Need Advice about boarding specific ship

[thedavid]

The ship I have in mind to board is the L size Pelican Sentinel that docks at a Scale Plate station during the Hatikvah Trade Revolution. This ship irritates me so much half the time I don't even bother boarding it and I just blow it and the station up just to be as cruel as I can.

But anyway, I want to board this ship. The problem I have is that after the cut scene and the pilot calls for backup the ship never undocks from the pier. This means that if I shoot the ship the crew will not abandon ship no matter how dire things look for them.

Usually when I go after an L size ship I shoot it until everyone abandons ship and only the pilot is left. This way I am guaranteed to take the ship with zero casualties. I don't like casualties of my own people. I really REALLY don't like casualties of my employees. I dislike it so much I pretty much never board the Erlking anymore. I blow it up, do research, and build a better one. I can't tolerate it if even one of my guys die.

But I want that ship from the Hatikvah quest chain. If I board the ship while it is docked and it has all of its crew, then at least one of my guys will die. I don't like it.

So I have some ideas and I would like to ask if anyone has tried them.

1: Board the ship before it makes it to the pier. I feel like I've tried this before and there was something wrong. I don't remember but maybe it was something like the mission didn't progress and so Hatikvah was broken. I don't remember. Does anyone know what will happen?

2: Blow up the station, or at least the pier, and thus hopefully forcing the ship to be in an undocked state so that I can blast it, make the crew bail, and then board it with just the pilot. Does anyone know if this will work?

If anyone has any other ideas, please let me know. I had a ship try to follow the Pelican around but after a few hours the ship never undocked. It just stayed there. What is this ship actually programmed to do after the mission is over?

I'm thinking really hard about this. Do I just take the ship and hold a funeral for my dead employee or do I try again and find a way to take the ship without loss of life?

[BitByte]

If you blowup pier dock while ship is docked also ship gets destroyed. It won't undock.

So solution if you want avoid casulties is that you use better marines. With 4 stars veterans can get the ship without casulties. Also pay attention to your marines morale as that will improve their fighting spirit and success.
And if you have started terraforming and built martial arts facilities for marine training you can get "cannon food" with very cheap price (especially if you have your own shipyard and/or wharf where get workforce) as their training to max 4 stars marines is (or was atleast in 5.10. Haven't trained marines in 7.x) ridiculous cheap.