what have you found to be the easiest way to get a new ship?
I got lucky and some colonizers were asking for help so I helped them out, then just out of curiosity I lock picked to get into their ship and was able fly off without consequence.
I tried doing the same thing with other landed ships but then it just says I’m not authorized
- Get the Targeting skill.
- Find space combat.
- Target engines, disable ship
- Dock with disabled ship
- Kill everyone aboard
- Get in the pilot seat
Congratulations you have a new ship for free. If you are well geared, this is incredibly easy and you can knock out a ship in a single shot.
You can also just hang around on planets and wait for ships to land nearby. If they aren’t Spacers or Ecliptic teams being dropped, you can sneak aboard and fly away. Though I find it kinda lame you can’t also take the drop ships used to spawn enemies. Dumb door to go inside is always [inaccessible] :/
Every ship I own I got for free either doing the above, or as a reward for a quest.
Are you killing the enemies first? I found that if I kill the enemies it will say [inaccessible] and they’ll fly away, but if you make a break for the ship you can take it.
Oh ho ho! Interesting. Yeah, I usually kill them all before I’ve gone up to the door, not wanting them to follow me in after. But next time I see one, I’m gonna rush the door and see if I can get in.
If you dock with the ship, get in the pilot’s seat, then leave and get back in your own ship, do you keep the new ship?
Kinda. There’s a fast way and a slow way.
Fast way: You have to dock with the enemy ship, clear it, sit in the seat, undock from your main ship, quickly open the menu, set the ship you’re in as your home ship, redock with your main ship before it flys away, and then presumably you’ll want to set that back as your home ship.
Slow way, dock, clear, sit, fly somewhere (grav jumping sets whatever ship you’re in as your home ship), land at a ship technician, set your main ship back as your home ship. You have to repeat this for every ship you take.
The fast way keeps you in system with your main ship so I prefer it, especially if I’m in the Serpentis system trying to make 100,000 credits collecting var’uun ships.
Just undocking the ship usually makes it my home ship automatically. I kinda wish it didn’t because sometimes I want to get away from hearing Sarah and the Adoring Fan tell me how good I am at doing things that are entirely automated.
You don’t even need the targeting
Every ship I’ve gotten behind and fired at has lost engines no problem
Hell, I think every ship I haven’t explicitly gotten behind had engines fail at low health too
I have to use targeting most of the time because my guns are so powerful, a single shot can usually blow up the whole ship otherwise lol
Ah ok so I guess I need to invest in one of those emp guns, at least when I tried to target a ship I wasn’t sure if it was disabled or not and ended up blowing them up each time
Targeting control to disable the engines- to do that, you need at least rank 1 of the skill (Dunno if more ranks are worth it. I get by with just the one.) Which then lets you lock onto ships. Controls are for PC, sorry, Don’t have xbox, but, e lets you target one, then, when you get close and properly locked on… hit and hold r to activate the targeting control systems skill
This opens up what is basically a minigame, with a new display of their power systems. you can cycle through and target the various systems- weapons, engine, shield. grav drive. Cycle the selection to engines and take their ship’s shields down if it’s not.
once the ship’s shields are down, and the engine modules turn a nice red color (active modules are white,) you can board. The shields don’t have to stay down, mind. To board, you press and hold R, if you’re inside of 500 meters.
You can only jack one ship at a time, so kill the spares first- because you just trashed the ship you’re jacking…
Edit: uh… I might have just found a way to jack more than one ship per outing. apparently, you can convert the new ship to home through the ship menu (H, to get there quick. Then press H again. no idea what the command is on xbox.) I’m not sure I’d recomend docking in the middle of a multi-ship engagement, But both new ships were available for sale at the landing pad. (next I’ll test if you can swap ships in the middle of space this way… I’d have assumed not…)
Jump around to different planets and get encounters with Crimson Fleet ships. Take out their engines, board, and steal their ships. Just be aware that once you pay the registration fee on the ship, you’ll only net maybe 2k credits upon selling it. If you’re interested in stealing ships for credits, there are many more lucrative options (though you definitely could score a decent amount of contraband with the aforementioned strategy).
This, but you can only reliably take out the engines if you put a skill point in targeting. Then there is a trick to sell them for a bit more. First find all contraband on the ship or you’ll get caught when you enter most systems. Then sit in the chair to take ownership. Press Tab or whatever controller equivalent for the menu is, and pick Ship in the lower left corner. There should then be a key to press to register the ship and for some reason it’s cheaper there than at dealers. Then the ship can be sold.
Oh also you can’t fly some ships without upgrading your pilot level to B or C. I boarded a really nice pirate ship and couldn’t fly it, had to leave it. :(
Without flat-out telling me “Go to X place and do Y”, what are the better options? Am I just getting bad ship spawns or is it something to do with selling unregistered ships to a location I may have not yet found? Or is it just me needing to go full space pirate and embrace bad decisions?
You can accept missions from the mission terminals to take out pirate ships.
Bet, I’ve largely avoided the terminals cause I’m usually doing faction quests. I’ll keep this in mind.
Put a point into the targeting skill. Use your lock onto shoot out an enemy ship’s engines during space combat. Approach within 500m and dock with their ship, shoot everyone on board, then sit in the pilot chair and quick travel with it.
Once you get to a system with ship services, you’ll have to pay to register the ship before you can sell it. However, registration price is lower than sales price so you’ll make a profit.
There is a trick on that, if you go to the Ship screen from the menu there will be an option at the bottom to register and it’s much cheaper there for some reason.
Ok I unlocked that last night but couldn’t figure out how to actually target the engines, I just kept moving side to side from system to system but didn’t know if I need to use missiles or what to actually hit just that system
I walked into a va’ruun ship by cydonia and killed everyone in it and just flew off with it. Was pretty easy.
I’ve had the most opportunities to get new ships from spacers/pirates/etc. when they land.
