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Is there a comprehensive guide as to what affects bail chance?

I read it was possible to do a morale check multiple times on the same ship. How is this done? Do I need to let the shields regenerate all the way to 100 before stripping them down and doing 1 point of damage to the hull?

Just tap away at their hull, for which you need light hitting weapons. This is just anecdotal, but I find that using a corvette, blasting their shields off with CIGs and then tapping the hull with a couple IREs (or one if you are really patient) gives pretty good results. Still more not bails than bails, but I get an adequate turnover.

An alternative approach, which I've increasingly adopted, is to just "do the numbers", by which I mean increase the chances by taking the most opportunities, rather than trying to squeeze every opportunity. In a target-rich environment, this is better - just hammer the shield as fast as possible and keep hitting till the hull is about half-done, let up, and if the target is stubborn just finish it off and move on to the next one. Of course, in a target-poor environment this is not the better option - then it's better to do as Tim suggests. And as he already pointed out, whatever you do, expect more "not bails" than bails - I think the most important aspect of bail-capturing is managing one's expectations.

Timsup2nothin wrote:Just tap away at their hull, for which you need light hitting weapons. This is just anecdotal, but I find that using a corvette, blasting their shields off with CIGs and then tapping the hull with a couple IREs (or one if you are really patient) gives pretty good results. Still more not bails than bails, but I get an adequate turnover.

I was always under the impression that "the" bail check occurs when shields are 0 and hull is knocked down to 67%. I thought that, at that point, either the pilot bails, or he will never bail. It was shocking to discover that the "check" can be performed multiple times on the same ship and wanted to get the details regarding this repeated check. Is it done on each hit while shields are 0 and hull is less than 68%? If so, then it looks like a single IRE/PBE would be the best weapon, but I don't know. Can anyone chime in on the true coded mechanics?

If the coders really wanted to make it realistic, the bail chance could have been based on your ship size/weapons, proximity to your ship, speeds of ships ("can I get away?"), proximity of friendly/hostile ships, etc...

mistercat wrote:If the coders really wanted to make it realistic, the bail chance could have been based on your ship size/weapons, proximity to your ship, speeds of ships ("can I get away?"), proximity of friendly/hostile ships, etc...

...and how many friends have gone *poof* (or more to the point, the player has MADE to "go poof", heheh) in the past few seconds/minute/whatever... Yeah, the system is rather simplistic.

I can't give an actual code based answer personally, but I have seen one. As I remember it's actually a timed thing, with a random timer before another check can occur. The longer you can keep blasting the more checks you get, but they have to be taking damage pretty much continuously or the timer resets, hence the pecking with a light weapon.

Again, this is memory from an answer by someone I gave credibility at the time, which may be totally meaningless but it does fit my experience pretty well. Following the process I described I get bails with a lot of hull and I get last minute bailers that even with an IRE it is hard to keep from blowing up the scrap they are leaving, and everything in between.

There's a lot of details to it. I'll start with some of them. The first bail check happens at 87.25 or 87.5, one or the other, so you have get to 86% of hull to make sure you've gotten it. There's a number of possible bail checks that are on a timer. We don't have access to the timer so I use the shield recovery of the target as the visible timer and get good results that way. If the target has 3 x 25 shields I wait until the shields have recovered to 20%. If it's 2 x 25 shields, I wait for 30%. 1 x 25 is 40%. There's further bail checks but it's too hard for me to figure them out.

There's a bonus if you're in a bigger ship than the target. Then a bail is more likely when the hull is less than 10%.

A bail check happens with every shot. That means an IRE is the best weapon for a successful cap, since the weakest weapon will take the most shots to kill a target. The PBE is also good. But a bail can happen with any weapon.

I always save before the capping attempt if I can. I dock at a station first if I don't have Salvage Insurance.

I do a morale check before I spend a lot of time trying for a cap. If a ship has a morale of 10 or less, it's a good candidate to bail. Above 20 and it takes a golden BB to get the bail. Ask if you want the procedure to check morale.

Bill Huntington wrote:There's a lot of details to it. I'll start with some of them. The first bail check happens at 87.25 or 87.5, one or the other, so you have get to 86% of hull to make sure you've gotten it. There's a number of possible bail checks that are on a timer. We don't have access to the timer so I use the shield recovery of the target as the visible timer and get good results that way. If the target has 3 x 25 shields I wait until the shields have recovered to 20%. If it's 2 x 25 shields, I wait for 30%. 1 x 25 is 40%. There's further bail checks but it's too hard for me to figure them out.

There's a bonus if you're in a bigger ship than the target. Then a bail is more likely when the hull is less than 10%.

A bail check happens with every shot. That means an IRE is the best weapon for a successful cap, since the weakest weapon will take the most shots to kill a target. The PBE is also good. But a bail can happen with any weapon.

I always save before the capping attempt if I can. I dock at a station first if I don't have Salvage Insurance.

I do a morale check before I spend a lot of time trying for a cap. If a ship has a morale of 10 or less, it's a good candidate to bail. Above 20 and it takes a golden BB to get the bail. Ask if you want the procedure to check morale.

Is it something that can be done in the vanilla game (meaning whatever was downloaded from Steam incl. the bonus packs/patches)?

No, but you can save, activate scripts, check morale, then reload your unmodified save.

That said, I'm with Raven. Blast away, if they bail, great, if they don't then they die. NEXT!!!

Here's how to check morale. You can do this, check morale, then reload the game knowing the morale of your target. If you don't reload then your game will be tagged 'Modified'. I don't care so I don't reload. I'm vanilla with everything else. If you care, reload.

The procedure: Go to Change Name menu. Type 'thereshallbewings'. There'll be a pause. Get to the Command Console. Type 'S' for Script Editor. Hit 'return' twice. You'll get to a screen that says 'Additional Info'.
Choose 'Yes'.

Click on the target and go to the very bottom of Information. Morale is two or three lines from the bottom.

You can also get your Pirate rating this way, by clicking on a pirate ship or station.

I've done this in TC and AP in the versions.

Bill Huntington wrote:Here's how to check morale. You can do this, check morale, then reload the game knowing the morale of your target. If you don't reload then your game will be tagged 'Modified'. I don't care so I don't reload. I'm vanilla with everything else. If you care, reload.

The procedure: Go to Change Name menu. Type 'thereshallbewings'. There'll be a pause. Get to the Command Console. Type 'S' for Script Editor. Hit 'return' twice. You'll get to a screen that says 'Additional Info'.
Choose 'Yes'.

Click on the target and go to the very bottom of Information. Morale is two or three lines from the bottom.

You can also get your Pirate rating this way, by clicking on a pirate ship or station.

I've done this in TC and AP in the versions.

Is there a hidden Yaki relations stat, too? I don't mean relations with a particular Yaki ship or attack group, but the entire Yaki "race."

Yes. You can get it from any Yaki ship or station the same way. Just try it. Probably take you a few tries and five minutes. Save first.

mistercat wrote:

Bill Huntington wrote:...

I do a morale check before I spend a lot of time trying for a cap. If a ship has a morale of 10 or less, it's a good candidate to bail. Above 20 and it takes a golden BB to get the bail. Ask if you want the procedure to check morale.

Is it something that can be done in the vanilla game (meaning whatever was downloaded from Steam incl. the bonus packs/patches)?

There's a reason this can't be done in vanilla - essentially, as far as I'm concerned at least, it's cheating. How is it I could magically determine how brave the pilot inside a ship is? Teladi-Boron quantum crystal ball? I prefer to immerse myself in the experience: I wouldn't know that a pilot is brave/stupid/stubborn until such time as I've tried and tried to intimidate him/her/it and failed repeatedly, and so that's if/when I find this out, and respond accordingly (my normal approach is brave=dead, sensible gives me ship and gets to live - I'm very particular about that, I don't kill ejected pilots. *shrug* Call it my way of saying "thanks" )

Timsup2nothin wrote:Blast away, if they bail, great, if they don't then they die. NEXT!!!

This method tends to yield much more frequent bails (assuming there are enough targets available, of course) - in the time it would take me to dick around with saving, activating cheat-scripts scripts, taking notes about which ships have low morale pilots, deactivating script, reloading, [none of the preceding constituting actually "playing the game"] and fiddly tickling of ships to improve my odds maybe by double, I can go through a dozen or more (depending on the "richness" of the area, and what ship I'm flying, with what weapons) "candidates", which is a dozen-fold (or more!) better odds... You do the math.

@mistercat:
One of the best discussions about capping (mechanism) was this thread . LV, Carlo the Curious, fiksal and others are 'legends' for X3 and X3-modding.
It's not the only relevant thread, you find more info using the 'search' on top of the page (under the line egosoft.com Space simulation development) and searching for "capping".

Short version:
a) A pilot only bails if the Shields have been lowered to 0% and the Hull is damaged to 87% or lower.
b) If a) is reached, the bailing mechanisms (probability referencing morale, aggressiveness and skills of the attacked ship's pilot) are calculated all 30 seconds.
c) Therefore it is useless to shoot permanently at your target; just keep the shields down.

Personal tactics:
Normal bailing: I just let happen; no reloading, no long circling around the target to get a second or third chance. It bails - or it dies. Or as Tim has put it:

Timsup2nothin wrote:Blast away, if they bail, great, if they don't then they die. NEXT!!!

Special targets (like ultrarare or unique ships):
Save - Attack at highest possible speed (using thrusters if possible) and with as much firepower as possible (eventually adapted for weaker targets) - shoot as long as the hull is over 87% - stop shooting - wait - second try.
If pilot does not bail, reload and play again.

Nice summary, Zazie - clear, precise, and to the point. Thank you.

(Just like Tim, I thought I remembered a recheck timer, of either 30 or 60 seconds, but I wasn't sure I wasn't just conflating memories - thanks for the confirmation.)

RAVEN.myst wrote:... I don't kill ejected pilots. *shrug* Call it my way of saying "thanks" )...

I don't kill them, either. I just incarcerate Pirates and Yaki in a dilapidated 'prison barge', often an old damaged Toucan or some other otherwise worthless hulk. They get 'life'. ** And that's when I'm playing the nice guy! When I'm playing a pirate or yaki , I cart them to the nearest pirate base, turn them into slaves, and then trade them in at Rehabiliation Centers for useable marines (who were former slaves).

**And when I'm playing one of the races, that race's arch enemies get the same treatment: Argon vs Paranid, Boron vs Split, Terran vs Everyone.

zazie wrote:@mistercat:
One of the best discussions about capping (mechanism) was this thread . LV, Carlo the Curious, fiksal and others are 'legends' for X3 and X3-modding.
It's not the only relevant thread....

Actually, it's not even a truly relevant thread, since most of that discussion predates TC and AP and applies to the mechanics in Reunion and probably X2. The capping mechanics have reportedly changed a bit since then.

Nanook wrote:When I'm playing a pirate or yaki , I cart them to the nearest pirate base, turn them into slaves, and then trade them in at Rehabiliation Centers for useable marines (who were former slaves).

Some marines steal ships. When they do, I'll be there to kick them out of the ship.

Then I pick them up. If they can fight, I will teach them. If they can't ... they'll become slaves again.

@Nanook: I like this idea of keeping a prison ship - it's the civically responsible thing to do, innit? Methinks I'll adopt the practice...

Not only is it a civic responsibility, but when some mission slinging pirate with a mountain of spare credits needs a whole busload of workers...errrr...um...what was that "civic responsibility" thing again?