Capturing ships:
Compact Overviews / TL;DR
Here's how to capture a new ship in space:
- 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,
sit in the 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
Raise Piloting skill to capture higher class ships.
- If in a Guardian, it takes two torpedos to fully stun an enemy ship
- To get back into your original ship:
- While 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
- Mods: the Sit to Add Ship to Fleet mod lets you own the ship by
claiming the Pilot's chair (and saying you want it),
without causing the old ship to abandon you
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, 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.
You may need to go outside and
kill and remaining crew there to complete ship capture - but do them
last since killing them all 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, make sure you made a save
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.
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 make a ship Home have had evolving effects on the old ship:
- To 2024-05: undock, wander until past ~4km distance, then grav jump away -
if you didn't catch it, difficult with the new ship's engines disabled
- To 2026-04: immediately grav jump 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 vanish, 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 will 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:
- The crew outside also needs to be killed (not always)
- 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
- Redock with your old ship
- Board the old ship
- 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
- Get into the landing bay - hopefully without being noticed
- Stealth, Void Form, hiding behind parts of the ship, etc,
may be useful for reaching the bay
- Killing crew outside may cause the ship to launch
- 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
- Warning: If the crew outside saw you, they might 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
- If you have stolen things, 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
|