Capping, stealing, boarding and carjacking ships in X3 Terran Confict - THE HOWTO

[psyclon]

In my experience if a TS (that you are trying to steal) drops its freight, the pilot never bails. Is this true?

[BurningMan]

In my experience if a TS (that you are trying to steal) drops its freight, the pilot never bails. Is this true?

No i had pilots bailing even after they dropped their freight.

[psyclon]

I caught my first big fish - a Galleon! It took a bit too much hull damage (37 mil on repairs) because i got carried away with the "i win button" of the Cobra, but hey, what are those billions in the bank for

The interesting part is that i had only 5 expert fighting marines - the others were from one to three stars in fighting, but almost maxed in the other skills. Nevertheless, no casualties!

This gives me the confidence to try capturing other whales and eventually Xenon ships.

Btw, i think that flails are a bit too powerful. Sometimes they bug out and just fly around the target, but when they hit, they can kill a countless number of fighters. Not that i'm complaining, i love watching them go boom, but sometimes it feels like burning ants with a magnifying glass.

[Alan Phipps]

@ psyclon: " .. flails are a bit too powerful. Sometimes they bug out and just fly around the target, but .." That is usually a result of saving and reloading while missiles are in flight. The looping and missing then becomes typical even for fresh launches until after the point where there are no missiles already in flight.

It can also happen if you have too many warheads in flight at the same time. The available guidance and collision processing time is shared between them all and the overall 'accuracy' will suffer if there are too many for your cpu core to cope along with everything else in the game. Sometimes less is better.

[psyclon]

It can also happen if you have too many warheads in flight at the same time.

That must be it. When i see a group of fighters i usually fire enough missiles to bounce and kill all of them. I will try firing a few at each target separately.

[psyclon]

I just want to share my latest cap: after a round of field training for my marines (cough...capping defenseless hospital ships...cough) i found myself near a lone friendly Minotaur and decided to employ the same tactics - go under it, a few bumps to drop the shields and then board. The moment my marines were launched the Minotaur fired a series of hammers and insta-killed me. So i reload, start a jumping sequence to the farthest gate, bump, bump, bump, launch marines, fly awaaaaaaay and voila - a capped Minotaur.

It may be standard practice, i don't know, but i was proud that i thought of it myself

[Guishinator]

I don't know if this was discussed earlier in the thread, but I didn't feel like reading through 37 pages of comments, so I apologize if this question has already been answered.

I'm fairly new to the fighting aspect of this game, mostly having worked with trading. So, I decided I would try out the capping, and collected all the tools for capturing smaller ships. I was flying in Aladna Hill, and I saw an Argon TS SF XL, so I attempted to cap it. I got the hull all the way down to 1%, and the pilot refused to bail. so I commed him to apologize, but there was no option for that. Did that get removed in a patch, or something?

[Nanook]

If you're far enough down a race's rep list, then that option doesn't come up. Or if the pilot is a pirate, you never get the apologize option.

[Guishinator]

Thanks. I'm pretty high with the Argon (Protector of the Federation), so I'm not sure why I couldn't apologize. I was able to apologize to a Split TS later, though, so I guess that was just a fluke or something.

[Nanook]

If you make a single pilot mad enough, you won't get the option to apologize to them at all. Sounds like you shot up that poor freighter just a little too much.

[Ni Meleth Li]

just had my first ever successful boarding attempt with this guide =D

managed to take a zeus!
i had to escort it out by firing barrages of flails at the remaining pirates, but now its mine =D
and i did it with marines i didnt think would make it o.o
http://i.imgur.com/mN7D4EQ.jpg

46% hull. this repair is going to take forever....

[RainerPrem]

Hi,

just had my first ever successful boarding attempt with this guide =D

managed to take a zeus!
i had to escort it out by firing barrages of flails at the remaining pirates, but now its mine =D
and i did it with marines i didnt think would make it o.o
http://i.imgur.com/mN7D4EQ.jpg

46% hull. this repair is going to take forever....

Congratulations. I still recall my first successful boarding several years ago.

As for the damages Zeus: You'd better sell it and use the money to train your marines and buy more flails and hammers.

cu
Rainer

PS: The mods don't like reviving threads that old...

[Bill Huntington]

Congrats on the Zeus, Ni!

I was going leave it at that, because it feels really good the first time.

But it's better to learn some things.

Like Rainier advised. Don't repair it, sell it. Because you always get another. If you want one, then pay the bill. I'll repair an M5, an M4, an M3, a TS. Early money is tight anyway. If it's more than a few percentage points, it's not worth your time.

You need support ships involved with a boarding. Like you said, to get the prize out of there. I usually have my Hype close by. I change to the Hype after the marines are inside, sometimes before. Then I get the Cobra out of the there. When the target is mine, I transfer a shield, Jump Drive, and Energy to the prize and jump it out of there. I transfer a shield to the Hype from one of the docked ships. I jump the Cobra to where my capped ship went, and transfer the marines back to the Cobra. Then I jump out myself. If I'm selling the ship, I can pick up the Jump Drive after the new ship jumps. Then I don't have to get another JD. Even if I only have one JD and no spares, I'll put it on my new ship. It's vulnerable, and things change once the boarded ship leaves the sector. I can escape in my personal ship much better than the new ship. I'll have my full shields, and I might have Turbo and lots of E.

That's enough for now.

You lost some rep when you boarded and took the ship. You lost much more if you killed the escort. It's not necessary, except on rare occasions.

[MarvinTheMartian]

Congrats indeed. The first cap is an exciting moment in the X universe and a Zeus is a challenging target.

As the others have said, sell the Zeus and reinvest the credits (it sounds like you don't have credits to spare at the moment), however, I would add that using some of those credits to train them in engineering will help, it looks like they did 4% of hull damage on that last deck alone - engineering skills mean they will do less damage as they fight and ultimately none. Looks like this is the one skill you haven't trained and it does cost money directly if you don't (whether you sell or repair)

I'm disturbed that you would pick on those poor pirates though when there's a far more deserving target next door but seriously, pirate rep is harder to maintain than most, more so because you can't actually see it, and you might find your assets become a target for them (unless you want an exciting universe)

P.S. yep, a new topic might have been better in this case

[Bill Huntington]

Here's a good one that you can use when the boarded ship docks fighters, and you're too far away for an immediate transfer. Change ship to a Kestral or similar. Zoom to the new ship. Dock. Transfer shield (only 25MJ), JD, Energy, and even Turbo 1 or Turbo 2. Jump out to a nearby safer place. Meet Cobra, transfer marines. Meet support ship, get more E. Get to SY for repair or sale. Then transfer JD back and get back to the Hype. This saves so many problems. And then you're ready to board the next one.