[Outdated] Claim Spaceships With Bots

Overview

This guide contains various settings for your bots to claim any ship you want. Thus giving you the opportunity to effectively play in “Singleplayer” or with a few friends and bots.No more sabotages or mistakes from random crewmembers anymore! :P[Last Updated for Beta 3.1][Still working in Beta 6][NOT working in Beta 8] AI was reworked. It kind of messed up this guide.

Commentary about AI

Commentary on [Beta 8]

Truth be told. I haven’t been playing since beta 6. The AI was great back then for solo playthroughs but didnt offer much options to immerse oneself into the game.

While the newly added utility is nice to have, it totally threw off the priority-mechanisms.

They no longer act according to the set priority, unless u set the crew command to “Board the Ship” & remove every priority-point but those on “Board Enemy Ship” and “Use Weapons”.
But there is still another problem: Even with the minimal setup they move sluggish like they don’t know whether to more to the teleporter or back to their stations.

(Back in Beta 6 and prior, everything worked fine. When the shields were down. Every single one of your bots rushed from their stations to the teleporter.)

—–> This has to be fixed/patched

The new UI didn’t add much functionality. Setting up the points on priorities even got worse in beta 7/8. You can currently only add points until it resets to 0. So changing them up a bit can be quite troublesome and time-consuming, especially while in battle.

——> There should be an option so save different priority settings

Introduction

I captured every shiptype with this easy step-by-step-guide. However you might need a few tries to get into the basic routine of capturing ships.

Very often, we find random people joining our games. And we all end up with players who won’t listen to commands and/or sabotage the ship.

If you are also tired of this and just can’t gather the right players to aid you, then make use of bots.

Looking through the bot’s priority-settings can be quite confusing. To give you a better idea on how to customize these settings, I will provide you with invaluable information for one of the ways to setup bots efficiently.

But before you go on with reading this guide, I have a little to advise to you beforehand:

Always save at every sector. Rename your ship to make different savestates. (Like: “U.S.S. Achilles”+ #-suffix / e.g. U.S.S. Achilles 1, U.S.S. Achilles 2, …)
[Not needed anymore since Update / You can save under different savestate-names]
There is currently a Bug in Beta 3.1 in which some enemy-spaceships have Warp Drives with too little Warp Range which causes you to be unable to jump to the next Sector (Game Over). So don’t just save directly after claiming an enemy ship! Look at the galaxy map and make sure that it is safe to save. You can now do a “Blind Jump” and pray that your captured (probably damaged) ship won’t burst into little pieces of scrapmetal.

Bot Settings

I used the following active priorities:

Weapon Specialist:

[+4] : Leading Boarding Party, Board Enemy, Weapons Use,
[+3] : Missile Usage (usually not needed)
[+2] : Repel Invaders
[+1] : Man Turret

Scientist:

[+4] : Board Enemy, Weapons Use
[+3] : Cyberdefense, Use Programs
[+2] : Repel Invaders
[+1] : Man Station (or Man Turret)

Engineer:

[+4] : Board Enemy, Weapons Use
[+3] : Repel Invaders
[+2] : Repair, Fire
[+1] : Man Turret

Pilot:

[+4] : Board Enemy, Weapons Use
[+3] : Repel Invaders
[+2] : (Man Turret)
[+1] : Man Station

Execution

Preparations:

Place the components, which you want to take with you into your cargo-slots.

Save after each sector and remember the SE-Nr. of the next sector. In case you didnt made it work you can simply restart the game with the savefile and fly directly to the sector to try it once again.

First of all: DO NOT turn off the enemy-ship by pulling the the left- or middle-lever in the engineering. To claim the ship, it has to be online.

And this is how the pirating starts:

Set the orders to: Boarding Enemy Ship (or similar; Offensive Attack works too)

(If you set the priorities correctly: the bots should be attacking the enemy-ship with turrets and programs until the enemy-ship can be boarded.)

You can speed it up if you set the shield-mode yourself and deploy the programs: Backdoor, Phalanx & Sitting Duck at the beginning.
Then just wait at your teleporter to enter the ship
(You can bord the ship when its shield are about 1/3 down)
Run straight to the engineering and start sitting next to the screens.
The bots will decoy the enemies away from the screens, so that you can claim all 6 screens.

Also: Manipulate the amount of energy-output which goes into weapons to 0.

In case you notice that the Enemy Hull is still getting damaged by your ship:
– Set “Man Turret”-priority to 0 on each bot and do the next step.
– Set enemy-energy-input to max in the engineering. Turn it back off if the attacks stop.
If the enemy-shields are at max: Disable their shields by pulling the right lever (only).
If the screens still cannot be claimed: improvise and conquer science or break stuff to lure hostiles away from reclaiming their screens.
Last steps:
CLAIM IT. You may change orders to: Repel Invaders
TELEPORT to your former ship
PICK UP all your important cargo-goods
TURN shields off, so you can destroy your old ship for loot
GO to new ship
CLEAN remaining hostiles

I gathered the strongest components of every shiptype into the infamous Grim Cutlass with this guide’s method. Now it is your turn.

How do you claim again?

For that you should look into the Manual of Pulsar: Lost Colony (General Manual[www.pulsarthegame.com])

Look into the Captain section: Captain’s Guide[www.pulsarthegame.com]

Short summary:

Crewmembers have to stay close to the screens until the bars is fully loaded (6 in total).
If you have overwritten enough screens the CAPTAIN (only) can claim the ship by clicking on the “CLAIM”-button on the status screen.

PULSAR: Lost Colony Guide