Given the grind for rarer metals, I target generators only. I know there are people who disagree, but I need that zascosium alloy.

Go for the rear thrusters first to force the ship to stop.
Do not go for thrusters on any other side or else it will drift even when the rear thrusters are destroyed.
Depending on your ship and playstyle, you could go away and come back with your mobile base/salvager/freighter/whatever-you-call-it since the OPV isn't going anywhere; so you have your salvager ready to loot and scrap the ship without leaving render range once the core is destroyed (despawns the OPV when you leave the area).
Again, depending on ship and playstyle you could blow a hole in the now-immobile ship and board it with an SV or strip the turrets from one side and bore out the cores. Since once the rear thrusters are destroyed the ship can't move or roll, so once you clear a blind spot you have a place to sit and recharge shields/reload.

With the exception of the Cutter and Corvette classes, you should never target generators on larger ships.
Generators on OPVs are always in the most heavily armored areas, with redundant backup generators (decoys) designed to make you waste ammunition and time while destroying the loot between your guns and those generators.
If you take out a ship's generators, it's not much different from destroying the core; except the generators are targetable and the core is not.

Originally posted by Vermillion:

Go for the rear thrusters first to force the ship to stop.
Do not go for thrusters on any other side or else it will drift even when the rear thrusters are destroyed.
Depending on your ship and playstyle, you could go away and come back with your mobile base/salvager/freighter/whatever-you-call-it since the OPV isn't going anywhere; so you have your salvager ready to loot and scrap the ship without leaving render range once the core is destroyed (despawns the OPV when you leave the area).
Again, depending on ship and playstyle you could blow a hole in the now-immobile ship and board it with an SV or strip the turrets from one side and bore out the cores. Since once the rear thrusters are destroyed the ship can't move or roll, so once you clear a blind spot you have a place to sit and recharge shields/reload.

With the exception of the Cutter and Corvette classes, you should never target generators on larger ships.
Generators on OPVs are always in the most heavily armored areas, with redundant backup generators (decoys) designed to make you waste ammunition and time while destroying the loot between your guns and those generators.
If you take out a ship's generators, it's not much different from destroying the core; except the generators are targetable and the core is not.

Sounds like a good strategy. So, to summarize, the strategy would be to disable the rear thrusters, board the ship and clear it. Then, destroy the core and dismantle? What about the shield? Can you destroy the core with the shield active?

A boarding SV sounds neat. Maybe I'll make something with this in mind. I usually go for stripping one side of turrets then core. Immobilizing the ship is nice because destroyed boxes will still be in place but I don't usually do that if I'm familiar with the ship.

Most of the larger ships have a hangar, whose door you can destroy and enter once the ship has stopped. You may have a problem with troops, but with a clone chamber on your SV you can always respawn right there.
As long as your ship (or you on foot) keep shooting the wall, the shield won't regenerate. Or you can destroy the shield generator after taking out the rear thrusters. They're usually near the outer hull on the back side. (Malrak's is in the nose though)
All zirax OPV cores are accessible on foot, except the Tovera's tail core.

I was thinking more of a small ship to get through the hallways, zooming into the hull breach with afterburners while dodging turret fire. The clone chamber is a nice idea though I don't usually use one. Don't really like zombie attacking to get something done. Actually that reminds me of a different boarding SV idea I had, where it had a wide opening in the front that you would stick to the enemy ship before breaching. I think it'd work, might could even do it under turret fire so long as you can turn the ship off once it's in place, or make the hole before the SV gets blown up.

Originally posted by Vermillion:

Since once the rear thrusters are destroyed the ship can't move or roll

is it a bug when ths ship without main hrusters seems to be able to move lsightly (more like twitching)? I thought it was from RCSs - on our own ships they allow some rotation when all thrusters are offline.

Originally posted by Gavodir:

I was thinking more of a small ship to get through the hallways, zooming into the hull breach with afterburners while dodging turret fire. The clone chamber is a nice idea though I don't usually use one. Don't really like zombie attacking to get something done. Actually that reminds me of a different boarding SV idea I had, where it had a wide opening in the front that you would stick to the enemy ship before breaching. I think it'd work, might could even do it under turret fire so long as you can turn the ship off once it's in place, or make the hole before the SV gets blown up.

I have a tiny SV from the workshop that I've modified for this. It's not pretty but it's very functional. The guy who actually built it did a good job considering how small it is and what it packs. A shield, healing station, rail gun, galing and a medium turret. In RE1 I could take a regular door out and fly it right down a hallway but now with everything Admin cored, I can't (which I think is good). But, it would work great for taking out a hangar door and flying right in. The medium Gatling turret is your friend. I'm in the middle of an abandoned mine but later I'll upload it and give a link if you want to check it out or make any changes, etc. I'm not a builder but like to tweak others things.

As a matter of fact, I'm at the end of the abandoned mine and this is the first time I've done it in RE2 and can't find that darn switch to blow the mine open at the end.... I'll keep looking. It's gotta be here somewhere.

Originally posted by Turist40k:

is it a bug when ths ship without main hrusters seems to be able to move lsightly (more like twitching)? I thought it was from RCSs - on our own ships they allow some rotation when all thrusters are offline.

Not a bug and RCS don't actually do anything for OPVs.
You've destroyed all of the thrusters on one side that isn't the rear; which is causing the ship to drift because it doesn't have the thrusters to stop drifting in that direction.
That's why you should only ever destroy the rear thrusters.

Here's the time "POI raider" that I've tweaked. Should work well for when you want to fly into the hanger of that disabled ship. Little tricky sometimes getting in and out of the seat. If you have any improvements, please share. https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3408299211