Interrogation

[Jacob/Lee (OP)]

So, I decided to go to war with an underpowered, low-tech, resourceless NPR. All they do is steal my minerals, anyway. First kill of the war, one of their survey ships sampling asteroids in Sol, which I then blew out of existence with antimatter missiles and recovered the lifepod. What does interrogation do? What can I learn from it?

[HaliRyan]

Interrogation gives you a chance to learn a portion of your enemy's knowledge base. You could steal one of their techs, find out about a new system, get design details on one of their ships, gain astrographic or geological survey information on a system, or come up with nothing at all.

[Girlinhat]

It should also unlock the "autopsy" thingy under biology research, or at least it did for me, which gives you the details on their living conditions and tolerances.

[Jacob/Lee (OP)]

It should also unlock the "autopsy" thingy under biology research, or at least it did for me, which gives you the details on their living conditions and tolerances.

Yeah, I noticed that. I performed an autopsy on my "friends" and learned their tolerances. The interrogation brought nothing else.

[blue emu]

They don't usually have much to say after you've autopsied them.

As the man said: "It don't matter much whether you catch a fish or not... after you bin used for bait, you ain't good for nothin' no-how anyway".

[Jacob/Lee (OP)]

I actually waited about half a year before performing the autopsy. Then I nuked another ship, this time a 70,000 ton jump gate builder (hey, geniuses, all jump points have gates) and I got another set of crewmembers.

[Girlinhat]

On the same scheme, does it do anything to "return survivors"?

[Hawkeye]

Interrogation is instant (at least that used to be the case, but I don´t think that has chanced with 5.5X)
You get few espionage points for crew memebers, officers, on the other hand, mmmmh yummy! The higher the rank, the more intel you get

In addition to the Espionage Points generated by teams, you can also gain Espionage points by interogating captured prisoners. For every ten crew you rescue from life pods you get one Espionage Point. Every captured officer will generate a number of Espionage Points equal to his rank cubed. So if the lowest rank is lieutenant commander, he will only be worth 1 Espionage Point (1x1x1). A commander would be worth 8 Espionage points (2x2x2) while a captain would be worth 27 Espionage points and a Commodore 64 (no computer pun intended ) Espionage points, etc. With this rule, sending a Vice Admiral (216 EP) into harms way because he has a high crew training attribute may not be a great idea. It will also become very worthwhile to rescue your crews to avoid them being captured by the enemy.

Fore every 100 espionage points, you get a chance to learn something (this is the same rule as for espionage teams, which is where I pulled this one from)

[Girlinhat]

And similar to teams, crews seems to occupy no space.  Is there any way to see how many lifepods a ship has?  I'm thinking of a dedicated FAC to run through lifepods and zip out.

[blue emu]

I use a search-fighter... my CAP Carriers carry 35 Air Superiority Fighters and two Search-and-rescue Fighters. There's nothing like seeing 1045 survivors packed into a four-man Fighter...

[Girlinhat]

Ah, now we're getting into DF levels of fudging details!

clearly all the lifepods are trailing behind like some perverse "just married" body harvester.

[blue emu]

Ah, now we're getting into DF levels of fudging details!

I call it "Quantum Rescue".

[Thiosk]

For search and rescue operations, I use a reasonably large cruiser sized vessel that is cram-packed full of engines, shields, and CIWS.  At mag-conf tech, these babies roll at about 12k km/s.  

I did lose one against a swarm incursion back in '37.  I put sensors on them now, too.The swarm blasted a scout, and sat dormant on its corpse until the rescue ship approached.  Pop.

[orfeusz]

The swarm blasted a scout, and sat dormant on its corpse until the rescue ship approached.  Pop.

heh, i lost some ships to that trick too. Poor fellows..   

[Yonder]

Ah, now we're getting into DF levels of fudging details!

clearly all the lifepods are trailing behind like some perverse "just married" body harvester.

That's the only way I could make sense of it as well. I decided that the ship was towing all of the pods, and the pods fed off of the ships power so that there wasn't an issue with the crew members dying any more.