A few ship capture tips

Well, we had a Ramming 101 (needed a snappier name - 'A Crash Course in Ramming' would've been cool), so I thought I'd try and pitch in with my favorite area of research. I'll try here to share what I've learned about capturing ships. Maybe others have learned more/better techniques and they'll share their knowledge also.

The two most important things are to have a ship with a speed of 8 to 10, and to always keep a repair ship handy. Speeds less than eight can't get close enough to launch the boarding capsule, and speeds greater than 10 will chase the target away so fast the capsule may not be able to catch it. (I don't give my ships orders in combat; if you do, you can get away with faster speeds because you can order your ship to turn around after launching.)

There are two reasons to keep a repair ship handy: most ships you cap will be slow or immobilized, and you can get your boarding ship back ready for another round.

When designing a boarding ship, it's not worth the trouble if you only use a single boarding party. Weapons are only needed to get shields down, so you can get by with less. It's better to have too many BP's than too few - it means a speedier cap, and a prize ship with less damage.

In theory, shield-depleting weapons and engine-destroying weapons are good. I have had some disappointing results in fleet actions because immobilized ships get killed before the BP's can do their thing.

In the strats, you'll want to instruct your boarding ships to stop shooting before killing their target. Once in a great while they'll do what they're told, and every bit helps. Have them select targets with the least shields and the most armor, so the target can survive long enough for your marines to do the job. Also "least crew" is recommended. Don't use "nearest (absolute), but rather allow 5 ls or 10 ls intervals so they can choose the best target.

As the game progresses ships get bigger and have bigger crews. The size of your boarding ships has to keep pace or they'll need to avoid going after the big stuff. The warp point ambush can still be effective for your smaller ships. A ring of boarding ships has little trouble landing multiple parties, and the process is fast. Unfortunately, so is gunnery; so it's only good for low-traffic warp points. If you have a large garrison, ships will die too soon and the BP's go to waste. For those who don't mind the work, manual placement on the map can help a lot. Use multiple rings of ships to control the timing. It takes a little practice, but it isn't all that hard to figure out.

I once tried going all out for capping tech from the start of the game. It's fun, but I don't really recommend it. The idea is to analyze capped ships in order to catch up on techs, but there's a drawback: you get behind on tech and it slows your expansion. Even when you catch up on tech, you're still behind in expansion. And you still have to get all your prerequisites in. You can't analyze a ship and get shields if you don't have physics. Once you get physics, you can skyrocket in shields, but it's not the goldmine I was expecting. There's also some sort of limit on how much higher a tech can be than your own. For example, analyzing level 10 armor when you're at level one doesn't work. From what I've seen, I think the limit's around five. The experts may know more.

Within fleets, I try to keep my boarding ships in their own separate TF. If they arrive first, they've got a good shot at taking a prize. If they arrive late, it depends on how the rest of the fleet's doing. Usually leftovers aren't in very good shape. I lean toward having them break formation immediately, but there are timing advantages to keeping them in formation as well. It depends on how many you have and how big they are.

It's often easy to organize an handful of boarding ships into their own group and hunt individual enemy ships. Don't forget to have a repair ship tagging along. Fleets are trouble. Even if you do cap a ship or two, it's likely the enemy will destroy them.

Strategically, you should always go after the highest tech opponents when capping. It's a risky enterprise, and the payoff's low if you're just taking home old junkers. You can also hunt colony ships for other atmosphere types. You can't analyze them for the colony tech, but you can use those ships to colonize planets you couldn't otherwise get. Racial tech fleets aren't appealing unless you just like the ships they build.

The future of boarding is uncertain. The next patch is supposed to let the AI know to run away from hopeless battles, so we may need to have fighters (or other little stuff) along to surround the hex before capping. As of 1.35, the AI doesn't self-destruct so you don't need to shy away from ships with those devices. If the AI learns to self-destruct, boarding ships will become a novelty - it'll be better to build something else and let the enemy suffer from wasting space. But there'll always be a little room in the game for boarding - it's just a matter of scale.

That's about all I can think of. Just remember to use minimal firepower. You only need to knock down the shields. It's not easy to keep the right balance when your enemy varies in shield strength. You won't win every time, but you can win frequently.