For S class you need to try few times, as for capital ship here are the step I usually do:
1. Make sure you already have freighter ship (no matter what class)
I always forgot this step always which hinder me in new save, you will not encounter capital ship if you do not have freighter ship.
2. Make sure you create restore point before you jump to the battle, as usually the indicator are minimum 3 hour playtime and 5 jump.
3. Search any system that pirate occupy which have skull symbol.
4. Wrap to the ship and see if you like the capital ship type and size.
5. If you did not like the type (Family, Venator or Sentinel) and size (Class, Venator|Sentinel, Imperial|Battleship or Resurgent|Dreadnought) , reload your restore point and try another pirate occupy system.
6. Repeat step 4 - 5 until you find the capital ship you want, so far from my experience, it will always capital ship battle if you wrap to pirate occupy system IF you already have freighter ship.
7. If you found the ship type and like the size (indicate from the indentation usually 2, 4 or 6) start the battle.
After the battle, go to the capital ship and after landing, check the freighter class using your scanner, if not S class and reload, go to the system again and battle until you got the S class.
If your lucky maybe you only need to redo around 7 times, if not like me need to do 15-20 times.

Not sure about pirate dreadnought though, I like the ship look but inside too dark to my liking.
Here is my favorite freighter, Venator Familiy | Resurgent Class
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3421964887

That's really clear details and better than most things I've read, thank you.

The confusion I have is the systems I go to every single jump they have a Capital Freighter in them. I dont have to wait for 3hrs of play and do a certain amount of jumps. I can jump in and out of the system and always spawn whatever ship is in that system.

Here is a couple screenshots to the systems I'm talking about where you can go in and out of them endlessly until you get your S class freighter or farm Freighter Upgrades without saving or reloading. From everything I'm reading I don't see anyone mentioning farming ships like this. (all those ships are in Euclid).

https://imgur.com/a/XnEqu2m

Yes some systems always spawn a dreadnort battle... i don't know how common it is?

Its likely you found one of these systems if you encounter a dreadnort battle less than 3 hours after a previous dreadnort battle.

Just this week i found 2 pirate systems close by to each other with this trait... so i bounced bewteen these two sectors capturing dreadnorts one after the other trying to get an S class.... took me about 40 captures to get one, the odds say it should be 1 in 20 for pirate systems.... but naturally the RNG loves to stiff me, nothing new or surprising about that!!!

Yes, two such systems within warp range are a convenient feat for farming freighter upgrades and faction points. I found a few about a year ago, so it is not a feature from recent updates.

The S-class roulette can be tedious indeed, mine took over 100 attempts back then. Pirate systems have the highest chance for S class ships, but note their starting slots can be as low as for C class. Which is no big deal, actually, when you can farm cargo bulkheads from a pair of systems with permanent Dreadnought activity.

Originally posted by DrBonifarz:

Yes, two such systems within warp range are a convenient feat for farming freighter upgrades and faction points. I found a few about a year ago, so it is not a feature from recent updates.

The S-class roulette can be tedious indeed, mine took over 100 attempts back then. Pirate systems have the highest chance for S class ships, but note their starting slots can be as low as for C class. Which is no big deal, actually, when you can farm cargo bulkheads from a pair of systems with permanent Dreadnought activity.

Are these systems player unique or universal?
I was just wondering if i can go to this location from a new save i only got 15 hours on (i know i got to have the glyphs tho) and it will work the same?

Yes, it should be a universal property of the system, e.g. someone could share the glyph coordinates from photo mode for you to try and see.

Originally posted by DrBonifarz:

Yes, it should be a universal property of the system, e.g. someone could share the glyph coordinates from photo mode for you to try and see.

Cool, because, let me tell you, getting all the Frigate boosting s class modules for the freighter in my advanced game was freaking Horrendously unreasonable and is not a process i EVER want to have to repeat unless i have a few tricks up my sleeve.

Gotcha, I can PM you the coords of the system I used a year ago, took just an hour or so to complete the module set. EDIT: Ah, you mentioned you already found some pairs.

Originally posted by DrBonifarz:

Gotcha, I can PM you the coords of the system I used a year ago, took just an hour or so to complete the module set. EDIT: Ah, you mentioned you already found some pairs.

Hehehe, yeah, i'm talking about giving myself coords from my advanced game to my new game.

Originally posted by mystikmind2005:

Yes some systems always spawn a dreadnort battle... i don't know how common it is?

Its likely you found one of these systems if you encounter a dreadnort battle less than 3 hours after a previous dreadnort battle.

It's surprisingly common... I'd guess something like at least 10% of hostile systems have them... I always manage to find one for each of the 3 races within the same region when I decide it's time to search for an S class dreadnought...

And regarding capital ships, the civilian freighters that spawn with the dreadnought are capital ships. And they will always be the same design in a given system, so I presume you can use the dreadnought battles as a way to try to get an S class civilian capital ship too.

Originally posted by DrBonifarz:

...Which is no big deal, actually, when you can farm cargo bulkheads from a pair of systems with permanent Dreadnought activity.

Are you talking about the alternative 3 bulkheads reward instead of an S class freighter module when you destroy a dreadnought? Is that still possible, I've not seen that reward in nearly a year now...

To clarify one question above related to a system always spawning a pirate dreadnought battle, this is from the Wiki:
"Pirate dreadnought battles are affected by the same 3h 5 warps cooldown as regular battles. However, some systems may always spawn a battle after each warp. This is decided by the system's conflict level:

Low Medium High Pirate
0% 0% 10% 20%
This means that 20% of pirate systems will always have a battle. It does not mean that you have a 20% chance after warping to a pirate system."

(Of course, requires to have some kind of freighter already.)


Also, when farming for a non-pirate capital freighter, I have doubts on the probability for pirate systems shown in the Wiki (and repeated elsewhere); the percents shown for starships (85, 5, 5, 5) might not apply to freighters, or then I had reeeeaaallly bad luck (my number of sequential C's indicated that the C-class probability would more likely be above 95%).
I ended up switching to a normal 3* system, and got very close to the expected ratio of various classes, including the S-class "Resurgent" in 75 tries (plus around 7 tries that failed due to various bugs preventing either killing the last pirate ship or landing in to the freighter). Pity though, the pirate system I tried first would have given nicer colors...
Read that as, "your mileage may vary"; if I'd have to do it again, I'd do a 3* system, but that is me.

(As it happens, I think that very same system that gave me my freighter, seems to also be an "always spawns pirate dreadnought battle" system.. Convenient, less places to make notes about.)

(And one more side-note; Wiki's info on when it is possible to recruit the pirate dreadnought's frigates, and to get a salvaged fleet unit seems to be a bit incorrect or at least missing some cases. I ended up losing the civilian freighter, but I destroyed the pirate dreadnought anyway... and got salvaged fleet unit, _and_ 5 pirate frigates were happy to offer their services...)