only for capturing transport craft and warships and so far excell at it.

What I'm getting at is it depends on what you intend to steal and how much capitol you have to support your raiding fleet.

though to be honest NOTHING balances out against talisman except ensuring you have a highly trained fleet that gains first strike and superior tech/numbers.

[Arkcon]

I've had some good luck with carriers with a couple of boarding parties, loaded with fighters armed with shield depleters. But it only really works if you suprise someone who hasn't massed the point defence.

If you've got the time, you might try space stations at warp points, with shield depleters and tractor beams, just in case the ship appears too far away.

But basically, anyone will just put a self-destruct device on their talisman-equiped dreadnought. If your capture ship is cheap enough for you to not care about losing it, its likely to be disabled before it reaches the enemy. And if you heavily armed capture ship breaks though and gets blown up, you haven't really gained a benefit. If that's your goal, you might as well just mine their space.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

As for the Self-Destruct Device, you could mod the game with an Ion Cannon component and set it to kill electronics..... (Electronics being, say, Planet Destroyers with value 0 or something else, and the Ion Cannon would have a damage type Only Planet Destroyers.)

Otherwise, well, if - IF - he's neglected to put selfdestruct on his ships, use a fleet with about one quarter fast capture ships (Escorts for the unmodded game), perhaps some large DNs or so with Boarding Parties - i.e. retail and wholesale Marine ships - and the rest should be a mix of a small number of regular warships, and a lot of ships with only Engine Destroyers as a weapon and another with only Weapons Destroyers. If they use shields, add some shield depleter laden ships for flavour. Move this group of ships to the enemy, the boarding ships keeping a little to well back. Deplete their shields, destroy their weapons and eliminate their engines. Then send in the Marines.

[Emperor's Child]

Let's not forget that in most cases, "Loading up" on boarding teams has no practical benefit. Whenever you board another ship, ALL of your boarding teams will participate and those portions of your ship that held them will be changed to damaged. So you can only ever take over one enemy ship per each of your own ships every 2 turns since you must then repair the boarding party in your next turn.

Unless your opponent(s) are humans, you won't find much resistance to even one boarding team (the self-destruct device notwithstanding, which must be eliminated). So against AI opponents it makes little sense to put more than one boarding team per ship.

I've found that in the late game, if you have not yet scrapped your early game small ships, that they are handy as boarding ships. Your big guys you typically don't want to drop shields until the battle is decided, but you can convert your little guys with a boarding party and use them to augment your big ships. Let the heavies take down the enemy ship shields and, if necessary, chop enough hull away so that the self destruct device is eliminated. Then rush in with a small boarding ship and take it. This will keep your heavy ships with shields up to continue the fight. Also, if a large ship has been hit enough so that its shield is just about down, you may as well use that ship's boarding parties because next turn your opponents are likely to take it down anyhow (the AI will to continue to attack the damaged ship before moving on to an undamaged ship)

[El_Phil]

I always put on a couple of boarding teams, if only because I've had a few incidents with "Failed to capture" type messages against ships with no ship security. Probably just a mod which had weakened boarding parties but as I can never remember the exact specs of each mod...

As the chicken said to it's kids "Better safe than lorry"

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

I once heard that Crew Quarters have an inherent hard-coded Boarding Defense capability of 4, so that might explain the Failed to board messages against a Security-less ship.

[El_Phil]

Hmmm, if so that would explain alot. Anyone got anything concrete on that? Or anywhere nearby to a copy of SEIV and can test it?