Deuling

[slawyer]

What does it mean when you are dueling with an enemy captain, and you hit them, inflict 10 points of damage, you see the little explosion on their ship (and not yours), and their ship rotates? Is that indicating you are rocking them? Why isn't their ship damaged at all?

When the toast says "captains duel to an epic standoff!" it doesn't seem like that 10 points of damage actually does anything since nothing ends up damaged. When the toast says "enemy captain has been wounded" it is clear I am succeeding, but when the enemy captain is a lot higher level than me, those wounds are very few and far between.

In a dueling stalemate (I have tried hitting duel for more than 3000 times in some fights and racked up more than a half hour of combat toasts), I have found it is actually better to retreat and let the enemy captain board you as you try to flee, because that way you can actually do some damage to them (though often I get a wound too in the process). Is this just how it works or am I doing something wrong?

I ALWAYS keep a minimum of 100 weapons on board, put points in the Warrior skill, and frequently use Leviathan System upgrade (sometime attack shuttles instead) -- is there more I can do to have success dueling high level captains?

[slayernz]

The enemy ship rotation (they go from pointing down to pointing right) means that their captain got his butt spanked and they are attempting to retreat (they've disengaged the boarding action). The damage can be directly at the captain, or it can also be a reduction of the crew as well. Ship is physically unharmed during a boarding action (unless you choose to fire your guns at point-blank range).

Sometimes, late in the game on hard difficulty levels, boarding can be quite a challenge. You can definitely focus on getting your warrior skill level up. Before boarding, you could strafe their crew decks a few times, as the number of crew you and they have makes a difference along with captain skill.

Finally, having lots of weapons is useful, but bear in mind that you should always have fewer weapons than you have crew. Anything more is of no benefit.

In saying all of the above, it is clear that you have a pretty firm gasp on things gamely. You've got an extremely high level character playing on Crazy. Maybe it's just that you've played so long the relative difference between your character and our opponent's are huuuuuuuge.

[oldalchemist]

Also, if your ship has lots of Engines, you have less crew available to board. How big is your crew?

(Screw boarding. Shoot out the Engines, let the enemy drift for a few hours without power and then board with a clipboard full of crew contracts.)

[Cory Trese]

I love playing Bounty Hunters. For me, getting the game to pay me 150,000 for a Capture is worth the work. Boarding is the best way to ensure a capture (except vs. pirates, those ramming buggers!)