Driven mad with envy by Hardrada's newly captured Pirate Kestrel :P, I've been on a constant stalking spree throughout pirate space, trying to find a potential target for my capping efforts.

I took a stroll in my Pirate Centaur on the pirate lane between Bala Gi's Joy and Hatikvah's Faith. Did not get to see any Pirate Kestrel, but I did manage to capture a pirate Blastclaw, which was missing from my ship collection (ironically I had the Prototype version but not the standard one).

Then, driven mad up to the point of (game-wise) suicidal tendencies :P, I strolled around Maelstrom in my Teladi Kestrel for a while, but a Pirate Kestrel still failed to show up.

"Oh, what the hell", I said, and steered my regular Kestrel to Mercenaries' Rift. The sector was full of pirate ships. Highlights were 2 Brigantines, 1 Deimos and 1 Carrack. I felt like a mosquito in a herd of elephants, much like I did while exploring some Xenon sectors. It also had 2 Pirate Kestrels flying around among the endless sea of pirate ships.

I wasn't going to let this opportunity slip by, no mater how hard it seemed, so I dived right at one of the Brigantines which one of the Pirate Kestrels was escorting, shot past it dodging its fire and fired a few shots at the Pirate Kestrel. Of course, then I high-tailed it bearing hard north-west to the outer visible edges of the sector.

After a while, when I could only see the Pirate Kestrel still in pursuit I turned around and had a quick dogfight with its Paranid pilot. Soon came the long awaited "I do not feel as if in luck I am. Here is ship." Wohoooooooo! Got out, claimed & repaired it, then transferred my jumpdrive and sent it safely outside of the pirate sectors.

I then, of course, kicked my regular Teladi Kestrel's engines for a final show of force and snuck speedily around the massive pirate fleet still in my pursuit... but the pressure was already off. I now have my prize and a new favorite ship. It was well worth the effort!

Great job!
Since switching to the Kestrel I have finished exploring all the friendly sectors and am starting on the unfriendly ones. Having a ship that moves 3.5 times as fast as my old one just makes exploring much easier and safer. I do miss picking fights with every pirate that crosses my path, but I have still managed to cap a pirate Buster that I ran into.

Thanks! :D

I was surprised to see it's quite a capable fighter with a very decent laser recharge rate. Even with dual PACs as main guns and PRGs in the turret, I rarely ran out of energy during a fight (its high speed of course contributes to that, as you have to circle round a lot).

I put IREs in the back as I was concerned about energy use, but I could be tempted to switch to PRGs if they are not giving you any problems. Of course, that means the ship is most dangerous from behind which could make for an interesting fighting style.

I too am curious about boarding, specifically what numbers and training you suggest, but any tips would be appreciated as I put together a squad.

But would one dare to sit in the turret of a Kestrel? Is it not either steer ship & handle front guns OR handle A (or 'the' in this case. only one) turret and let the auto-pillock do the steering, which probably means it flying in a straight line = an easy-ish target. Must test these things more exstensively :-)

Can you take direct control of a turret? I was thinking of setting up the rear view camera and doing my best to keep the Kestrel pointing directly away from the target.

Yes you can!! It is the ONLY reason some of the game starts are possible at all to do but your way works too in many places.

Since you're playing AP, I can comment :). There are some good boarding guides out there (such as http://x3wiki.com/index.php/Boarding) , so I'll just do a short summary:

- don't bother buying any marine with less than 2 stars in combat skill (>33 raw value I believe)
- remember that combat skills only improve during boardings, there's no training course for that
- you can use as many marines to board as the ship you're trying to board can usually carry (though sometimes you can get an extra one in), for e.g. you'd use 8 for boarding corvettes
- a rule of thumb is to train your marines as much as you can afford (recommended 3 stars in all skills), for specifics read up on: http://x3wiki.com/index.php/Marines
- if you want to make your life easier, use an M7M class ship and boarding pods
- remember to keep the target's shields below 10% at all time (any ion guns are perfect for this)

Of course you can, but I wouldn't do it on a Kestrel. There's no need for a rear view camera if you ask me, as your rear turret can cover the entire rear hemisphere of your ship.

I usually shoot at things with my PACs and hear the PRGs shooting as I go past my target. Remember that they won't eat up a lot of energy since you're going at 635km/s so the firing window is not that large. You can also fly around your target in tangents or almost parallel to it and let the back turret do its job (I sometimes set it on "Attack my target" and do just that).

I just realized I've never published any pilot stats before. In the meantime I've also discovered the new graphs and plots they've added for AP - I sense a managerial influence here :).

As news from the game, I've captured two more Pirate Ospreys (yes, I know, I'm staring a collection), which turn out to be rather potent despite their lack of speed because they can mount the ISR in their left/right turrets. Never used the ISR too much until now, but I'm impressed with the efficiency it has both against fighters and corvettes.

During the last boarding I also hit a first. In all my days of playing X3, I've never had a marine with 100 combat skill before. Guess there's a first time for everything :P.

Right... I've just had the longest and most arduous battle of my life. My Astraeus Hauler took a beating and I barely managed to get out alive from this one and head out for repairs. Many additions, weapons and shields got destroyed, but I sucked it up and did not reload. I'll replace them in due time.

Overall it's been worth it. My capture list is in the screenshots. Surprisingly, the Yaki still don't hate me enough to attack me on sight after this. Guess they're really NOT vengeful folk :).

Wow, that is quite a haul you got there, you must be proud.

78% to repair out of 480,000 hit points is about 375,000 hp, time to whip out that hand repair laser ......NOT. That loot pays for the repairs thankfully.

Yeah, I did good, but I'll lay low for a while and not do any more boardings. I'm quite exhausted after pulling this one off.

Exactly. The repairs cost me around 24 mil. credits (not counting the damaged equipment), but I'm sure I'll recover it from the 2 Ryus and one Akurei which I plan to sell.

I'm getting the hang of boardings. So much that it's starting to feel comfortable... I now know how to pick the weapons and ships to do the job depending on what I want to board. Have not boarded any M1s or M2s yet, but I don't have enough well trained marines to do that right now anyway.

I managed to get about 8 veteran marines with 100 combat skill, and I think I'm going to attempt boarding a Xenon P the next time I run into one.

I've managed to capture a Carrack and it seems like an interesting ship. It's got a lot of lateral weapons, but insufficient shielding... it might work out well though as a boarding support vessel with the right tactics in mind.

Also ran into a little surprise while patrolling the sectors (see screenshots). I'll be keeping this one in my exotic ship collection, together with a Pirate Scorpion which I've finally managed to capture.