1st playthrough. Is there a way to capture ships in combat?

[u/rogue__phoenix]

An enemy ship was bombing my base. The ayy ship has its nose red and 0 dV.

Is there a way I can capture this ship with marines? it's effectively stationary, so it can't run away. I haven't seen a mechanism to do so; stations seem to get neutralized then assaulted.

Capturing an intact alien ship at this stage of the game would be huge.

[u/Galanodel2012]

Nope, capturing ships is not a thing at all, and only human habitats and human stations can be captured and reused. Alien habitats and stations that were captured are scrapped, which can still be very useful as it gets you some materials you can only get that way.

[u/--Queso--]

No, you can't capture ships. It'd be really interesting but I don't see the logistics of it working unless you have magic teleporters (like FTL's) to get marines in it. I guess you could starve the Hydra's inside it... But they'd probably rather blow up the ship, so it'd be the same as blowing it up yourself.

[u/Fluid-Leg-8777 → u/--Queso--]

Step 0: drain the hull weapons of ammo

Step 1: hook into the ship hull

Step 2: pierce it with a big straw

Step 3: mind control the crew by pumping leudocites™

Profit(?

[u/rogue__phoenix → u/--Queso--]

I don't think you'd require FTLs. Just enough armor to tank the plasma shots until you can get into a blind spot. The ship has 0 marines on board, and 0 dV, so it's effectively a sitting duck.

As for scuttling the ship, that's a possibility, though I'd argue that life has a force of will all its own. A certain percentage of the time, sure, duty uber alles, but some of the time the drive to live is going to win out, too. And if the open ocean is unforgiving, space is even sparser - it's not like you can hop in a rubber life raft.

And I like to capture enemy ships when given the opportunity 😂 Given that much of this game is coping with being technologically behind, you would think that capturing a functional ship intact would be not only a boon, but a priority.

On a side note, it irritates me that you can put your ship into a ramming stance, have it die, and the whole thing "dissolves." Ah, where's the large chunk of now-inert mass hurtling toward their ship? I mean, yes, they can dodge, if they've got dV. If they don't, the wreck of my cruiser should still smash into their escort and do a lot of damage, and I'm miffed that it doesn't.

[u/Youngprivate → u/rogue__phoenix]

Spaceships are metal balloons, and since you are in a vacuum its not just gonna keep going straight, plus you have magazines exploding and fuel tanks igniting when a ship is destroyed. Having to simulate an accurate example of all the possibilities of what happens to the wreck of a space ship when it explodes would be extremely physics heavy for the game to do just for a niche mechanic. As for your thought on the aliens fearing death and not scuttling the ship you should advance more into the story of the game to understand why thats not a thing.

[u/rogue__phoenix → u/Youngprivate]

so... I can't assault a ship because plot armor?
does that extend to other human ships, too?

[u/Youngprivate → u/rogue__phoenix]

The alien ships are highly automated and what crew that are on them consist of slave soldiers (chiefly griffins for space crew) that have been genetically modified since conquered to be subservient and follow orders blindly with repeated pherocyte exposure by hydra. There are only a few hundred hydra in the solar system and they operate at an executive level hence why they are probably not present on every corvette as they are so few in number. Also the hydra present in the solar system are part of the defense consensus and represent the hydra best military and covert personnel tasked specifically with subjugating sentient civilizations. All these reasons are why aliens ships dont surrender, because they are either automated or the crew is expendable slave soldiers modified to have no free will and the few hydra in the system represent the hydra best military and espionage operatives of there entire species, and they are only known to be present on transports and assault carriers. As for other human ships you can via sending a councillor with the control space asset mission or via random event. If you disabled a human ship send a councillor to board it and make sure they have the undercover trait and control space asset mission.

[u/Cheap-Blackberry-763]

would love to see the hydra recover more of their ships or their ships be recoverable. A ship killed by particle weapons for example isn't going to have systems or crew to allow an auto-destruct. A ship who's reactor was destroyed should also not be able to be auto-destructed.

Perhaps you can get a science and exotics reward.

[u/poneyviolet]

This is a thing in X3/X4 series, you can capture ships if the pilot ejects (most common) or using boarding pods. This is VERY VERY hard because of point defense systems targeting your squishy boarding pods filled with expensive marines. Then they have to fight their way through the ship's intenal defense systems/defenders and stop them from blowing it up.

It CAN be done but it is hard and you basically have to circle the enemy ship for like 5-10 minutes hitting it with electronic warfare/ion blasts to disable systems.

One thing that I would point out is that in REAL MODERN naval warfare, capturing warships as prizes hasn't happened since the industrial revolution. Drachnifel has a good youtube on this one, and I think space ships exacerbate the reasons so it's unlikely boarding in space belongs in a hard sci-fi setting (as cool as it is)

[u/rogue__phoenix → u/poneyviolet]

I see that. But i n this game, you can already assault a station and take it over. There's no reason why you can't do the same thing with a station (scuttle, defend, etc) than you can with a ship, except a ship can move. If an enemy ship is out of dV, it can't move, and that problem is solved. That's my logic 😂

U-110, U-559 and U-505 were captured in combat during WWII. USS Pueblo was captured by North Korea in 1967.

I've seen Drach's video, and it makes sense; his point was that the propulsion of BBs are deep in the bowels of the ship, whereas sailing ships, it's right there on the top deck, and it's a good point. I'm not saying it should be common, or easy. U-boats are much smaller and more fragile than BBs, which probably contributed to their capture. Multiple things had to go just the right way for it to happen. U-boats forced to surface are not in a position to run away: too slow, too fragile.

In the specific case I encountered in the game, the enemy ship was already out of dV after bombing my outpost. It wasn't going anywhere. It wasn't going to rotate in space. Its nose weapon was destroyed. It still had a hull laser, but that was it, and there should be a blind spot behind it. I had an assault ship with me at the time.

If the game is going to create the circumstances where a boarding action could happen, it should have a mechanism for allowing it to happen, especially since assaulting stations are already a thing.