Capturing Tech

You have to use the Deconstruct and Analyse order on the ship (it has to be in a sector with a spaceyard).

Ya, i steal alot of technology.
if you research military science you get boarding parties and you can take over more advanced ships, bring them back home and analyz them and you get a boost in whatever technology they have.
i don't know if analyzing 1 colony component will give you the full tech but i know it would give a decent size boost.

You will get the full technology. As far as I know analysing will never give partial results.

Also from what I've experienced you can only analyse items that you can currently research. For instance you can analyse a ship with shields but you'll only get the free shield tech if you have researched 'physics' and have the 'shield' tech area available. You'll also only get one tech level so if you are at level 2 in armor and steal a ship with level 4 armor you will get level 3 armor from analysing.

ya i didn't pay to much attention when stealing techs. i just see they have higher tech than me so i take it. never really followed up on what i actually got from them
but! stealing ships is fun!!!

do you get tech. from capturing planets? saaaay facility upgrades??

Sadly, no. You can only get this kind of techs via Intel.

I find capturing ships fun, but more for the fact that I capture them, and attack there ship, why waste my own on thier ship. I found out that the AI designs ships to do this, but they don't, nor remote mine. it really sad

I got idea, but did not actualy use it yet. Put boarding party on colony ship. This way, it can defend itself aginst not shielded frigates. (Assuming you go for capture techs ASAP)

Or you can put a colony thingy on a full armed baseship

interesting thread, answered all my reverse engineering questions in one go.

another thing you can do with a captured ship is upgrade it, whereupon it becomes one of yours

How much technology do you gain when you analyse a tech?

Depends on the level of sophistication of the ships components.

You will basically gain one tech level for every component type on the ship that you can currently research.

ie: Say in BM you capture a Light Cruiser with level 4 armor, level 3 CSM, level 3 ion engines. Now say you have level 2 armor, level 1 CSM, level 3 ion engines, and can only build level 1 Destroyers. You would recieve level 3 armor (multiple armor components don't count, you only get 1 tech level) and level 2 CSM. You won't recieve engine tech because you already have it and you won't recieve Light Cruiser tech because you can't research it.

From what I've experienced there does not seem to be a limit on just how much tech you can get (except that you can only gain 1 level per tech area). I've captured colony ships early on that gave me colony tech, ship construction tech, engine tech, armor tech, and supply tech.

You CAN get more tech levels per area.
If they have normal armor and emisive armor (both requiring et least 2 more TLs than you have), you gain one from normal and one from emisive.
Similar is resupply (ordonance & supply).

And there's no way to change this formula?

oh btw I was playn stock and I captured a ship with warp weapons, I didnt have any research in that area at all, and instead of getting lvl 20 warp weapon, I got lvl 1 warp weapons, but it also gave me the research leading up to it

(I think) My game hung after the end turn and I put it away, and also cause of finals...can anyone verify this?

Good joke is (after analyzing colony tech) keep capturing enemy colony ships and colonize what they wanted to colonize.
Imagine what just happened. Colony ship with 100 crewmembers and 10M sleping colonists fly through WP, strange ship approach colony ship captain does not see any way to escape, so he tryes to ram that strange ship. Strnge ship launch small shuttles and avoid ramming attempt.
Shuttles board colony ship, blow holes through hull and kill crew including brave captain (who is brave but little stupid, becose his ship is faster or at least as fast as those shuttles, so he could have escape (if colony ship uses something better than basic enginse)).
Then remaining 46 marines find out how to fly that ship and guide it to some planet. There those 46 marines wake up 10M colonists and say them that there was little change in goverment and that they are from this time forward members of XXX empire. Colonists happy that they does not have to go to sightseen tour around planet without space suit accept that and happily colonize planet and became productive members of new society.

Capture is a critical early tech area, its a bit expensive but it is also a ruins special if you get lucky. The tech spec says 50 troops can kill 200 crew but in Balance Mod it seems 50 troops cannot even take 100 crew.