So I stole 2 ships yesterday and find it to be lots of fun.
I learned some important things and thought I'd share.
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When you steal a ship, you have to register it which costs about 9.6k. Apparently you can't sell the ships for much more than that, but I haven't tried yet.
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If you sit in the pilot seat of the ship, you'll see a message about potentially making it your home ship if you take off. If you do not take off in it and just leave, it does not become one of your ships and will disappear if you leave the planet.
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if there are ecliptic mercs nearby, attempt to steal the ship before killing them. Sometimes you can, sometimes you cannot. If you kill the mercs, the ship takes off.
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If the ship is sitting there, it may be empty and ripe for the taking. If there's a crew aboard, there may be something you can do (chat with the captain and get something), but most likely you'll piss off your companion if you just "take care" of them.
When you land on a planets or moons surface, listen for another ship to land or checktthe map markers on your scanner for ship landing site. Usually it's ecliptic or spacers, and you just clear them out and fly the ship off planet.
I went through a spate of it being a UC ship that landed for like 5-6 times in a row. It was really frustrating to walk so far out of my way only to have to leave the ship alone. Got a nice Ecliptic ship today though.
Most of the ships I find are inaccessible. The couple I have been able to board have been peaceful, and I didn't have the heart to start a fight with them.
About the only valid target I got was one time a ship landed really close by. A solitary spacer got out and I thought "Game on!". I dropped the spacer with a headshot, and then of course the ship raised the bay ramp and took off again. Bastards.
Ugh, yeah, that happened to me the other day too. Spacer ship landed like 70m away while I was up on a high vantage point. I dropped all 4 spacers right in their bay, then jumped down to claim the ship, only to have it take off with the bodies still inside. I didn't get the ship or the loot!
Yeah, apparently that's a thing: if you kill all the ground crew, the ship rabbits.
Next time I'm going to ignore the last spacer and sprint for the bay, see if I can do a Todd and have it lift off as I kill the last one on the ground :)
I took out an entire ground team of ecliptic and was still able to board, kill the rest onboard and take the ship, I was guessing that it was because they came over to where I was and engaged me first and/or they were far enough away from the ship that the onboard crew didn't immediately rabbit. ...I mean it's Bethesda...could have been a glitch ;)