How to board and steal ships in Starfield

Settled Systems of Starfield is full of enemy ships — vessels of pirates, Spacers, and, depending on your alliances and choices, everyone else. And those ships can be yours with a little work, if you’re willing to Steal a ship.

The following are some of the ways to improve your own ability. StarfieldGuide will help you learn. What to do when you board a cruise ship, What is the best way to steal a boat?, and everything else you need to know about disabling an enemy ship’s engines, docking, and claiming a ship for your own.

Piracy isn’t the same as stealing a ship in Starfield

Before we get started, let’s define something — piracy isn’t the same as stealing (both in real life and in Starfield). With the Deception skill from the Social tree, you’ll get the [Piracy]Dialogue option is available when hailing a vessel. The piracy in question only refers to stealing that ship’s cargo. You won’t actually get the option to steal the entire ship (or even to dock with it).

This part requires a great deal more shooting.

Starfield: How to capture an enemy vessel

To steal an enemy ship, you’ll need at least one rank of the Targeting Control Systems (Tech) skill. This lets you directly target an enemy ship’s individual systems (like weapons, shields, engines, or the grav drive).

Image: Bethesda Game Studios/Bethesda Softworks via Polygon

When you’re fighting an enemy ship — basically any ship whose marker is red on your HUD, which either means they started out aggressive, or you’ve (accidentally) shot them — and want to steal it for yourself, you’ll first need to take out its engines. When your weaponry is locked, press the X key and use the leftstick to highlight it. You can also use ENGOption and start firing. Ideally, you’ll do this relatively early in the fight — damaging the engines also damages the hull, so if you reduce the hull to zero, the ship will explode.

Once the engines are disabled, you’ll get the option to DockOnboard, you’ll need to eliminate any crew members of the ship. Onboard, you’ll have to kill any enemy crew. When they’re all cleared out, you can sit in the pilot’s seat to claim the ship. Just know that a stolen ship is considered contraband, so you’ll have to register it before heading to any of the patrolled planets.

Once you have selected a destination for fast travel, plotted a jump or landed, the ship becomes yours. Home Ship.

There’s also not a lot you can do with a stolen ship until you register it — after that, you can modify it, rename it, or even sell it.

Can you sell stolen ships?

You have a problem to solve before you jet off (gravve off?) in your new ship, you’ve got a problem to deal with. It is important to consider the entire ship. contraband. It doesn’t matter what the cargo hold, er, holds, it’s the ship itself that will trigger the scanners space controlled by the UC or Freestar Collective factions.

That means you can’t land at any of the big cities or settlements — or even enter their orbit.

Here are your options. The best place we’ve found to get around this problem is to dock at The Den in the Wolf system. The Red Mile is another option. Porrima III. If you are a patrolled area with an outpost, then it is advisable to have a The Landing Pad and Ship BuilderThere are three options that you can use to avoid anyone noticing your stolen vehicle. You can use all three options to avoid anyone seeing your stolen vehicle.

What does ‘you are not authorized to pilot this ship’ mean?

There are two reasons you might see this error when you try to sit in a stolen ship’s pilot’s seat:

• First, it might just be someone else’s ship. You can’t just stroll in and take a ship without a fight (see above). If this is a ship you’re currently stealing, there might be more crew somewhere on board.
• It could also be related to your finances. Piloting (Tech) skill and the ship’s (reactor) class. You can’t pilot class B ships until you hit rank 3 in Piloting, and for class C ships, you’ll have to wait for rank 4.