It's bloody free real estate out there, mate.

Read this guide if you want free small ships. Ships that are smaller than M6 & TM.

If you are looking to grab capital ships for free, search for "the absolute most painless guide to boarding".

Small ships have a chance to bail when they are:

1. shield down
2. hull is at most 85%, and taking hull damage
3. past a cooldown from last bail check

This has nothing to do with the "take my cargo but don't shoot me" dialogue trigger.

The first bail check happens when their hull reaches 85%ish.

If they don't bail at 85%, they won't ever bail within the next 30s or so, because the bail check has a cooldown.

Most importantly, your target's morale score. This is an hidden info that you can only check after going modified. The higher the morale the less likely they are going to bail. Xenon, millitary & Terran ships have higher morales while pirates & mission spawned ships have lower morales.

If you wanna quickly check their morale but wanna stay vanilla, change your pilot name to "Thereshallbewings". The game will freeze for a second and doesn't actually change your name. You have enabled the script editor. Warning: your game is now modified. If you save now, you won't receive achievements for this save file.

Go to command -> script editor -> additional info <on>

Now you are able to see the morale of your target.

Genenrally speaking, morale > 20 is pretty rare to bail.

Your fighting rank (from harmless to like Eagle Eye is a pretty significant increase)

The weapons you use to shoot (capital grade weapons increase the chance)

The ship you are flying (the bigger the better)

How fast their shield dropped (just a rumor on Egosoft forum)

Current Hull % (the lower the better)

NOTE:
In X3:FL there's a hidden "honor" score about you.
If you blow up the ejected pilots, you lose honor.
If you blow up the ship after telling them to drop frieghts, you lose honor.
If you pick up the pilot and dock at their destination (check in their info, usually the nearest station), you gain honr.
And to be expected, the higher your honor the easier for bails to happen.
I'm pretty sure this is not a thing in AP, so blow them up as you may.

If you expect them to bail fairly easily:

Blast them to 85% hull as fast as possible, if they don't bail reload. Simple as that.



If you want a super rare ship that you simply cannot let go or find another one, and you are ready to sit here all day no matter what, and/or if you checked their morale and it's high 20s.

Blast their hull to 20%ish, SETA for 20 seconds or so, save, then equip ion disruptor and hold down attack + SETA until target bails.



For Xenon ships, when they bail they just turn blue.
Xenon/Terran ships spawned from missions also have lower morales.

I find the very best weapon to use being Pulsed Beam Emitter, despite not capital grade. Reason being it basically never misses and deals high shield & low hull damage.

If you are still flying in fighers, try to switch to a compatible M3 (generally Split/Paranid/Xenon) with a full PBE setup. Blast target to 85%, if they don't bail, move on or reload.

Happy hunting!