Capturing using Ion Disruptors

[Ronin677]

Hi

As the title suggests, my query is whether it is possible to capture ships using Ion Disruptors like in X2

any advice on the best way to capture ships?

thanks

ronin

[Sinxar]

Using an Ion Disruptor on a fighter reduces it bail chance by a huge amount. Not sure if it brings the bail chance to zero or not, but its best not to use them for that purpose.

The pulsed beam emitter works well for capping due to the high shield dmg and minimal hull dmg.

A lot of people like to strip the shields quickly then peck away at the hull. I used to do this and honestly now I just shoot to kill and keep a watch for them to bail. Either way is fine, I haven't seen any real difference in bail rates. The pecking away at the hull is good to help keep as much hull intact as possible.

[nponoBegHuk]

This is what I use all the time:

• Use Mass Drivers to get the target hull to 2%
• Start attacking target with a mix of PAC/IRE to bring down the shield
• When the shield gets around 5% switch to single IRE (maybe 2 if the shield generator on the target is powerful).
• The target ship will be pretty crippled at this point, situate your ship in a comfortable position for you to keep shooting without your target dodging, and save the game.
• Use controlled bursts with your IRE to remove the remaining shield and damage a hull a litle bit.
• If the ship hull drops to 1% (or the ship gets destroyed ) and the pilot refuses to bail, reload the last saved game and try again.

Also, you want to use a bigger ship than your target for an extra 5% chance. I used a tenjin for M5-M4 targets. For M3 I used tenjin for mass driver part, then switched to hyperion to for the latter part.

EDIT: Follow this link if you wish to know not just "how" but also "why" and don't mind massive spoilers: http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php? ... 16#3928216

[Lea Flamma]

Well it depends if you mean capture-board or capture-bail

For the first, they work perfectly. I always have at least two IDs in my M7 for just this role.

For the second, this can be tricky. They have low range and anything that can mount them will be too slow to chase and keep up to smaller targets. Still worth a try as they fry through shields in no time.

[zazie]

@nponoBegHuk : why do you reduce your bailing-chances deliberately ? As long as the ships have shields, the random generator does not start calculating the bailing chances (and it does it all 30 secs).
So it is imo not a good idea to reduce the hull to 2% before attacking the shields.

@ Ronin677: Ion Disruptors are best used before attacking heavily armed M7 or bigger, especially Xenon-ships. After stripping their shields, use IDs to destroy the equipment of the ship you want to board (that's the same what Lea Flamma is talking about). If the target has Sentry Lasers or other special equipment on board (Advanced Firewall and the like), the chances for boarding are even worse. Ion Disruptors can help "frying" that equipment without damaging the Hull of your target.

[nponoBegHuk]

@nponoBegHuk : why do you reduce your bailing-chances deliberately ? As long as the ships have shields, the random generator does not start calculating the bailing chances (and it does it all 30 secs).
So it is imo not a good idea to reduce the hull to 2% before attacking the shields.

The first bail check happens as soon as all the following conditions are met:

• Ship shields are below 1k
• Ship hull below 87.5%
• Ship is hit with a laser or missile launched from a player ship

You want to have hull damaged beforehand precisely because knowing all these factors makes you know exactly when a bail check occurs and whether you should keep shooting or just reload game. On ships with low morale I just start shooting "normal" lasers until the ship is at ~90% (not less than that), save the game and after that just shoot once more to bring him below 87%, if he doesn't bail, just reload and shoot once more. 2 minutes and the ship is yours. When the morale is high, you need to damage the hull further than 87% to get a chance of bail to occur. If you just attack it the normal way the first bail check just gets wasted because when the hull passes 87.5 mark your bail chance is 0 and you have to keep shooting him for a minute longer to have a chance at the next bail check (which ends up taking much more time than pre-damaging hull with mass driver and not wasting first bail check).

Anyway, all of this is based on my personal experience, and there's no proof it actually works like that. Nevertheless, it did work for me quite well on my way to collecting one ship of each. Here's some videos I just recorded where I get random ships to bail using this method (audio got out of sync at some point, sorry about that):

[X3TC] Quick TS capture
[X3TC] Capturing Kha'ak Fighter