I got to admit, I'm a bit confused. Basically, I came across a Ragnarok (and her pallette-swapped sister, the Arokk), but the despite pounding the hulls and praying to the void lords, I couldn't capture either of them.

Okay. We've got plenty of credits, I want one of those, so let's just buy the ships. Or, barring that, conquer the station where they're built...

...and that's when things got confusing.

I managed to capture an outerlands shipyard, and now can build their ships. For my fleet. They won't sell me the hull for personal use. The syndicate seems strangely absent from my game, and while I managed to snag a freeport belonging to them, no dice here either as far as getting the hulls go. They seem to be gone from the map by now.

I know that there is a spreadsheet with the ship stats and the manufacturers,
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RVQS3kO1VqWwsZPOqYu-h4jViMKTtdaKdVtGZ7nrE_U/edit#gid=1980765620

...but that one is useless when it comes to actually buying things. Does anybody have a list of stations that actually sell hulls? In particular, the pirate faction ones?

Oh my goodness. A classic case of not seeing the forest for all the trees.

It's a bit of a shame the Syndicate versions of the Outerlands ships can't be bought anywhere. I prefer their paintjob to the "I can't believe it's not a Minmatar ship"-style of the Outerlands ones.

Thanks for the heads-up, I'd prolly never seen the tabs on the bottom otherwise.

MKI and MKII is just a difference in the loadout I assume?

I was eager to look at the Tzar carrier and kept farming them to get the MKII research. Turns out I misunderstood and you cannot actual buy or build MKII for you garage.

The ship looks a bit like a Collector vessel and that is the name of my ship :)
http://pre00.deviantart.net/a144/th/pre/f/2013/057/1/5/me2_attacked___normandy_sr_2_and_collector_ship_3_by_chicksaw2002-d5waadk.jpg

For my purpose a carrier is no good. Still a good ship in the fleet, captured ships are sometimes as good or even stronger than MKII?

There is this one carrier I had for ages with me and it just doesn't die... while Tara had to be resurrected a few times.

Thanks for the link to the table, I think Ragnarok and Halbert are an improvement for me... need to go hunting.

MKII ist just a different loadout for the existing hull. You get more damage, but the hull points and shields stay the same.

As far as capturing goes, NPC ships are either MKI or MKII themselves. IIRC the designation remains, along with the loadout.

Halberds are nice, they are incredibly tanky and have a decent turret coverage. The Ragnarok/Arokk suffers a bit from odd turret coverage, it can't shoot below. And due to the general pancake-shape of the thing, "below" is a terribly, terribly big area.

Carriers lack a certain je ne sais quoi at the moment. Fighters are unreliable sources of damage at best, and the hulls themselves have worse shields, energy banks and turret counts than the dreadnaughts, which incidentally are also available earlier, AND cheaper to boot. It's a known issue, the devs are working on it.