Ships can only be targeted to be destroyed once the population gets really low right, i.e. just before an invade? Or can you attack a defending ship even if the population is full. Sorry. It's ages since I've attacked a well guarded planet so can't remember.

Another use for them could be to use the wreckage of the ship to repair yours if its damaged?

So you'd lose the ship but get a full or partial repair from it depending on the ship and its strength/level ?

sacirficial use yeah!
thatll help when you have 0 repair nanos
5:00 till repair
and 0 legion mates online (if your disabled)

From a resource standpoint... matched ships should be strictly prohibited from capture. It would get out of hand if the system had to track 3 bajillion differnt matched npcs.

If planets aren't limited to the number and strength of ships on them, it could get ridiculous to take them.

if matched scaled with rank, won't there be just 1 for each rank?
but then.... i don't really keep track so don't really know..
The hard part would be track all of their damage condition...

on a side note, on the fake screenies, the buttons after the captured ship are wrong
You can't "use" a planet artifact in the artifact list, and considering you are planning to put a max limit on # of captured ship and how it works, i doubt share/send would be available neither.
I think the chassis button set (scrap, grayed send, grayed use) is probably more proper~

yeah, i know.... that was random....

well spotted.

And I don't see why matched ships should be blocked. The stats are done on a formula so it only has 1 number to remember. The damage would be more draining, yes, but look at modules. Some players have 100+ modules...

Also there would be a limit of 2 guards, and elites/bosses could not be captured.

Capture chance is based on NPC strength, so strong NPCs would be rare...

A couple of points i would address

1. warping should not work on an NPC guard

2. your limit of NPC guards should be fairly high... say 1 per 10 ranks due to the large number of planets someone can have that need guarding...
( a rank 200 player will have about 50 planets but will have only 20 NPCs available at max to guard them)

3. to offset the lack of warping & extra NPC guards a player should be able to target the NPC by itself without knocking down the population

4. a limit of 3 NPC's per planet

5. NPC's are destroyed with a % chance of disable & returned to owner for repair

the target before pop i don't agree with removes the point of them a max of three would be a good idea was thinking only one originally.

ok... i dont want to see 3 NPCs on a planet & have each one be a Flamehawk lvl 400 with 2000 atk & 2800 def.... this would make some planets virtually impregnable ...

x3 Flamehawks 8400
planet def b4 6000
legion bonus 100%
new defense 28800

this is b4 any arties.... why i suggested that NPC guards could be killed b4 planet pop is lowered.... how about a different approach... % based..
NPC ranked ships
1-100 = 5%
101-200 =10%
201-300 =15%
etc. etc. .....

this would make the above planet these stats instead... much more manageable

x3 Flamehawks 60%
planet def b4 6000
legion bonus 100%
new defense 19200

well, he did say that capture chance drops as the stat of the ship goes up...
the uber flamehawk you mentioned might have like a 0.1% chance of capture. So it would be rather hard to have that happening, and very few planet would have something like that even if it can happen.

and it's probably also why he decided to lower to 2 from 3.

I really like this idea. I always thought that the ability to manage a fleet was something that this game needed, especially with all the planets to guard.

my only concern (even with a really low drop rate) is that some players only NPC.... & would still acquire the uber NPC's to defend with.....
on another point i'm ranked 483 & see other ships with high stats as well every day....
Dark Runner Ranked 483
Attack 2128
Defense 3580

addressing this with only 2 NPCs is ok but personally i like the whole idea of managing a "Fleet" & the more there are the more it feels that way lol anyway this parts a personal interest in the way it works