“Capturing” is used somewhat interchangeably with “boarding” in X4 discussions, but here the terms have specific meanings:
Boarding is for L/XL ships, where you have to use marines to take over the ship. (See Boarding for details.)
Capturing is for S/M ships, where you harass the ship to intimidate its crew, causing the crew to bail out into escape pods. (No marines involved.)
This page is about capturing S-size and M-size ships.
Concept
Capturing small ships is about intimidating the ship’s pilot and crew, harassing them enough to get them to say “this is isn’t worth it” and flee the ship in an escape pod.
You do this by damaging the ship, then shooting at them (without destroying the ship) until they fail a “bail check” (essentially a dice roll). When the ship fails a check, a few of the crew will launch in escape pods. Once you repeat this often enough to get all the crew off, the attack ends.
The pilot will be the last to bail out. When this happens, the ship changes to Neutral (unowned), and you can take control of it (see below), at which point you own it just as if you had bought it from a wharf.
Mechanics
To get ship crew to bail out, you need to meet certain specific requirements:
- Hull must be below 75%
- You must have fired on them within the last 30 seconds
Once ship’s hull is below 75%, a random “bail check” is made every 30 seconds. If the ship fails the check, up to 3 crew will exit the ship into escape pods.
Note that it’s always “up to 3 crew” no matter the crew compliment. If you try to attack a ship with 20 crew, it may take a very long time to get them all to bail 3 at a time.
Once you force all crew and pilot to bail out, the ship becomes adrift and Neutral. You can fly to it in your space suit, turn on Scan mode, scan the signal leak you’ll find by the airlock, and control of the ship is transferred to you. You now own it.
Note that the pilot will be the last to bail, and will sabotage the ship on the way out (possibly destroying some or all of the ship’s equipment). There is no way to prevent this.
Process
“Harassing” the ship is done by firing at them to bring their hull under 75%, then continuing to fire occasionally on the ship.
Every 30 seconds or so, the ship’s crew will face a “bail check” to see if their morale has given out. Crews with higher morale are less likely to bail.
You don’t need to fire continuously (boarding check is only ever 30 seconds), and it doesn’t matter if the ship’s shields regenerate (shield strength plays no role in “bail check” calculations).
Note: sometimes crew bails quickly, sometimes it takes a very long time. If you’ve been attacking a ship for several minutes and no one has bailed yet, you may want to consider moving on to another target. There’s no guarantee that the crew will bail before you get bored or frustrated.
Evaluating targets
To see a ship’s crew count and morale, approach and turn on your ship’s Scan Mode and scan the ship.
Factors to look for include:
- Crew size: large crews will take longer to force out three at a time
- Crew skill: experienced crews with high morale will take longer to intimidate
- Hull strength: if target has a high hull strength compared to yours, they will be less intimidated
- Ship size class: if you’re in a smaller ship but still beating up on the target, they will be more intimidated
Tactics
A popular tactic is to use shield penetrating weapons (available from PAR and ZYA) to bring down the hull, then use low-damage weapons to avoid damaging the ship further. Once the target’s hull is below 75%, you don’t actually need to do any further damage when you hit it.
Once the ship is “unowned” and adrift, you can also tell a marine to “Claim” the ship if you have one on board, but this will cause further damage to the target.
Escaping ships
If a target ship thinks it can make it to a station to dock and/or leave the sector, the chances of crew bailing will drop to essentially zero.
For this reason, attacking ships near stations, gates and the superhighway is generally a losing proposition that will just waste your time.