Boarding

β

Boarding is a mechanic that lets you storm a crippled enemy ship, fight through it compartment by compartment, and capture it instead of destroying it. A captured hull can be repaired, scrapped or sold at the Drydock, and surviving defenders can be taken as prisoners.

Becoming boardable

An enemy ship can only be boarded once it is critically damaged — its hull must be driven below roughly 40%. Below that threshold, each further chunk of damage gives a chance for the ship to become boardable. When it does, the ship goes dead in space (engines cut) and a boarding prompt appears.

• EMP weapons greatly increase the chance. Draining a target with EMP damage is by far the most reliable way to force a ship into a boardable state — the intended "disable, then board" loop. Pure firepower can trigger it too, but far less often.
• The lower the hull, the higher the chance per hit.
• Approach a boardable ship and interact to launch the boarding simulation. (You can also simply destroy it instead.)

Capture Enemy Vessel mission

The easiest way to try boarding is the Capture Enemy Vessel mission, which hands you a target that is already set up to be boarded.

• Offered at stations once you have progressed far enough into the main story (and reached higher-level stations).
• The target is always a Corsair Syndicate (pirate) ship, so capturing it carries no reputation penalty with the legitimate factions.
• Pays a boosted reward compared to a normal mission of the same tier.

It's a low-risk sandbox for learning the boarding simulation without having to grind a ship down yourself.

The boarding simulation

Boarding plays out as a tactical takeover of the enemy ship's interior, one compartment at a time.

• The ship's interior is a set of connected compartments (rooms) — airlocks, quarters, engineering, the bridge, and so on.
• Your boarders arrive in boarding pods (about 10 crew each) and enter through an airlock. Your goal is to push through to the bridge.
• Each contested compartment is decided by combat power — the total fighting strength of your crew in that room versus the defenders. Marines are far stronger boarders than ordinary crew, and adjacent rooms lend partial support to a fight.
• Crew on both sides have morale. When morale breaks, units surrender, panic or flee. Seizing the bridge can trigger the entire enemy crew to surrender at once.
• A win-chance indicator reflects your fighting strength relative to the defenders.

You win when every defender is dead or surrendered. You lose if all your boarders are killed or your morale collapses — and a defending ship can sometimes break off and flee, ending the attempt.

Defenders don't always fight fair: depending on the faction, they may counterattack, vent an airlock, scuttle the reactor on a self-destruct timer, rush you in a last stand, defect to your side, or offer to be bought off (see Faction defences).

Prisoners

File:Boarding.brig.png

Defenders who surrender or are captured become prisoners, held in your ship's brig.

• Over time, a prisoner has a chance to become Willing.
• A Willing prisoner can be recruited into your Crew at 40% of the normal hire cost — a cheap way to grow your crew.
• Prisoners can instead be put to work, contributing a portion of their profession bonus while still imprisoned (improved by the Forced Labor node in the Leadership skill tree), or simply jettisoned.
• Brig capacity and prisoner conversion chances are improved through the Leadership skill tree.

There is no ransom mechanic — prisoners can't be sold back for credits.

Captured ships

When you take a ship, it switches to your colours and its surviving crew is cleared (assign your own crew to fly it). The captured hull is sent to the Drydock, where you can:

• Repair it and add it to your fleet,
• Scrap it for materials, or
• Sell it for credits.

If the capture was for the Capture Enemy Vessel mission, the mission completes and pays out automatically. See Drydock for repair/scrap/sell details.

Faction defences

How hard a crew fights when boarded depends on its faction:

Faction	Behaviour when boarded
Mindus Holdings, Steel Vultures, Forge Industries	Mining / salvage / industrial guilds — weakest defenders, surrender readily
Stellar Industries	Surrenders, and even defects, the most readily of the corporations
Kolyatov Collective	Corporate security — fight hard and counterattack
Luminate Combine	Deploys defence drones
Canisec	Police forces — strong defenders that never break into a mass surrender
Omnitac Agency, Void Drifters	Mercenaries and smugglers — can often be bought off to end the fight
Corsair Syndicate	Pirates — fight to the death and counterattack; won't surrender
Meridia's Chosen	Fanatics — fight to the death, scuttle the reactor, vent airlocks, suicide rushes
Darkspace Compact	Toughest defenders — relentless counterattacks, fight to the death

See also

• Crew — Marines are your boarding specialists; prisoners can be recruited as crew
• Leadership — skill tree that boosts boarding power, crew resistance, brig size and prisoner economics
• Drydock — where captured ships are repaired, scrapped or sold