Question about capturing medium ships

[Utsuho Reiuji]

I may have encountered some sort of buggy situation in my current game, but before I create a bug report I have the following question:
If the player attempts to capture any medium ship, does it have to be below a certain hull threshold before the captain bails? More specifically, is this hull value 75%?

[Nanook]

The chance of bailing for an NPC pilot is related to their morale rating. A very low morale pilot may bail when his ship is barely scratched, whereas a pilot with 4+ or 5 stars in morale may never bail. This goes for both S and M class ships. But there's a lot of chance involved, as well.

[Utsuho Reiuji]

It is entirely chance based?

My current situation is a venture astrid that I am trying to capture. The 5 star pilot (5 stars in piloting, engineering and morale) already bailed a couple of times, but destroyed the ship in the process. I think this captain does 75% hull damage to the astrid. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to make them bail if the hull was anywhere above 75%.

[Zloth2]

I don't know what goes on in the venture worlds, but you can increase the 'psychological pressure' by using weapons that do small damage to the hull but high damage to shields. Argon Ion Blasters are good for that. This makes the pilot have to roll a lot more often before the ship dies.

[Alan Phipps]

In my experience in vanilla, the hull has to be at 74% or less before a ship has a chance of any crew bailing when hit by fire. This applies to ships of all sizes, in my experience.

Nanook is correct that other factors come into play regarding to the chance whether a bail happens at that 74% or less hull level.

An M ship will bail completely on the next successful bail test if the crew is 4 or less and it has no prisoners aboard (which usually reduces the bail number count from 3 to 2). An M ship will not be left with just a lone hostile pilot.

[cdcerber]

there are couple of hidden mechanics in making them bail, the game makes dice roll for up to 3 crew bailing every 30 sec and it starts at 75% hull, the other modifiers are for morale, the higher morale the harder for them to bail, and your ship max hull but can't confirm it, apparently the more puny ship you fly the better odds.
JK Ninja made great short vid on piracy on youtube

[Scoob]

I did read elsewhere that something is different when it comes to bailing in the Ventures beta. People were reporting ships blowing up constantly as they bailed. I don't know whether this was considered a bug or a feature, I personally have no interest in Ventures. Bailing Pilots have always sabotaged ships, destroying valuable equipment (yeah, like I'm NOT gonna shoot your escape pod for that, you dick lol) which takes a lot of the value away. However, for them to destroy the ship entirely is taking things a bit far.

[Rastuasi]

there are couple of hidden mechanics in making them bail, the game makes dice roll for up to 3 crew bailing every 30 sec and it starts at 75% hull, the other modifiers are for morale, the higher morale the harder for them to bail, and your ship max hull but can't confirm it, apparently the more puny ship you fly the better odds.
JK Ninja made great short vid on piracy on youtube

Are you sure on your 75% value? I attacked a dragon that bailed as soon as his shields departed and on first hit into armor.

[Alan Phipps]

Dragons have such weak unshielded hulls that a substantial hit could well have done the necessary to deplete it enough.

Plot missions, third party mods to ships and equipment and even in-game mods to weapons can all have different effects on bailing chances, but I think the hull rule generally still applies.

[cdcerber]

there are couple of hidden mechanics in making them bail, the game makes dice roll for up to 3 crew bailing every 30 sec and it starts at 75% hull, the other modifiers are for morale, the higher morale the harder for them to bail, and your ship max hull but can't confirm it, apparently the more puny ship you fly the better odds.
JK Ninja made great short vid on piracy on youtube

Are you sure on your 75% value? I attacked a dragon that bailed as soon as his shields departed and on first hit into armor.

relatively sure this is the mechanic for fresh ships, so just speculating now that it might have been shot up before or some other weirdness happend, so lucky you, besides that in curs plot from ToA if you pick Ace mission he guides you through M ship capture to get the hull down to 75%. This whole plot seems like tutorial on piracy

[Rastuasi]

there are couple of hidden mechanics in making them bail, the game makes dice roll for up to 3 crew bailing every 30 sec and it starts at 75% hull, the other modifiers are for morale, the higher morale the harder for them to bail, and your ship max hull but can't confirm it, apparently the more puny ship you fly the better odds.
JK Ninja made great short vid on piracy on youtube

Are you sure on your 75% value? I attacked a dragon that bailed as soon as his shields departed and on first hit into armor.

relatively sure this is the mechanic for fresh ships, so just speculating now that it might have been shot up before or some other weirdness happend, so lucky you, besides that in curs plot from ToA if you pick Ace mission he guides you through M ship capture to get the hull down to 75%. This whole plot seems like tutorial on piracy

Well I just had a mercury vanguard bail at 98% and free up. I'm also vanilla, so maybe it's mods causing the delayed bailing?

[Alan Phipps]

I found an interesting post by BitByte that postulates that there may be a one-off hard hit situation for bail outside the normal hull rules, and also suggesting that comming the ship to surrender can also have a rare success.

[j.harshaw]

Code: Select all

- Are we losing? (Can this ship not have shields, or did the last hit bring shields to below 20% and hull to below 75%)
	- Has it been at least 30 seconds since crew last bailed from this ship?
		- Did the captain fail to hold the crew together? (percentage of crew still on board vs captain morale)
			- How intimidating is the attacker? (target combined skill check modified by approximation of how intrinsically weak the attacker is and how strong the attacker currently is vs how weak we've become)
				- Is the scourge/hero of the universe personally attacking? (reduce chance otherwise)
				- Are we in a capital ship? (reduce if true)

If all true, number of crew that bails depends on the confidence of the captain and their ability to hold the crew together vs number of crew that have thus far already bailed.

If not in a capital ship and number of crew bailing is greater than the number of crew on board, captain bails.

If triggered by a call to surrender, the call is considered the last attack for the purposes of these evaluations.

Pardon the code tags. Felt the spacing might be useful.

[sh1pman]

Can you call them to surrender? But they always answer “I’m not talking to you” and that’s it.

[EGO_Aut]

Can you call them to surrender? But they always answer “I’m not talking to you” and that’s it.

After bring all down to 75% hull, i take mostly 1x beam to slowly bring down the hull a little more and let the shields up ~15-20%. Then down all again and try to comm. Then repeat and repeat and repeat....some will communicate with you, and there is a chance that they leave the ship.

[Nanook]

Can you call them to surrender? But they always answer “I’m not talking to you” and that’s it.

Generally only before they turn hostile, i.e. 'red'.

[EGO_Aut]

Can you call them to surrender? But they always answer “I’m not talking to you” and that’s it.

Generally only before they turn hostile, i.e. 'red'.

Thats wrong

[Nanook]

Can you call them to surrender? But they always answer “I’m not talking to you” and that’s it.

Generally only before they turn hostile, i.e. 'red'.

Thats wrong

Oh, so you regularly and successfully communicate with red hostiles? And I don't mean the ones you purposely turn red in the map settings.

[EGO_Aut]

Generally only before they turn hostile, i.e. 'red'.

Thats wrong

Oh, so you regularly and successfully communicate with red hostiles? And I don't mean the ones you purposely turn red in the map settings.

After attacking a ship, there is a small chance that they will comunicate with you.
Like i did mention above....but you will hear a lot "..dont talk with you" before it happens. And after that, when you say "surrender" there is a small chance that they realy do it.

[Nanook]

Which is why I said 'generally', and not 'always', in my above post. And in all the thousands of ships I've forced to bail, only a handful have ever responded as you said. It's extremely rare, at least in my experience, so I generally don't bother anymore.