Best Pirate/Yaki M7 as Player Ship

[Garik_Loran]

Just boarded a Xenon J with the Akurei. I was looking for an I but found a K, however the J turned up as well and was way faster so I guided very far out. With 35 Marines (20+3×5 for each Blastclaw) it was bit annoying with the transfer (especially to send the first additinal 5 very fast to make a total of 25. But it worked on the second try with 9 losses total, I can live with that, since you only need the 100% Marines for the Xenon. I wonder if this will work with an K or even I as well, I will let you know

[ksnk]

Just boarded a Xenon J with the Akurei. I was looking for an I but found a K, however the J turned up as well and was way faster so I guided very far out. With 35 Marines (20+3×5 for each Blastclaw) it was bit annoying with the transfer (especially to send the first additinal 5 very fast to make a total of 25. But it worked on the second try with 9 losses total, I can live with that, since you only need the 100% Marines for the Xenon. I wonder if this will work with an K or even I as well, I will let you know

It's worked. I am captured all Xenon heavy ships including Q with pair Cobra + Carrack. And yes, if you lucky enough - you lost 10 marines only. All with 100% fight.
In order not to regret the losses so much, you can use the training center to create your own Marines. Strong Arm will sell it to you. And Split will sell you a factory for the production of handguns. Pirates can sell you slaves, so "free" them in the center, fill the center with energy, oil and weapon.
It can train a marine with 3-4 battle stars each. After the first upgrade, (->M) can train one random discipline( fixed once per game or once per center not realy sure ), and the Marines have initial skills in that discipline, so 3 upgrades can produce Marines "almost ready to fight", you just need to improve them a bit for combat to 100%... However, it is unclear what to do with such a large number of infantry after all the Xenon ships have been captured
Traing center can't be placed in complex
This time I am start new game with Akurei as "main" ship for capture anything, so I am try to capture Xenons with one ship only.

[Garik_Loran]

Its a good point with the training center. I would need to steal the blueprints as Strongarms hate my guts pretty bad. äBut I wonder if it is really nessecary...

I got about 120 maxed 5* Marines now as I usally park one TP in every putpost and just buy everything with 30+ Combat rating and train them there and just collect with one runner TP every once in a while. While boarding in yaki and pirate sectors or just paranids in xenon hub they level up so fast without losses. I got the feeling that I basically have the marines to get every hard target, e.g. Xenon, I only still need K and I. Once i deconstructed them I would rather focus on easy-to-acquire ships and just produce the ones I need.

One question if you want to go with your own training factory. I read that enslaving bailed pilots ruins your moral code and therefore significantly lowers the bailout chance. At first I went collecting every single bailed pilot and sent him to his station but soon it was just too much and too annoying so I just release them in blocks of 40 at the Goner temple. I get so many bails at the moment that I just leave most of them where they are and don't bother too much.

Will buying slaves lower your noral as well? Or ist it just negative when you enslave them yourself?

[beast_regards]

Will buying slaves lower your noral as well? Or ist it just negative when you enslave them yourself?

You could buy slaves on the black market. Exchanging it for other goods works the best, as otherwise they would charge you quite the lot.

With each black market transaction, there is a certain chance you would be detected, and you would either pay a fine, or worse, suffer damage reputation.

Damage reputation may go to the extreme where they shoot your ships on sight and stations go hostile, but that's the most extreme reaction when you don't stop.

Normally, it won't go that far, so it's pretty easy to do. Argon kicked me out of its space several times because at this point they realized they get drown in stuff if they let me dock at their "free" trading stations, as I usually send a few transports worth of goods at once. (If you are docked, it doesn't matter if they go hostile, so sell until you satisfy the local demand)

From my experience, Aladna Hill is the best place to get stuff as there is always a lot of traders, but since everything is illegal Argon may not like you very much. (but I sell industrial quantities of stuff)

[Garik_Loran]

Will buying slaves lower your noral as well? Or ist it just negative when you enslave them yourself?

You could buy slaves on the black market. Exchanging it for other goods works the best, as otherwise they would charge you quite the lot.

With each black market transaction, there is a certain chance you would be detected, and you would either pay a fine, or worse, suffer damage reputation.

Damage reputation may go to the extreme where they shoot your ships on sight and stations go hostile, but that's the most extreme reaction when you don't stop.

Normally, it won't go that far, so it's pretty easy to do. Argon kicked me out of its space several times because at this point they realized they get drown in stuff if they let me dock at their "free" trading stations, as I usually send a few transports worth of goods at once. (If you are docked, it doesn't matter if they go hostile, so sell until you satisfy the local demand)

From my experience, Aladna Hill is the best place to get stuff as there is always a lot of traders, but since everything is illegal Argon may not like you very much. (but I sell industrial quantities of stuff)

I meant to honor system, once you enslave pilots the bail rate will drop. But the I guess this is not the case when you buy them. I fot bustet once for trying to buy Ion mines, but I was just charged with some credits.

[Garik_Loran]

And I actually managed to board the Xenon I

It came with Q,K,J,PX and P but I got lucky and managed to lure it away

It was with about 20 Fighter, I just rammed most of them and the Flak/PBC got the rest pretty quick.

On the first try I accidentally rammed it while boosting in to send the second wave, but on the second try it just worked very smooth with the exchange with the 3 docked blastclaws. My shields were barely scratched and I just lost 9 Marines and got even more lucky as I found a jump beacon on board

I really love the Akurei, the boarding works really smooth. Turbo in, send the first 20 in right away, switch 5 fast, turbo in and send them after and then the rest. Works really great, not a single rocket is needed

[ksnk]

Here is my modified plan on how to purchase Aqurei from the very beginning.
- Complete the first mission to get the xenon hub, clear out the Hub defense fighters, but not to talk to boron and so do not finish the mission. So you can enter the X universe from Holy Vision alpha, and dynamic's reputation is still disabled.
- This way, you can boost your reputation without penalty from the rest of the races. The exception is corporations. You need to choose one corporation to be friends with, the rest will be enemies. I prefer Strong Arm, they have factories for producing lasers.
- Send several agents to boost your reputation among pirates and buy a Carrack for 30k$. A good point is you can purchase it with PBC (basically one, but pirates have 3 shipyards and Strong Arm can sell something). So you have ready for action ship
- Train 15 marines to get 3-4 stars of mechanics + technical skills. And then - 4+ for battles. Let some of them be hackers. A good idea is to save-load your game, and when you can get your first M6 in the mission with good crew.
- Make friends with a Paranid, this is the key to success. We need to find the Paranid shipyard where the trophies will jump. I have this Paranid Prime alpha (immediately up from the Yaki sector). Fly to the Yaki sector and start capturing everything. The goal is to capture at least one Akurei. If you meet Cariudo, take him as much as you can. Disassemble one Cariudo at your station and create 10 drones (10 for each Cariudo you have). It seems that we have too a little time to fix the Akurei with drones, I always repaired it at the shipyard for money, after which I loaded the weapons from Carrack and sold the old ship - the money became too small. Next continue robbing yaki. But I had a beautiful new boat All other captured ships should be sent to Paranid Prime, wait for drones and repair themselves.

So you have almost good reputation with all except Earth, Yaky and corporatiion. For me it's a good start point if you like to purcharge all blueprins for collector achivement. Just buy blueprints by agents, it's much faster than stealing.

The only problem is that you don't have access to Earth without completing the first mission and starting the second, so you'll have to do it sometime...

[Garik_Loran]

That is a very good tipp with the Xenon hub, had I known this, I think I would have chosen this path.

I spent quite some time in Yaki sectors and never saw a Kariudo so far. I got a Shuri and and all other Yaki ships, but I didn't even see a Kariudo. But I guess I'll just have to be patient. In which sector did you find them the most often?

For the Xenon Boarding, I just finished the rest and got the achievement. Got a K on the first try, then refueled and got back in, then just boarded a P, a Q and a J with one set of 35 Marines with 20 surving this run. Was quite happy with the result

[ksnk]

I spent quite some time in Yaki sectors and never saw a Kariudo so far. I got a Shuri and and all other Yaki ships, but I didn't even see a Kariudo. But I guess I'll just have to be patient. In which sector did you find them the most often?

Almost every of 3 Yaky sector can hоld this ships. Last run it was a first ship I've meet and captured by Carrack, and only next arrived my future Aqurei, in south gate of Ocracoke's Storm. They are captured better than Aqurei, for speed is less and no long range weapon.
You can use some script to find a ship you need - A00.The.All.Seeing.Eye is good for me, just don't forget to save game before running a script and reload after.

[beast_regards]

I meant to honor system, once you enslave pilots the bail rate will drop. But the I guess this is not the case when you buy them. I fot bustet once for trying to buy Ion mines, but I was just charged with some credits.

I had the option to test this considerably.

Handing of the captured pilot to the Marine Barracks counts as killing them and affects your honor values considerably.

I merely handled a two, and bail chances dropped considerably. I can measure it only because I have a lot of turrets in the Void Alpha, and mere presence in the system causes the transport pilots to bail once they find themselves under fire. This, however, became rare with merely handing two prisoners to the Barracks. It doesn't produce better marine either. Also, this is across factions, since in Void Alpha most victims would be Borons, while prisoners handled over were Terracorp's I got elsewhere. Hence black market brought slaves are less likely to cause issues, and could potentially give you hundreds if not thousands of candidates (and yes, queue in the station could be few hundreds spots long even if the maximum number of marines is only 5 or 10)

Slaves are more likely to be sold on Argon Station's black markets (paradoxically, Argons as the faction which in-universe abhors slavery, sells most slaves. Split, who are slavers, don't sell slaves.) Everything is illegal in Argon space, so their black markets are often overcrowded.

Split stations (Black markets) are unlikely to sell you slaves, but they are going to buy them. Handguns (both conventional and pirate variety, plus disintegrators) are more likely to be sold there.

Pirates (Black markets) are more likely to sell you ship weapons and illegal software, and buy slaves, narcotics, firearms, occasionally space flies. Space Weed and whisky are brought only occassionaly, but you could always sell them over counter on pirate stations (basically everything can be sold over the counter as pirates aren't too fond of this thing called market restrictions)

As for the fines, some of the black market merchants are "undercover/shills" for the police and interacting with them gets you a fine. You can spot them because they offer you considerably more for the illicit goods than everyone else, sometimes even 200 or 300% of value in most obvious causes. Only pirates black market doesn't have them, in rest of cases there are always "undercover/shills". Strong arms station seems to be especially paranoid.

You are often charged the value of the illicit goods you are trying to sell, and try to spot you by offering more, the highest fine I got was around 12 million because I thought I would get over 20 million for the whisky shipment.

You could try to interact with the black market OOS, the "undercover/shills" still will be there, but the police ships in space won't scan you.

The cargo bay shielding only provide percentage of protection if you are in system, and you could be scanned by ships and attacked.

[Garik_Loran]

Thanks, that is some new information. With the honor system I collected every bailed pilot and brought him to the desired station for the first about 200 pilots.

The bail rate was/is very high, they often bail due to flak hits. But now I find it too time consuming to collect all and bring them back. I still collect some, but i release them all at the goner station.

For the black markets I have some TS sitting in the pirat bases and one fast TS to do the collection run once they are full. Best find so far was 75 PBC in one single offer, that was awesome.

[ksnk]

Handing of the captured pilot to the Marine Barracks counts as killing them and affects your honor values considerably.

I see something different. I've collected about 20 captured pilots from Yaki. Races is different. Right now all of them been transported to my own training center. Next am checked reputation and queued them all as my future marines. After checking reputation again - all still black - no change at all.
So maybe pilot nationality is important, not his race- I've lowest reputation with yaki.

Same with slaves. To "free" them at my own training center cost no reputation drops.

[ksnk]

Look like I've missed something. Is Kariudo can abordage enemy with pods or anything else except directly drop marines? He can't be equipped with pods by own.

[Garik_Loran]

Handing of the captured pilot to the Marine Barracks counts as killing them and affects your honor values considerably.

I see something different. I've collected about 20 captured pilots from Yaki. Races is different. Right now all of them been transported to my own training center. Next am checked reputation and queued them all as my future marines. After checking reputation again - all still black - no change at all.
So maybe pilot nationality is important, not his race- I've lowest reputation with yaki.

Same with slaves. To "free" them at my own training center cost no reputation drops.

The honor system is not equal to the reputation. Honor is not visible and basically determines, if and how often enemy pilots will bail. If you kill the spacesuits, it will drastically drop the rate as well as enslaving them. If you do this too often, enemy pilots will not bail out, regardless of the rank. On the other hand, if you let them live, bring them to their stations, your honor will rise and more pilots will bail out of their fighters. There is another thread about it where the system is explained in detail.

[beast_regards]

I see something different. I've collected about 20 captured pilots from Yaki. Races is different. Right now all of them been transported to my own training center. Next am checked reputation and queued them all as my future marines. After checking reputation again - all still black - no change at all.
So maybe pilot nationality is important, not his race- I've lowest reputation with yaki.

Same with slaves. To "free" them at my own training center cost no reputation drops.

The "honor" is the unseen value which decides how likely would enemy pilot bail.

In other words, it is value for capturing the small ships like fighters or transports.

It is independent of the reputation. I.e. you could have high honor value even if faction hates you, in my case Borons leave their ships behind because I tend to leave them alone afterwards. I used to either sell the ships I capture this way, as TS-AT costs few millions, or reprocess them to gain microchips. I found microchips particularly difficult to get and they are hard to manufacture as scaling the plant up tend to ramp the cost prohibitively high, so sometimes it is easier to steal the ship and build the another ship from the parts from the previous one.

It's hard to say what the honor value is, since it is invisible, but it is very real.

It built up for me because I practically blockaded the Void Alpha access, and since lasertowers are slow to damage a lot of pilots have chance to bail before the ship gets vaporized. This convinces them you would leave them alone if they give you the ship, hence high honor value. High honour value = they always bail and leave ship behind.

I used to fly around in decently fast ship and collect the abandoned TS or M3. Since I have System Override I don't have to leave the ship, though I have to get very close so system override is best to be installed in fighters.

Reputation is independent to all that. However, at some level you reach the point where reputation is too low or too high. I basically can't get reputation with Pirates so raising it doesn't affect anyone else, and I couldn't lose more reputation with Boron as they hate me so much the agents infleunce is priced out

[ksnk]

The honor system is not equal to the reputation. Honor is not visible and basically determines, if and how often enemy pilots will bail. If you kill the spacesuits, it will drastically drop the rate as well as enslaving them. If you do this too often, enemy pilots will not bail out, regardless of the rank. On the other hand, if you let them live, bring them to their stations, your honor will rise and more pilots will bail out of their fighters. There is another thread about it where the system is explained in detail.

Has any way to see a numbers? Some script maybe? Then free hunting at Yaki sector, I am captured about 30 pilots. It's all surrendering from fighters defending a heavy yaki ships. They likes to travel to places unreachable for me, so all of them became marines. And about 60 slaves too. Sometimes later i am found pirates blastclaw prototype, and found it's relatively hard to surrender this ship, but still possible, so it's looking right.

[beast_regards]

Best find so far was 75 PBC in one single offer, that was awesome.

Also stack on Phased Array Laser Cannons, they are better then flak, and something like Galleon could find fit both PALC and PBC's all around.

Alternatively, if you aren't using pirate ships like I do, Split Pterenodon, Panther or Tiger is also beam laser all around.

Alternatively, if you are capturing Xenon ships the Xenon K could fill either Fusion and Plasma Beams too. Fusion Beams are generally for many xenon ships like Q's and K's.

Has any way to see a numbers? Some script maybe? Then free hunting at Yaki sector, I am captured about 30 pilots. It's all surrendering from fighters defending a heavy yaki ships. They likes to travel to places unreachable for me, so all of them became marines. And about 60 slaves too. Sometimes later i am found pirates blastclaw prototype, and found it's relatively hard to surrender this ship, but still possible, so it's looking right.

It must be visible through some script, but it may invalidate the save as cheated or modified..

I don't know if Blastclaw or Blastclaw Prototype is harder to get since I simply brought mine from the pirates' shipyard. I brought like 10 of each because I wanted to outfit M1, but then run out of 25mj shields and weapons to outfit more.

Susanowa Prototype was my starting ship, so I couldn't tell for Yaki variants, but I managed to captured their Fujins and normal Susanowas.

Most captured ships I tend to get are Barracuda variants, Athenas, Wenedras, Dolphis or Mistrals.

I never managed to capture any Argon or OTAS vessel, as far I could tell getting any of them to bail is the same issue you have for Blastclaws.

Only OTAS ship I've obtained was Boreas, and it was M2, it straight boarding with pods (and I lost ten marines in the process)

[Garik_Loran]

There is a script which shows the pilot morale (0-100 I suppose) while using freight scanner. On better Ships sich as Argon Military Aamon Prototype you usually have pilots with higher morale so they will bail less frequently but with enough patience it should be managable. However you should return bailed pilots if you want to improve the bail rate. It also gets easier when you have a larger ship, such as M6, M7.

[Garik_Loran]

Regarding beam weapons, I buy everything I find and have many M1/M2 fully equipped, e.g. 4 Brigantines with 32 PBC each. Got about 20 total even though I sell a lot, but at the moment I'm still building up a fleet. Got about 200 of each kind stocked. Could build and equip some Xenon I as well, but at the moment I try to make the economy work, all of that is pretty time-consuming...

I have yet to test the other beam weapons as stats can let you make false conclusions (such as thinking PBG is weak).

[ksnk]

There is a script which shows the pilot morale (0-100 I suppose) while using freight scanner. On better Ships sich as Argon Military Aamon Prototype you usually have pilots with higher morale so they will bail less frequently but with enough patience it should be managable. However you should return bailed pilots if you want to improve the bail rate. It also gets easier when you have a larger ship, such as M6, M7.

Thank you. I searched the forum and found a script in the topic "Let's talk about honor." He show me 15 points, which is not bad, so that moment with the "hard to surrender" pilot looks like an abnormally high morale of an enemy pilot.
It's a bit strange that honor isn't as bad as I thought it was. Anyway, it's nice to discover something new in the game, thank you!