There was a patch Interplay released between 25th anniversary and Judgment Rites that made ship combat optional for 25th Anniversary. I have the patch but I'm not sure how to get it working since this game is emulated in DOSbox. Could someone give me some instructions?

The no battles patch is a modified game executable, so you should simply replace it in the game's directory (making a backup copy of the original executable is advisable), then you can run the game normally and hit F8 to bypass any combat.

Wow this is great, thanks for sharing! Does it eliminate the final battle too, or perhaps make it easier in any way? After all these years I've never gotten past it.

Can anyone help with the combat patch? I tried replacing the game file with the patch in this thread but it causes the game to crash at the start of the first away mission, removes the load game feature and the cast voice overs. Not sure what I'm doing wrong? Would really like to turn the combat off as it's terrible.

Same here, this patch seems to break my game in the same way with it crashing at the start of the first mission. The character's audio is missing and the text is some times garbled too. Such a shame as I can't even finish a single ship battle even if my life depended on it.