I have seen it mentioned a number of times that boarding parties provide more value overall then simply blasting a ship from the sky. Has anyone done any actual research into this? Granted, I am far from a professional, but my anecdotal experiences lead me to believe its about the same in overall scrap value. The real change is that you get some of that value in the form of usable objects.

For example, if I were to annihilate a ship I might get 60 scrap. If I were to board, I might get 20-30 and a Pike Beam or some such. Essentially something equal at resale value. Now, if it were what you were looking for and wanted to equip it, then sure, you save the retail value. Overall scrap value seemed to be right in line.

Again, this is based on limited experience, so I am not proclaiming this as gospel. I just found it contrary to the general claim that you get a "much greater" haul boarding than if you simply blow them from the sky. Way off base? Anyone with some other thoughts?

Killing the enemy crew earns you more scrap, missiles and drone parts than blowing up their ship would. You do not loot weapons and equipment. I do not know the percentages but I think it is probably some 50% extra scrap, missiles and drone parts compared to destroying the ship.

Yeah, I am not seeing anywhere near that kind of increase. At best its been 10% or so. Of course, the haul in either case can vary wildly so its hard to tell. Regarding what can be looted, in my experience you get a number of usable weapons over outright destruction. Again, anecdotal, but I would say more often than not I get some weapon or whatnot. In any case, I get nothing with blowing them away.

It can not be just about 10%, that would make it just 1 or 2 extra scrap per salvage, and a rounding error for missiles and drones.

Way off base. ;) I haven't analyzed it, but it's a significant enough increase. Said gains in scrap are more noticeable in later sectors.

I usually pull more than 10 scrap on any type of victory, boarding or otherwise. 20 is fairly common. Sometimes I see 60 from flat destruction. I cant recall the top out amount I saw on a board, but if I had to guess I would say its something around 70-80 total scrap value.

I guess I need to start writing it down to convince myself otherwise. Although I intend to keep boarding now anyway as I like the added play style.

So it seems its all about difficulty level. At the easiest level the amount of scrap difference is negligible. Moving through Normal and Hard you can start to see substantive differences between the two collection methods. While it is still up for a good dose of randomness (I could still pull 40 scrap on a destruction in normal) at least on the surface, it leans to the boarding party.

I suppose Easy is already paying nearly the max scrap amount on destruction.

Well actually, sometimes you get a message saying "You find a brand-new <weapon>/<drone>. With no crew to stop you, you install it on your own ship."

So sometimes you CAN loot weapons and drone schematics. I've also sometimes received an augmentation this way, though I can't remember whether I get a message like the above for that.

There is an advantage for taking a ship intact most of the time. (Burning them out or killing them off by hitting the oxygen does the same thing as boarding) It does depend on the event though. Some events, the rewards for destroying a ship are the same as boarding. Taking a ship intact also gives you a chance to find extra fuel and crew that you do not get with destroying. For example slave events use different tables and transports different too. About have the events use the default rewards though.

It breaks down as follows:

Default destroying of the ship (most events)
100% Medium Standard loot. (2 of 1-3 fuel, 1-2 missiles, 1 drone + scrap)

Default Dead Crew
3 in 9 - Medium Standard loot
2 in 9 - High Standard loot (about 50% more scrap than Medium - same fuel/missiles/drones)
2 in 9 - High Fuel loot. (more fuel, no missiles/drones but also the 50% more scrap)
1 in 9 - Crewmember + Low Scrap only (about 50% less scrap than Medium)
1 in 9 - Weapon + Low scrap (about 50% less scrap than Medium)

So taking the averages, low cancels high. The scrap is on average only about 10% higher but you also have slightly over a 10% chance each of getting free crew or a free random weapon on top of it.

Warehall covers the basic result - there are absolutely better rewards for killing the enemy crew versus destroying the enemy ship, which can easily be seen in the game's internal files.

I estimate that you get a 15% increased reward on average per fight you kill the enemy crew versus blowing it up. It's difficult to precisely quantify because different events give you different rewards (there's a good handful where the rewards are straight-up equal) and because you can get random crew/weapons which have highly variable value.

Fun fact: boarding rewards were nerfed in AE; it used to be more like 25% better reward. Still extremely strong and worthwhile in AE.

Really? That's interesting - the first time I've heard of it!

Funnily enough I never noticed the difference...

What about accepting surrender terms over insisting on a fight to the end? I always seem to think that I want it all and will finish them off to get it, even though it's gonna be a long fight that knocks the crap out of my ship. When it's over it seems like I would have been better off taking their surrender terms. Any truth to this?

Generally speaking, I don't accept surrender, but as always, it depends on the situation. Like if you think your ship is going to take a lot of damage, it might be better for the mission to end the fight and not get beat up. Or if your hull is in the red, and you want to avoid further damage. Or if the enemy is going to run away, and you don't think you can stop it, take the surrender.

Often, a surrender offer will be more stuff (fuel, missiles, drone parts) and less scrap. So how much do you need what stuff they offer? Are you low on fuel? Is your ship the Rock A, and they offer missiles? 4+ might be worth it, especially early, when the scrap rewards aren't that high. In later sectors, though, you'll be giving up a lot more scrap by accepting surrender.