[Kie99]

I used to be fascinates by this option in the command menu.  I spent ages trying to put this to use, mainly to capture Shivan vessels because they'd always stressed the importance of it in FreeSpace 1. I always massively struggled to get it to work.  Most of the time the ship in question would be destroyed, maybe it would have 3 engines instead of 1, maybe the docking ship jumps out etc. 

There was one time, I think it would have been the Sixth Wonder where there's an NTF cruiser.  I managed to disarm it, get one of the freighters or transports to go and pick it up, it went to it's warp point and jumped out with it.  I was expecting a commendation from Command for retrieving a cruiser and bringing the crew to justice.

You can imagine my disappointment when neither command nor the debriefing even mentioned it. 

I tried it with the Sathanas a few times, but it doesn't have an approachable dock point so it just crashes the game.  I can't remember if that was something in a retail mission or something I set up myself.

It got me wondering what the point of that option was in the command menu was.  Any captures of a ship would have to be scripted events, and the game doesn't really handle it that well anyway (if you're not sure what I mean, dock an Elysium to a Colossus and ram into the Elysium).  I can't remember ever using it, all the capture missions in both games happened without your input. 

Was it just a remnant from some older plans to have the player press the button?

[Colonol Dekker]

Its been over 20 years since I played squadwar... I might be mis-remembering but there was a mission concept about which team could nick the most cargo from a depot using poseidons.

[Goober5000]

There was one time, I think it would have been the Sixth Wonder where there's an NTF cruiser.  I managed to disarm it, get one of the freighters or transports to go and pick it up, it went to it's warp point and jumped out with it.  I was expecting a commendation from Command for retrieving a cruiser and bringing the crew to justice.

You can imagine my disappointment when neither command nor the debriefing even mentioned it.

That's awesome.  We can put that on the list of all-time HLP achievements, along with Grey Wolf 2009 saving Capella, and Trivial Psychic destroying the Sathanas that destroyed the Colossus.

It got me wondering what the point of that option was in the command menu was.  Any captures of a ship would have to be scripted events, and the game doesn't really handle it that well anyway (if you're not sure what I mean, dock an Elysium to a Colossus and ram into the Elysium).  I can't remember ever using it, all the capture missions in both games happened without your input. 

Was it just a remnant from some older plans to have the player press the button?

It's likely one of those features where something was started but then the game design moved in a different direction.  There are a few other vestigial features in the codebase, such as "crew spots" for capital ships, as well as wingmen complaining when they don't have any orders.

[shiv]

There are a few other vestigial features in the codebase, such as "crew spots" for capital ships, as well as wingmen complaining when they don't have any orders.

Wow, never heard about those before. Are you able to tell us more in details about those abandoned features or even wikify this trivia?

[Goober5000]

There are many such features; these were just the ones I remembered offhand. I don't have the bandwidth to wikify them all right now; my plate is too full of FS-related projects at the moment.