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Knowing how to dock in Starfield lets you board ships, loot them, and even steal them for yourself if you're so inclined. However, even if you're not planning on hostile ship takeovers, knowing how to board is important for missions, as you'll spend plenty of time heading to various orbital stations and manned satellites in Starfield.
Attaching yourself to stations is surprisingly simple, but docking with a moving, hostile ship requires a special targeting skill, as you'll need to take out your target's engines before you can even consider boarding. Here, I'll explain the process of how to dock with and board ships in Starfield.
How to dock with ships in Starfield and board them
In general, to dock with a ship in Starfield, you need to get within 500 meters of it and then follow the 'Dock' button prompt (X on an Xbox controller). This works for any stationary ship or orbital station such as the Starfield Almagest or the Eye. However, if you intend on boarding an enemy starship while it's flying, you've got to disable it first.
- Acquire the Targeting Control Systems skill. This is unlocked at tier 1 of the Starfield skills Tech tree.
- Engage in combat with the ship you want to board.
- Power up your weapons and keep the ship ahead of you while the targeting meter builds up at the bottom of the screen.
- When the meter is full, press X to target specific systems of the ship. Use left and right on the D-Pad to select different engines.
- Fire on the engines until they are non-functional. How long this takes will vary based the power of your armaments and the target ship's resilience.
- If the enemy ship evades you with fancy flying, repeat steps 3-5, but be careful not to completely destroy the target ship.
- Once the ship's engines are destroyed, it becomes immobile. Be careful - it can still fire on you.
- Now, get within 500 meters of the enemy craft and hold X, when prompted, to dock with it.
- Now docked with the ship, as you would a regular spaceport, you have the option to board the ship - and what you do from there is up to you.
At this point you'll have free rein of the enemy craft, with your Starfield companions joining you. However, the occupants are not going to be happy about any of this. If you're stealing the ship you'll have to kill everyone before you can get in the seat and claim the ship, we've got a separate guide on how to steal ships in Starfield if you want to claim your new ride permanently.
If you're on board for more altruistic reasons, usually because there's a hostage to be saved well, you'll still have to kill all other hostiles, but you'll usually find the captive in the cockpit waiting to be rescued. Remember not to clear out the cargo or captain's locker if they are, as they'll see you and it'll count as stealing. Anything else on the ship out of their line of sight is fare game for uninterrupted theft though. Once you're done with whatever you want to accomplish and aren't thinking about keeping this ship, you can head back to the airlock to get back to your own ship.
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