A few boarding questions.

[Ashery]

Finally throwing off the shackles of the pirates' protection rackets and am having to now deal with some pretty decent sized raids. And, amusingly enough, I'm currently using a fleet setup almost identical to one of the pirate factions I'm dealing with: Lasers and assault pods.

Except I've run into a pretty frustrating snag:

Despite double checking to confirm that I'm not scrapping newly acquired vessels from boarding, the pirate ship I just took exploded the second I won the battle on the ship. I noticed the same behavior on my test game, but put that down to me not having the boarding settings setup right.

Is this just normal behavior when capturing pirate ships or have I looked over some setting? Searched both via google and the forums and didn't find anything.

A couple other questions:

Is it possible to reinforce a boarding action already taking place? It should definitely be possible on the offense, but I'm curious if it's possible to reinforce, say, a mining station that's currently being raided.

And because it's midnight and I don't feel like digging any more: How do you prevent military ships from going into automated mode after construction? I know you can switch it off while they're being built, but that's extra key presses every time I build.

[Edmesa]

To turnoff automation for new ships: options --> empire settings --> newly build ships are automated.

[Overlord015]

ORIGINAL: Ashery

Finally throwing off the shackles of the pirates' protection rackets and am having to now deal with some pretty decent sized raids. And, amusingly enough, I'm currently using a fleet setup almost identical to one of the pirate factions I'm dealing with: Lasers and assault pods.

Except I've run into a pretty frustrating snag:

Despite double checking to confirm that I'm not scrapping newly acquired vessels from boarding, the pirate ship I just took exploded the second I won the battle on the ship. I noticed the same behavior on my test game, but put that down to me not having the boarding settings setup right.

Is this just normal behavior when capturing pirate ships or have I looked over some setting? Searched both via google and the forums and didn't find anything.

A couple other questions:

Is it possible to reinforce a boarding action already taking place? It should definitely be possible on the offense, but I'm curious if it's possible to reinforce, say, a mining station that's currently being raided.

How damaged was the ship? Sometimes your ships will keep attacking a target even as a successful boarding action is underway. So it may just have been killed by fratricide just as control was about to flip over to you, I've had that happen before.

As to the other question, as far as I'm aware, while it isn't possible to reinforce a boarding defense it is possible to do on the offense. Now, you can make your designs more resistant to boarding, boarding defense takes into account not only any existing boarding components but also habitation components. Therefore larger designs tend yo be more resistant to boarding, in my fortress mine designs I tend to add 2-4 boarding components, this should repel anything but actual fleet sized (10+) capture attempts by pirates.

[Aeson]

Despite double checking to confirm that I'm not scrapping newly acquired vessels from boarding, the pirate ship I just took exploded the second I won the battle on the ship. I noticed the same behavior on my test game, but put that down to me not having the boarding settings setup right.

Is this just normal behavior when capturing pirate ships or have I looked over some setting? Searched both via google and the forums and didn't find anything.

If the ship is very badly damaged when you capture it, then the computer will at least sometimes scrap the ship rather than keeping it around for a construction ship to repair.

Also, make certain that the setting for how to dispose of captured ships isn't set to scrap immediately.

Is it possible to reinforce a boarding action already taking place? It should definitely be possible on the offense, but I'm curious if it's possible to reinforce, say, a mining station that's currently being raided.

It is possible to reinforce an offensive boarding action by launching more pods at the target.

As far as reinforcing the defending side, I am less certain as it's something I've never tried. However, I do not believe that it is possible to do so; if you want to keep the ship, you'll just have to board it after the attackers take it over. The only possible exception to this might be with ships with troop compartments; troops are supposed to help during boarding actions, so if you can pick up some while the ship being boarded you might be able to reinforce the defenders.

[Ashery]

Thanks for the quick response Edmesa. Completely overlooked that screen (Had also been wondering how to turn off the suggestions for pirate smuggling spam).

Boarding/scrapping stuff:

The ship was pretty heavily damaged, but not excessively so. I'd ballpark it at just under half non-armor hp (I saved the game around the time the success of my boarding party was imminent). Still at 36 of its original 52 firepower.

All but one ship as since jumped away from the engagement.

Empire policy settings confirmed to all be good (Never enlist + Always disassemble for tech).

Boarding reinforcement stuff:

Kinda figured that's how things would work out. Guess I'll just add some more shields and 3x assault pods to every mine.

Edit: Just ran my test game and changed the empire policies, and it looks like the auto-scrap on heavy damage hypothesis is most likely what happened. That's gonna make hot boarding a right pain.