Capturing ships
Compact Overviews / TL;DR
Here's how to capture a new ship in space:
(StAStoF = the mod Sit to Add Ship to Fleet)
- Shoot a ship, preferably from behind, ideally with Targeting
locked on to their engines, disable them (can be much faster with EM
weapons), close to within 500m, dock, purge all other life from the ship,
loot (especially if you aren't going to capture it).
If you only wanted to defeat it, not capture it, done!
- Sit in the Pilot's chair
- If it didn't let you sit, your Piloting Skill may be lower
than the Reactor class. raise the Skill now or done! ;-)
- If that's not it, see § Gory Details for possible reasons
- If you have StAStoF, just add the new ship to your Fleet and done!
- Otherwise (without StAStoF) if you don't mind making the new ship your
Home Ship, then just stay in this one, and it'll become your Home Ship
as soon as you grav jump (or land, probably, etc).
- Your old ship will stay part of your Fleet and grav jump away
- Otherwise, if you want return to your original ship and keep both
- End up in the pilot's chair in the new ship
- Undock and redock with the old ship,
and during the activation of docking with the old ship -
meaning while the dock button is being held and filling -
activate the Fleet UI, make it your Home ship,
then pop back out to watch the docking complete
Here's how to capture a new ship on the ground:
- On ground, for normal ships, bypass any crew around the ship, get into
the bay, make a save NOW!, invade the ship, purge all life from it, sit in
Pilot's chair and (if you don't have StAStoF) use
your Fleet UI to make the new ship your Home Ship to own it.
- If the Pilot's chair rejects you
- Because your Piloting is too low raise the Skill now or done! ;-)
- If because not everyone's dead, you may need to go outside and
kill any remaining crew there first
- If that's not it, see § Gory Details for possible reasons
- If the Pilot's chair accepted you, be aware that this will affect where
quests through the ship (too offworld)
point when you're outside - to the new ship
Here's how to capture a Guardian on the ground:
- To ground capture Starborn Guardian ships, be running up the wing as they're
still landing, trigger the door on the sill under it
(the time window for this is mere seconds),
this usually will
get you in just as the crew gets out,
capture ship (this works as for normal ships), go back out, kill
Starborn to gather Essences
Keep reading if you want gory detail on space capture, or jump forward to
Ground Capture's gory details.
Why Capture Ships?
- Ship vendors have the most credits to hand you for ship you sell
- Profit from ship capture may seems a bit thin after Registration,
but it's common to capture ~10k credits, Astra, and X-Tech from them
not to mention a pile of guns to sell
- It's possible to engage in prestidigitation to avoid having to pay
the Registration fee to sell ships - even good roleplaying,
for the right kind of character.
- If you're intending to use the QED to pass credits through the Unity,
credits from inside sold ships (not the sell price)
end up in your Home Ship cargo,
and can be directly transferred by using the QED itself.
This isn't possible from your Inventory, only from sold ships.
- This also means that you should probably leave as many credits as
possible unlooted from a ship you're going to sell anyway,
which feels quite weird when you do it
- For the "They're Not Toys!" Achievement, some of the figures are more
easily acquired by capturing Terran Armada patrol ships,
from their Captain's Lockers
Space Capture - Evolution
Starfield loves to force ships to undock when you change the new ship
you've captured to be your Home ship,
and even once used undocking itself as the trigger for changing it.
Changes in making a ship Home have had evolving effects on the old ship:
- To 2024-05: undocks, wanders until past ~4km distance, then grav jumps away -
if you didn't catch it, difficult with the new ship's engines disabled
- To 2026-04: immediately grav jumps away - unless you'd set the new ship
to Home with an aborted grav jump, still need to chase the old one
- Past 2026-04: instantly vanishes, not even showing a grav jump,
although this may be different during the tutorial
As of 2026-04's Terran Armada update, most of the older ways to capture
yet have access to your old ship are broken,
because all methods of making your new ship your Home ship make
your old ship vanish instantly, unless you overlap docking and "Home"ing.
It's possible this method has always worked,
but currently it seems to be the only thing that works.
Additionally, since your captured ship is probably shot all to hell,
it's advantageous to get back in your old ship before undocking
(which needs the Sit to Add Ship to Fleet mod),
or to be able to redock with it quickly after taking real ownership
of the new ship.
This is more complicated if you've captured a ship before the final one in
a battle, where you'd need to redock with the old ship during combat
where StAStoF is about the only thing that seems realistic.
During the early period when redocking was viable,
having the capturing ship's docker facing forward was helpful,
since during the undock,
your original ship would want to move away,
and would usually have to turn (because of the docker location)
first to avoid banging into you,
giving you more time to attempt to redock.
Space Capture / Gory Details - after 2026-04 Terran Armada update
- In your "old" ship, disable engines on the "new" ship
- If you don't have EM weapons it's easier to do this on higher difficulties
- Be within 500m, Dock, prep if needed, and enter it.
- Make a hard save, just in case
- Kill everything
- (If you had any random stolen items, stuffing them in the
new ship's cargo bay may strip the stolen attribute when you
gain ownership of it)
- Sit in the Pilot's chair in the new ship;
if it won't let you, try to address why,
if no way is found, abort this list ;-)
Common issues are:
- Some crewman is buried in the wall or in some interstitial space.
Powers are very useful for finding and killing such crew
- The Ecliptic Bounty Hunter ships from the Wanted background
are often uncapturable
- Your Piloting skill is too low
- This is a good to consider repairing the new ship's engines and/or hull,
especially if the old ship abandons you in the next part.
- [optional]
If you like, you can do these to see the problem we need to solve:
- Check your fleet UI, both old and new ships appear
- Note that the new ship is not your home ship
- Return to your old ship and board it
- Check your fleet UI, note the new ship is missing!
- Get back into the new ship's pilot's chair to continue
The only way to own the new ship is to make it your home ship,
but we want to do that without the old ship grav jumping away,
so we aren't going to use the Fleet UI (or grav jumping) to do it.
- Taking ownership
- This can fail if your Fleet is full
- If you have Sit to Add Ship to Fleet:
Just tell the mod whether to add the ship to your fleet,
they stay docked. Go to the next numbered item
- [In earlier years, just undocking made you the new ship's owner,
or starting a grav jump, but no longer]
- If you're doing the ship capture with no relevant mod:
You'll need to overlap two actions abnormally in this:
- In your new ship, undock from your old ship and hold your position,
be careful to avoid ramming it if your docker is frontward,
since that could make either ship explode if heavily damaged
- Target your old ship from 500m or less,
so that the Dock option appears
- (read the next step first)
Hold the key to initiate docking with the old ship AND…
- …before the key activation completes:
open your Fleet UI
- Set the new ship to be your Home ship, then exit the Fleet UI
- You should return to see the docking completing
- (If you were stripping stolen attributes, see if it worked)
- Return to your old ship
- Verify in your Fleet UI that you still own the new ship
- Profit!
Ground captures are generally pretty easy, especially because sometimes
no one is inside the ship.
However "easy" depends on your level, stealth, paranoia factor, whether you
have a follower, gear, and so on.
It's definitely pretty brutal if anyone is inside on Extreme at low level,
but otherwise:
- Land somewhere in, say, Serpentis, (best on a not-too-rocky temperate moon)
- Find a ship
- If a ship is already overhead when you get out, take the Rover out to it
- Otherwise:
- Look for likely landing spots
- Drive to one in your Rover and see if something lands
- Repeat if needed
- Stop behind cover, of if you're more of a nut, land your Rover on top of
the ship
- Killing crew outside the ship often makes a ship launch,
which can sometimes happen anyway,
and they may have enemies in space that will start shooting them,
meaning you have to capture the ship before it's destroyed -
all in all, a rough deal
- Get into the landing bay - no killing, hopefully without being noticed
- Stealth, Void Form, hiding behind parts of the ship, etc,
may be useful for reaching the bay
- The hatch may be locked, unlock it or run away if you can't
- Make a hard save!
- Prepare for entry
- Crouch
- Optionally apply any useful Powers like Void Form, Reactive Shield
- Optionally ready crowd a control like
Gravity Well, Anti-Gravity Field, Sunless Space
- Swap gear if needed for close-quarters on-ship combat
- Make sure you've made a hard save!
- Enter the Ship
- If the crew outside saw you, they may (rarely) follow you in
- In some cases, telling your follower to stay by (guard) the hatch is good
- Use stealth if you like, remember you can run away through the ship if
the foes get too difficult. Do not just casually stuff yourself
back out through the hatch if any outside crew is still out there.
- Kill everything
- There is a tactic for putting credits into the QED that relies on not
looting credits from a captured ship you plan to sell,
try to keep this in mind about NPCs/ship inventory and anywhere else
- If you have things on you marked stolen, put them in the ship's cargo, since
capturing a ship will sometime strip them of their stolen tags
(or is it the Captain's Locker? Or both?)
- Sit in the Pilot's Chair
- If you can't, someone's still alive inside, or your Piloting is too
low, or you need to kill the crew outside first
- If you can fix all that, do so, and then…
- Settle into the Pilot's Chair and add the new ship to your Fleet
- This can fail if your Fleet is full
- If using Sit to Add Ship to Fleet, then add the ship
- If you aren't using StAStF, use your Fleet UI to set the new ship as Home,
but keep in mind that your old ship will launch and grav jump away
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