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Extreme ship combat difficulty is brutal, and a big jump from the level below.
Based on extensive max difficulty play (XP+75%) with my level 222 main in NG+13, using various ships (as most notes about here suggest) and the Guardian (highlighted in some notes).
First, be cautious about doing ship combat other than in level 1 or level 5 systems early on, which is similar to the fights over Vectera. Also be very careful trying to capture that early if you're on XP+75%, because in-person combat with the crew, especially the elite they typically have, is brutal without a follower.
Second, be efficient about upgrading the Frontier, or wait until you can have a different ship with a significantly better reactor (from a capture, or possibly the Star Eagle, which has a good reactor). That is, buy final parts whenever you can, like the Obliterators, which you can unlock almost immediately, instead of intermediate parts you'll toss later.
Third, be sure, while unlocking the Obliterators through joining U.C. and doing their little quest, to level Piloting up in their simulator until you can pilot class B ships. Class C can wait a bit, but it's common to run into a class B pretty early on, and frustrating to have to abandon.
Other notes as the game goes on:
- You should probably be using that B/39 reactor or a C/40 in the long term, the best free one before is probably the A/33 (IIRC) in the Star Eagle, from the questline on Akila starting at the bank
- Have Repair Parts, 10 to 20 should be plenty. If you have extra, they have mass, so you can just drop them by your pilot's seat or something in case you need to jump up to get them into inventory
- Aneutronic Fusion is great
- Equip your ship thoroughly. As in, about 350k credits worth
- Skill up, and have a crew with applicable skills
- Know that you can underpower turrets at about 50% yet still have full effectiveness. Turret placement is important, and needs synergy with your combat movement
- Get the Isolation skill, and when expecting ship combat, make sure you don't have a follower, so Isolation will be active
- Try to be behind them! Boost to get there when it makes sense, and definitely have high or max maneuverability on your ship
- Evade missiles with the shortest burst you can, so that you can do it more often, Guardians are the best at this, even ignoring that they also break missile lock regardless of your Skills - but good engines like the 3015s are facile at this as well (I think they're not the absolute best, but the extra speed is nice). Those massive SAL-6830 engines are reportedly terrible at this same thing, but I haven't tested this myself
- Use maxxed-out targeting whenever possible, take out the shield, target weapons if that's going quickly - any shot intended to destroy might as well go through their weapons
- If you have a chance to board a ship before the last one, do that. You get more XP, more loot, a chance to grab Repair Parts from the pile on your ship's floor, and more
- If you want to fight in a Guardian, go ground capture a tier IV or VI in the far east galaxy (possibly normally after encountering one over Neon). I've seen both tiers on Fermi VII-c. [Note that Watchtower used(?) to make this vastly harder by overriding most random ship landings] You can also do this in pre-NG.
- If in a Guardian, place your stun torpedoes carefully to manage up to two enemies while trying to take out the third one - you'll have to restun them, too. Try to place ships so that you can use the ship you're hiding behind as a shield
- The Guardian's main weakness is its weapon refractory periods, so to fight in them you have to build chances to recover into your fighting style
For groups of 3, I usually try to kill a weak one first, then go for the strongest one. YMMV, however. Notionally killing them off from weakest to strongest is a good plan, although Starfield's terrible targeting system can make this difficult [or impossible, in Watchtower fleet fights].
I've seen a lot of cases of being able to capture multiple ships in one battle. I don't know why this is, although I wonder if it's related to none of them having missile lock on me, which might relate to having tier 4 of Engine Systems (does it enhance if one's in a Guardian?). Or it could be a bug in a mod. Regardless, this did occur rarely when I was playing pure vanilla, especially if you stumble across a two faction fight and manage to avoid shooting the wrong side. I noticed once, after capturing a mid-battle ship and then sleeping in it to recover, that all the other foes split. Convenient :-) Unless you're trying to capture the big one.
The process required to capture a ship, but return to your original ship without losing control of the new one, is over-complicated in Starfield (with one update making it worse), basically forcing you to start a jump in the captured ship and abort it when it's only mostly spun up. This give you ship ownership, but lets you redock with your starting ship. Still tricky. If you want a sane method instead, add the Sit to Add Ship to Fleet mod, which grants you ownership without having to chase your other ship to redock.
I have not explored whether some Chem might enhance ship combat, but that's certainly something to check out.
Everything below here is about Guardians
I spend a lot of time on my main flying a Guardian, which I've found can capture shockingly well on Extreme. Examples of what one can capture are:
- solo ships up to potentially max level (but this almost never occurs)
- the better of a pair or ships where one is \~65 and the other is <30
- one of a trio of <40 each
- quads are a good time to run
A trio of level 50 ships destroyed my Guardian, repeatedly knocking out my engines, possibly with EM. So, consider running from trios of level 50s :-) or any group at all that turns into a problem.
Ground capture of a Guardian means you pretty much have to be at least on the wing as it's still landing to make it to the "doorknob" plate below the entry door. While it will go active on its own, I tend to keep clicking on the plate until it does. You'll basically swap places with the crew (almost always) when you go in. If you end up in there with the crew it gets rather exciting, but this is super rare. If your quick at seizing the ship, you can still jump back out the door and farm the Starborn for Essences. Once you've seen it work once, it'll make a lot more sense. The window for entry is short, only a few seconds.
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