SPOILER How do I collect watchtower ship parts?

[dawnroselyn]

My understanding is that I can now mark a disabled watchtower ship as salvaged, at which point Gren will have modules I can buy. The problem is that in order to disable the ship, I can't bring my whole fleet, because they blast everything before I can dock with it. If I don't bring my whole fleet, then the incoming reinforcements outrun the ability of my one ship to disable a ship without getting blasted myself. I can't whack the moles fast enough. Every time I take out a ship to thin the herd enough to disable another, 2 more jump in and join the fight.

What do I do here? arm my entire fleet with laser and EM only and hope for the best?

 

[Ragnos21]

My understanding is that I can now mark a disabled watchtower ship as salvaged, at which point Gren will have modules I can buy. The problem is that in order to disable the ship, I can't bring my whole fleet, because they blast everything before I can dock with it. If I don't bring my whole fleet, then the incoming reinforcements outrun the ability of my one ship to disable a ship without getting blasted myself. I can't whack the moles fast enough. Every time I take out a ship to thin the herd enough to disable another, 2 more jump in and join the fight.

What do I do here? arm my entire fleet with laser and EM only and hope for the best?

Personally, I fly without a fleet, alone. On the corvette watchtower. I destroy any threat alone and without the help of the console. Recently, I single-handedly destroyed an entire fleet with a huge cruiser at the head. Therefore, I have no problems with capturing ships.

 

[Torberg]

My understanding is that I can now mark a disabled watchtower ship as salvaged, at which point Gren will have modules I can buy. The problem is that in order to disable the ship, I can't bring my whole fleet, because they blast everything before I can dock with it. If I don't bring my whole fleet, then the incoming reinforcements outrun the ability of my one ship to disable a ship without getting blasted myself. I can't whack the moles fast enough. Every time I take out a ship to thin the herd enough to disable another, 2 more jump in and join the fight.

What do I do here? arm my entire fleet with laser and EM only and hope for the best?

A suggestion I saw in another thread is to equip your fleet with Lasers (to take out shields) and EM weapons (to non-destructively disable enemy ship systems) and not to give them Ballistics or Particle Beams. I've been trying it myself and have been able to board/capture a few enemy ships (though I haven't tried it with WT ships as I'm not up to that point in my current playthrough). I've seen mixed results, as Laser weapons can still damage hulls, so I need to find the right balance of minimal-hull-damage laser weapons to use on my fleet. Generally the enemy ship has been damn near destroyed by the time I boarded.

 

[Bobwalt]

That is really a workaround rather than a solution. It would be better if once a player uses targeting on an enemy ship system that ship will no longer be attacked by other ships in ones fleet. This would allow disabled ships to be boarded or marked and left for salvage. I am also not certain none of the parts would be salvageable if a ship was destroyed. Sometimes there would be useable items left besides what was in the ship’s hold.

 

[Jarnin]

I've had more success boarding ships that land on the surface. As soon as I hear one I fire off Phased Time, which lets me sprint/boost in slo-mo to the nearest landing site, usually before they open their bay doors. Just run by the Watchtower goons in the bay, click the hatch and go inside. The ships have almost always been empty for me (the entire crew is outside?), though a few times there's a friendly crew of "Security" folks. They just let me stroll right up to the cockpit and sit down to claim the ship.

 

[Bobwalt]

Anything special about these ships?

 

[Jarnin]

Anything special about these ships?

Watchtower ships have custom modules. As you turn in computer cores you'll eventually gain the ability to salvage ships that you board, which will unlock those custom modules in Gren's workshop. Eventually you can capture the ships and add them to your collection.

 

[Bobwalt]

I get that but are these custom modules worth the effort? Currently I kill any Watchtower fleet I run across before I have a chance to disable them. Do they have anything really special to make it worthwhile, say a reactor that produces more than 40, heavier shields, some special weapons?

 

[Khylarin]

I get that but are these custom modules worth the effort? Currently I kill any Watchtower fleet I run across before I have a chance to disable them. Do they have anything really special to make it worthwhile, say a reactor that produces more than 40, heavier shields, some special weapons?

They look cool! Dark and industrial without tons of junk cluttering the space.

The infirmary is incredible looking; it's just missing functional infirmary support

 

[SLB1]

Do they have anything really special to make it worthwhile, say a reactor that produces more than 40, heavier shields, some special weapons?

One of my annoyances with the vanilla Starfield is many ship modules do not add anything functional. Then I found the TN Ship mods (eg, Nexus mod 6376). Examples include:

1. Deimos Control Station adds 25 reactor health,
2. Deimos Engineering Bay 3x1 adds 2 grav jump thrust, 50 engine health and 50 grav drive health,
3. Deimos Computer Core 2x1 adds 1 power generated,
4. Deimos structural wing c add 5 max shield health,
5. reactors (supplemental)/Tower R910 added 8 power generation, and
6. HopeTech cargo hall 3x3 carries 1000.

Many have skill level requirements and some are a'bit expensive.