As of writing this guide only 4.1% of all X4 players have this theoretically simple achievement. I aim to change that and hopefully reduce some frustration in the community. After all, claiming ships is a natural part of the progression in the game.

This guide is intended to be quick and dirty to send you on your merry way, ergo for players familiar with the game, so don't expect to get all the mechanics explained.

I will however include this reminder on getting enemies to bail: in order to force a bail the hull must be below 75% and the shields below 25% simultaneously. This will start a counter roughly 30 seconds long, in which the game checks the enemy pilot's morale, your total ship hp in relation to target total hp and so on and so forth (Math, who cares.) and then decides if part of the enemy ship's crew will bail in sets of three per 30 second interval.

Theoretically you could punt the enemy below 70% hull and then poke his shields with a small weapon/burst to keep it in the 0%-5% range, but that is just one way to go about it.

Anyway, onto the guide. Join me and become a true liberator for managed democr- wait, wrong game.

Or why the hell you haven't gotten the achievement yet.

Essentially there are two ways to claim any ship: doing it yourself or using marine(s).

Aside from the abandoned Odysseus and the potential Timeline rewards in every gamestart, L and XL class ship can only reasonably be boarded with marines. For the purpose of this guide we will ignore these ships.

So you "found" an abandoned S/M ship, aka a ship without pilot and crew. Congrats!

Now, usually you exit your ship, hop in your space suit, float over and then scan the signal leak. Voila, new ship. I'd congratulate you, but... well, your counter for "ships liberated claimed" in your statistic section will still be at 0.

Okay, now you're frustrated so you board one of the random L-class SCA Plunderer destroyers. Hey, new ship, good for you. You totally ignored what I wrote above though and your counter still sits at a taunting 0.

Because Egosoft wants you to use a certain mechanic involving marines that isn't full on boarding.

In theory any ship - doesn't even need a marine on it - that floats past an abandoned vessel will notify you (if standard settings are enabled) and you can then tell the captain to either claim (marine required), protect or ignore the ship. Well, that mechanic isn't it either.

Also in theory any ship with a marine should be able to be commanded from the map to "claim" an abandoned ship. Well, that didn't count either.

So we return to the pilot seat, because clearly, if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.

If we're doing this quick and dirty and don't want to wait on natural progression (i.e. Lasertowers on Hatikvah's Choice I Gate to Tharka's Cascade XV forcing Xenon to abandon) what you need is either an S or M ship you feel comfortable dogfighting in.

Quick hint: You own all the DLC? Grab the Xperimental Shuttle.

If your universe doesn't yet contain at least 10 abandoned ships you can comfortably grab, you'll have to make them. Be on the lookout for Minotaur Raiders, Prometheus or just SCA/BUC ships in general, as their loot drops and modded loadouts will be useful longterm.

Now, depending on the level of micromanaging you wish to engage in, your ship must contain at least 1 Marine, preferably up to 10. This is so you can just sent your new ship on it's merry way instead of having to comm the pilot later and tell him to rejoin you as marine. If you already have a ship with full crew, remember you can just swap crew members from service to marine.

As soon as you got the pilot to bail do not enter your space suit and scan the signal leak (as you usually would)! Stay in command of your ship, select the empty one in front of you with a right click. In the context menu there will an entry literally called "Claim" - if you forgot to bring a marine it will be greyed out, otherwise go ahead and click.

Your ship will now be launching a boarding pod with this single marine in it to claim the abandoned ship. I recommend staying about 200m away to make it easier on the pathfinding AI and cut down the time needed in potentially hostile sectors.

Once the pod has made contact with the abandoned ship a few seconds will pass and the ship will turn over to you. Congratulations, you successfully increased your "Ships claimed" counter by 1.

Now go get the other 9!

Don't mind the explosion, it totally didn't count you making a marine board the ship instead of scanning the signal leak as "violent entry" and blew up some of the equipment the ship had...

Or the image guide for those still reading.

Ship located:


Ship loadout before we board:

The menu without a marine on board:


After swapping crew to marine we are ready:


Somehow Palpatine returned a boarding pod was launched:


Boarding succesful but we lost the Mk2 Bolt Repeater main gun:


Proof I went out there one more time just for you:

The plot walkthroughs (Covert Ops station build mission requirements in Operation Hyena might differ in your save):

https://wiki.egosoft.com:1337/X4%20Foundations%20Wiki/Manual%20and%20Guides/Objects%20in%20the%20Game%20Universe/Plots/

or

https://x4playershandbook.com/index.php/story-lines/

The "large" achievement guide by manoeuvring with difficulty:

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2376337650

The somewhat interactive universe map and wiki by Roguey:

https://roguey.co.uk/x4/

Station builder calculation tool:

http://x4-game.com/#/station-calculator

The black market finder tool (not a mod!) by foxxbl from the Egosoft forums:

https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=463804

PSA: Please be aware of a recently introduced bug that causes the basegame sectors to sometimes not get any black marketeer on game creation, because of the way modules are loaded. So if you want to be a "proper" smuggler lord in a new game, you have to enable the DLCs step by step, meaning: create game without DLC, start your run, save, exit out, enable expansion 1, restart, load game, save, check save with tool and repeat.

Otherwise you might end up like my newest save, with about 15+ black marketeers each in Pluto and Zyarths Dominion IV. (Here the cargo cloak mod crafted with exceptional ship nanoweave, dropped by BUC ships, will be your best friend. See how it all ties together?)

Thank you for your attention and have a great time in the X universe.