Capturing ships Made easy

[Kryten]

There's lots of posts about capturing ships and how best to do it but a lot of people want to jump straight in at the start of the game, this is not unreasonable but the general advice has been to wait until you have a better ship, well this little guide will explain in detail how to capture ships of any size with your starting ship and credits. Of course they need to be capturable, its impossible to capture some.

starting out - your first capture

So you've just started a new game, been released into the universe with a little discoverer. you feel all weak and would like to get straight into a nova or comparable ship. First head to equiptment dock. sell your weapons and buy 10 wasp missiles, now head to the goner temple in cloudbase southwest, if you are unsure how to get there go west from argon prime into ringo moon then south 2 sectors. At temple you should ave just enough for 2 salvage insurance, buy up and head into ore belt. look about for a lone pirate ship, eventually you will find one, fly up to it and stop all engines. when its 3km away use your salvage insurance, if you don't know how its shift+s it saves the game if you are wondering. target pirate and fire exactly 7 missiles in quick succession. it has to be as quick as you can and without any blewing up on firing which happens if your too fast. after they all hit you will have 2 possibilities, he will have surrendered or he will not. If he hasn't reload and fire the missiles again, if fired correctly the first 6 hits will have removed his shields and the 7th will have done enough damage to qualify the ship for surrender, its random so thats where the reload comes in, can get lucky straight away or have to reload several times.

Now that you've got your first ship what to do with it? Well look at its cargo hold, if it hasn't got a bhept or a 25m shield I'd reload and try until i get one with good cargo, the reason for this is you need a lot of credits for the next part. when you got a decent ship to sell then get it to dock at argon shipyard and advance time.

Stage 2 in the capturing game

Ok, you could possibly have upto 300k from a sale of a single ship, buy as many wasp missiles as you can hold, upgrade your ship in whatever way you like and head back to goner temple and buy as many salvage insurance as you can. Now your ready to capture any ship you want.

So How do I capture an Orinoco?

Simple, fly to about 5km from 1 and save, fire 12 wasps and wait for them to hit, either he'd have bailed or not, you know the drill by now.

So how about a bayamon?

Probably the hardest ship to capture, needs 2 wasps to drop its shields but a 3rd will destroy it. Get one to agro on you and run to 10km distance. turn and cut off engines, at 9 km fire 2 wasps, fire another at about 6.5km, this should be enough to force a surrender, reload if not.

What about the little mandalay?

exactly 1 wasp if it has full shields, if its shields are not at full you will blew it up.

Pirate ships are not great, I want an M3

M3s are actually a lot easier to capture than pirate ships, they're not hostile to start and some you can capture before they even turn aggressive, here's how, count the shields:

M3 with 1 25 mw shield takes 7 missiles.
M3 with 2 25 MW shields takes 12 missiles
M3 with 3 25 MW shields takes 19 missiles.

Its as simple as that, so if you want to kill a nova just fire 19 missiles at it, be around 5km at least away from it because it takes a good time to fire of 19 missiles.

transports although use the same shields can be slightly different due to the hull size, it takes 20 missiles to force a mercury to surrender, just experiment with the numbers until you get the right amount.

Some Q&A

Is it really as simple as counting missiles.

Yes, I'm afraid that its just a matter of knowing how many will do the job and then counting, of course if you can't count it could be a tad difficult.

Surely an Orinoco will have whooped me before i can kill it?

Most times you see an orinoco are when its attacking a station, you can have you missiles fired off and not even be in range when he surrenders.

What about my rep if I go after a nova, won't it make the argon mad?

No, 1 kill won't make them angry, if you make a habit of it without a good reputation then they may get angry, just pick a ship that is on its own.

I'm a crap pilot will this work for me?

Indeed, I'm a crap pilot myself, its the reason I only use missiles to capture most of the time. you can shoot out of range which means the risk factor is non existant.

How can i deal with those groups of pirates that allways travel together?

Most of the time it,l be a big ship like an orinoco or TP with bayamons and/or mandalays in support, for these i'd just kill of the small ships quickly with missiles and then concentrate on the main prize.

Can't i just buy 19 missiles at the start and capture a Nova right away?

Yes you could, but you would not be able to afford the repairs or buy good weapons for it.

I'm sure I've missed something but plenty there to get you started capturing some ships.

[jjanthony]

This is the funniest post I have read so far. Here I am trading for the last 20 hours trying to get my SPP going right. If you can capture so easily then good for ya! Wish I had read this post before lol

[Kryten]

The whole point of it was because most people don't realise its so easy, try it, you'l be surprised

[JaimeWolf]

The ease of capturing in this game is what made me lose my interest in earning my credits.
Very early on I bought an Iguana and outfitted it with a GPAC and as many IonDs as I could afford. Soon I had 4IDs, 4GPACs, and an AIRE for the littlies. It also had 2x25MW shields. You also need fighting software MkII or it's near impossible to hit anything.
Standard loadout is IDs and a GPAC on the front. Strip shields and drop them to 85-87% hull.
Run away. When their shields have recharged head back with only IDs equipped. Strip their shields but don't do any more hull damage.
Once you have attacked something that is not already in a fight it will follow you for just about forever so you can forget about one of the ships you are hunting and encourage others to follow you around with a damaged hull.
Just remember not to get the hull much below 87% - easy if you never target it again once you've got that far. 87% is the key. I have never captured anything with a higher hull than this.

[Samhorns]

Hint on your Bayamons, Dragonfly missles. They can be found floating around all over where there's heat. They eat the shields from full to empty in one whack on a Bayamon. Run up to a Bayamon, get behind, hit with DF then follow up with a short burp of guns enough to reduce hull to 87% or below. If they're going to bail they will, if not reload as previously instructed. Disclaimer: Admittedly though effective the constant reloading is known to make you feel a bit cheap

[Ewok^]

my missiles mostly explode before they reach the nova :/

[paulindevon]

my missiles mostly explode before they reach the nova :/

If your firing them too quickly they will hit each other and explode. If you have patched to version 1.3 the nova's have got wise to Kryten me and others and now some of them attempt to shoot down your missiles. I find its better to go after orinocos. Kill a few and you can in effect rake the money in. If you follow the advice above and get them with two weapons or 2X 25mw shields they can sell for 300k I made about 4 million last night in a few hours from orinocos alone. Now I am capturing anything I can to try to make 10 million for my Split Dragon.

For plenty of orinoco's head to

Spoiler

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ore belt

[canazza]

Spoiler

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or Priests Pity, lots of pirates there

[Kryten]

I've refined the method for non aggressive races

Get a bayamon, arm it with 4 ion guns, load up on wasps. auto behind an m3 till your about 400-500 metres away, blast its shields until they're at zero, it should still not be aggroing you, fire wasp, missile hits, quickly hit ions again, good chance of bailing, got 15 barracudas and 10 novas earlier doing it this way, good thing is you only lose about 1% rep due to them bailing at the last minute, don't seem to turn red a lot of the times, even when they do I've hardly took a rep hit.

The trick is to lower the shields and keep them non aggressive, this way even if they have wingmen you can get them to bail, can manage it with 2 ion Ds but 4 is better. By the time they've given you a warning the shields are gone and the missile is on its way.

[Charlie Whiskey]

Been trying to capture my very first pirate ship today, and the damned thing shot down all my missiles if I fire at 3km range. After 30-odd attempts I finally succeeded by getting up close and personally, unloaded the whole barrage at point blank range (<500m) up his ass followed by a short burst of cannon. That did the trick but the prize was down to 66% hull, no weapons and no shields. But since this is the very first capture I'm satisfied though for pocketing that 60000+ credits!

[Kryten]

hmm, maybe this is with the new patch, will be installing it later, well if its true it was fun while it lasted I'll come up with another plan, I won't be defeated

[Gazzareth]

Definately seems to take longer in general - although some still bail fairly early. Now got 23 ships taken since 1.3 to escort to the shipyard (bloody khaak) can't wait until I get the Elephant to jump them in !!

[gillrichard]

One way of catching lots of pirates is base harvesting.

Take any pirates base and launch a small attack in a suitable large vessel (say the OspreY) As is normal hordes of pirates will swarm at you, let your auto guns fire away. I have never failed to get 3-4 captured ships this way

Then tell them all to fly to a shipyard and jump out of the sector to let the pirate base restock.

Wonderful.

[JamieKnowles]

Hehe,

I remember the first time i PO'd a pirate base, in my little Mako M4.

Hoards of pirates appeared, so i bravely legged it to the nearest station and hid

Finally when i'd plucked up enough courage i popped out again to help the local defence forces, and 1/2 an hour later i had 3 pirates ships and 2 orinocos.

Love that Mako

[Gazzareth]

One way of catching lots of pirates is base harvesting.

Take any pirates base and launch a small attack in a suitable large vessel (say the OspreY) As is normal hordes of pirates will swarm at you, let your auto guns fire away. I have never failed to get 3-4 captured ships this way

Works fine in the Iguana as well, normally get 50% captured (6 last night)..... You also get some Orinoco's which are worth 3x as much as the standard Pirate Ship so well worth the effort. The only problem that I have with it is that I normally use the base in Bali Gi's Joy (since that is well away from my other ships) and the Khaak keep going into Farnhams legend so the captures need to be escorted !!!

[gillrichard]

Now that is annoying if they are flying at 40-50...

I use the one in bad debt as it is really far from anything I own and is in reasonable jumping distance of the hidden khaak cluster. (if you ever want a ranking boost, go visit there!)

[acook59]

OK SAY I'VE JUST CAPTURED MY FIRST PIRATE SHIP, WHERE DO I SELL IT? ARGON WHARF? SHIP YARD? HELP!

[DDM_Reaper20]

OK SAY I'VE JUST CAPTURED MY FIRST PIRATE SHIP, WHERE DO I SELL IT? ARGON WHARF? SHIP YARD? HELP!

Whereever is the closest ship yard or wharf, the location doesn't matter. Enjoy your hard-earned cash!

Regards,
DDM_Reaper20

[Gazzareth]

I use the one in bad debt as it is really far from anything I own and is in reasonable jumping distance of the hidden khaak cluster. (if you ever want a ranking boost, go visit there!)

Not explored that far "South" yet, although sounds like a good idea - especially until I get a Mini-Carrier...... (Elephant that is)....

[gillrichard]

I had not thought of that, I could buy a carrier, take it to a pirate base with me leave it out of combat zone and get pirates to dock there.

Holy crap batman, i AM stupid,

Ta!