Ship capture

[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"