Bail Troubles

[Iwantyoursmiles]

Been trying to get this Teladi Food Transporter to give up his Vulture Prototype for an hour now. I've gotten him to give up his cargo 100+ times but never his ship.

Does a pilot that surrenders cargo also have a chance to give up its ship or is this a futile endeavor?

My fight rank is warrior.

[Jimmy C]

My sympathies. Sometimes you just run into that one intractable pilot that won't do what they should to save their lives. Nothing you can do except look for another instance of that ship type.
But before you reach that point, there are some things you can try.
First, what weapons are you hitting them with? Use fast, low hull damage weapons for the most chances to pass a bail check. I recommend PRGs, EBCs and Ion Ds. If you don't have these on your current ship, you'll just have to make do with what's available and pace your shots. A rate of one shot every half to one second seems to work. Yes, you can put the gun on a turret and command it to attack your target too. Just be familiar with the disable turret key and be ready to press it the instant the pilot bails.
Second, regularly comm them to demand their surrender while shooting them. It sometimes works.
Third, stop shooting when they transmit. There seems to be no bail checks during a transmission, so why waste shots? Also, familiarize yourself with their last transmissions before they bail. You need to know when you've won.
Fourth, keep shooting until they explode before you reload to try again. I've gotten bails at under 5% hull before. I don't care, I've got a full team of repair drones in my sector to fix ships.

[Iwantyoursmiles]

My sympathies. Sometimes you just run into that one intractable pilot that won't do what they should to save their lives. Nothing you can do except look for another instance of that ship type.

I suspected that the pilot may have had a high bravery score so I spent 10 minutes save scumming every vulture prototype I could find. I checked somewhere between 5 and 10 pilots.

But before you reach that point, there are some things you can try.
First, what weapons are you hitting them with? Use fast, low hull damage weapons for the most chances to pass a bail check. I recommend PRGs, EBCs and Ion Ds. If you don't have these on your current ship, you'll just have to make do with what's available and pace your shots. A rate of one shot every half to one second seems to work. Yes, you can put the gun on a turret and command it to attack your target too. Just be familiar with the disable turret key and be ready to press it the instant the pilot bails.
Second, regularly comm them to demand their surrender while shooting them. It sometimes works.
Third, stop shooting when they transmit. There seems to be no bail checks during a transmission, so why waste shots? Also, familiarize yourself with their last transmissions before they bail. You need to know when you've won.
Fourth, keep shooting until they explode before you reload to try again. I've gotten bails at under 5% hull before. I don't care, I've got a full team of repair drones in my sector to fix ships.

I appreciate your response but some of your information conflicts with what I've read.

Referring to this page https://www.egosoft.com:8444/confluence ... +Mechanics which states that there is an internal cooldown on bail checks that get longer and longer after each one. This would imply that using fast firing weapons wouldn't increase the odds of a bail. There is only 1 check and then you have to wait 60 seconds, unless this information or my comprehension of it is faulty.

I've also heard it mentioned that Ion Disruptors used to be the Teladi's meow when it came to bail checks but it got nerfed to being near useless. It does make me wonder if it's the only weapon with an edited bail chance or if every gun/missile in the game has its own unique hidden variable.

One strategy I've wanted to try is using mass drivers to bring the hull down to less than 5% and then bringing the shields down with some other weapon. I tried to do something similar earlier by using a missile with a payload that brings down the shields and most of the hull in 1 shot but it didn't cause the pilot to bail.

[Jimmy C]

That article was posted in 2018 and should not be considered valid for FL. From my experience, it's far, far easier to get bails in FL than AP. I've barely had to buy TS ships. Dukes is a source of TS, TP and even TM ships.
Even if getting the hull down to under 5% maximizes bail chances, it looks inefficient to me. Most bails I get leave over 75% of the hull for me. 5% remaining feels like wasted effort.
Also, Mass Drivers, short ranged, low damage and ammo-based. How long would you spending to grind the hull down before thinking, "I'll start looking for bail now." How many boxes of ammo would you consume for each bail? I get their shields down and I'm constantly asking for surrender while shooting at them already.

[Iwantyoursmiles]

I wouldn't use the mass driver strat for general purpose bailing for profit. I'm trying to target a specific ship so I can reverse engineer and mass produce it. I want this particular ship just to fill with nividium and vendor at shipyards. Due to its high cargo and low production cost.

[Jimmy C]

The mass driver strat doesn't look good for specific bailing either. I still stand by PRGs and EBCs for forcing bails.
And have you looked at non-Teladi ships to find a Vulture Prototype?

[Iwantyoursmiles]

I found a paranid that was piloting one and had no luck with that pilot either.

Bought a truelight seeker and tried a bunch of different weapons including PBEs and Ion Disruptors, no luck.

I believe the problem is that dropping cargo replaces bailing, at least for this specific ship.

I've decided to either give up on it or go from sector to sector looking for explorers guild reps to maybe find one selling the blueprint for it. I found one that was selling an Aran blueprint for 33 million discovery points (I have 2 million and have found maybe 3 million total).

[Hwitvlf]

A post (think it was a dev) said that dropping off bailed pilots increased future bail rates. The best method I've found is to keep steady fire on the ship till it's hull drops to 9% then send a surrender request. If it refuses, leave it alone till it's shields refill to max, then drop them to 0 and repeat till it bails.

I've used most available weapons and I'm pretty confident that Pulsed Beam Emitters are the best for bailing. I was getting about 75% bails with the Hyperion and PBEs - so high that I asked if it was a bug. I was routinely dropping off all bailed pilots so that may have been a factor.

[Iwantyoursmiles]

I got my ship. I found a paranid pilot that was stuck in one of those weird clusters of TS ships that just sit perfectly still near a gate.https://i.imgur.com/yXzTrrW.png He only had a few fighter drones in his inventory so I stole them with the cargo hacker. Then saved and blasted him down to about 5% hull and com'd for his surrender. Took 23 reloads, but it worked.

He had no cargo which prevented him for dropping any. No idea if that's what made the difference or not.

[BrigandPhantos77]

Maybe I'm just extremely lucky, but I have quite a few Athena's from the Dukes. To the initial question, yes a pilot can do both. Both drop cargo then give up ship. I see it all the time. They are most likely to give up cargo in hopes you will go away.

I use the Nemesis from the start plot. I've overtuned it quite a bit. Keep it also with a Turbo Booster. My payload is 3 CIG, 3 Ion Shard Railguns and 2 Plasma Burst Generator. Most events the pilots will bail with just the ISR. But if I throw in the PBG it seems to increase, but with a high likely-hood of it happening then kaboom. I've seen this posted in threads many times for AP. The key is dropping the targets shields quick. This triggers sometimes an "Oh Sh*t" for the target. Things that will help is weapons fire from the factions. But this increases the likeliness of the ship being popped. Happens a lot in Aladna Hill for example. For some reason the OWP will keep firing missiles even after the ship bails. For like 3 - 5 seconds.

For those 5% of the hull left ships, don't sweat them. If you get a drone carrier you can easily repair these ships quickly.

Places to consider farming Duke's....these systems seem to be pipelines.
Homily of Perpetuity
New Income
Montalaar or Light of Heart.

An Ozias is an invaluable tool for this. You can dock up to 12 TS on it. Then jump them wherever you choose.

My method; I send all to Light of Heart. I got lucky with a jump beacon right next to the shipyard there. I keep my Griffon there ready to do repairs, then afterward it's either to the shipyard to sell for 6 - 9 mil, or to a station/job for use.