Can't even claim a ship without piloting skill?

[TheDarkside]

Damn this is a let down...

There was a ship that landed and I got on board, killed the spacers inside but because the ship has a class B reactor I can't even claim it! I would have to sit in the pilot seat to claim it, and the game won't let me do that without sufficient Piloting skill! But I don't care if I can't fly it yet at least let me claim it and I'll come back to it later!

If I get off the ship now and fast travel anywhere it will just disappear or it will fly off (yeah without anyone on it, must have some autopilot feature lol)

[Dæmon]

Originally posted by TheDarkside:

Damn this is a let down...

There was a ship that landed and I got on board, killed the spacers inside but because the ship has a class B reactor I can't even claim it! I would have to sit in the pilot seat to claim it, and the game won't let me do that without sufficient Piloting skill! But I don't care if I can't fly it yet at least let me claim it and I'll come back to it later!

If I get off the ship now and fast travel anywhere it will just disappear or it will fly off (yeah without anyone on it, must have some autopilot feature lol)

There is a mod on the Nexus which lets you pilot all of the classes from the start. I would recommend to play it through once before installing mods though. Besides you get almost nothing for selling it. Between two and three thousand credits normally.

[Xcorps]

The progression for this is pretty straightforward. You are literally trying to break out of the progression pathway and it's not going to work. Just move on, get the skills you need, and try again somewhere else. It's not any different than not having the skill to unlock advanced locks.

[Jaggid Edje]

Yah, that piloting skill seems really important for ships. I was customizing the Frontier about an hour ago and I couldn't do what I wanted because of my Pilot Skills. I have Sam assigned to ship crew, so I thought his ranks in piloting would count, but I guess not.

[chipartist]

Originally posted by ⓀⒾⓦⒾ‰:

a is the lowest tier b is mid and c is the highest power unlock from standard shipyards
finding a b class in the wild is just chance

Rare perhaps but not out of the question -- I'm just 3 ships away from a Class C license and found a Class C Ecliptic Claymore with an excellent layout that I cannot claim -- truly a bummer.

[AoD_lexandro]

Originally posted by chipartist:

Originally posted by ⓀⒾⓦⒾ‰:

a is the lowest tier b is mid and c is the highest power unlock from standard shipyards
finding a b class in the wild is just chance

Rare perhaps but not out of the question -- I'm just 3 ships away from a Class C license and found a Class C Ecliptic Claymore with an excellent layout that I cannot claim -- truly a bummer.

Ship happens.

[chipartist]

Extremely good news. I came back to the Ecliptic Claymore I mentioned above a couple of hours of gameplay later, and had by then capped the Class C Piloting skill -- and the dang ship was still there!! No need to build a Cadillac class C, I just stole one.

So, if you manage to take down a ship you cannot pilot, remember the Landing Site it is at and DO NOT land there with any other ship (that will make the captured ship vanish I think), then get your pilot's rating up and return to claim it. I do not know how long in RL hours the ship will persist, but I changed planets many times, built an outpost on a planet in the same system, and was still able to return and get my prize. I did not quit during that time, however, neither to Main Menu nor Desktop, so that's probably something to avoid.

Good hunting!

[Barrel Full of Monkeys]

so I have a quirky addition to this discussion. so I was on Andraphon looking for good spots to build a mining outpost. I ended up mostly killing spacers and I found a Spacer Hyena parked with a bunch of spacers on it. I hopped on and killed a bunch of them and got my looting on. I eventually found the cockpit and realized that I hadn't sufficiently leveled my piloting skill to fly it. Sigh. So I left and signed up for the UC Vanguard to access the piloting simulator and level that ish fast. Because I also had the Kepler R just sitting that I couldn't fly, also.

So I maxed out my piloting skill so I could fly Class C ships, and picked up that Kepler R. That took me awhile, though, so I went to bed after.

I decided the next day that I'd also go back to Andraphon to see if I could re-take the Hyena. It seems spots like that often repopulate with enemies if you leave and come back. To my surprise, the spacers were gone and the ship was still there. Even with some dropped guns sitting around. I figured I'd be golden to grab the ship. But I noticed that the "Activity" titled "fly the ship away or leave" that came up the first time was not popping up this time.

The first time, if I tried to climb into the pilot's seat, I'd get the warning that I lacked the piloting skill to do so. Sure. Now that I have the skill, nothing happens (I'm sure associated with the fact that the activity doesn't come up now). I've tried sleeping on the ship as well as off of it. I've tried exiting the ship, looking for missed enemies, getting back on the ship to locate missed enemies and the place is clear.

There are a few more things I'm going to try, but anyone have any thoughts about this particular ship?

[RunningBare]

I don't mind the idea that we need to earn the skill, its the way its done, its 2 dimensional, murder lots pilots and crew by destroying their ships, I'm just glad our airline pilots don't have to train for their pilots licence in the same way.

[Ihateeverybody]

In my own experience. It doesn't matter "Which" ship you start with. If you put in any time into Pilot and Ship Design skills you will still be gated by Level lock (some things won't show up until character level x). You will be buying something at sometime because all Vanilla ships are horribul in some way.

This last playthrough I managed (don't ask me how) to disable the engines on one of the Vasco Tutorial Pirates. I grabbed a CF Ghost before landing on Kreet. It has those 4 thrust Hopetech gears so I nabbed it.

[dtt.scanner]

Same thing happened to me... leveled up and then found the ship again.

If you get into the pilot seat and take off, it will "claim" the ship even without that pop-up. Fly it to a starport, register it, change back to your home ship, and then you can sell the ship for around 3-5k profit, depending on the value of the ship. Be sure to empty the captain's hold and cargo hold first, and before you fly to a system, make sure there isn't any contraband on board because they have zero shielded cargo. I lost a bit of my profit having to pay a bounty. I actually had captured a ship much earlier also, came back months later to find a pirate ship floating in orbit. Boarded when I saw it wasn't attacking. Looked around, no one alive, went to the bridge (no message) and took the ship back to Akila for sale... (forgetting to check for contraband). Less than 1k for the fine and contraband was confiscated, but I still came out ahead. I just hate the tarnished record.

There was another ship that I could not claim because a pirate had glitched into the wall somehow, and couldn't be killed or removed. I had to let that one go. Even if it looks empty, if you fire a round into the wall, it will "spook" anyone that might still be on board and you can see that you aren't alone.

[Barrel Full of Monkeys]

So I've written this one off to a bug that's unresolvable currently. But I found a way around it. I dug into the console commands. I'm already using a couple minor mods, so no big at this point. Had to use a few to make this work.

First, I had to lookup the item ID for the ship in question (Spacer Hyena). None of the item ID lists had this one, so the lookup was essential. Combo of Reddit and IGN covered me.

Enter the console with the ~ key
Type:
help xxx 4 gbfm
where "xxx" is the name of the ship you want. In my case, Hyena returned quite a list of numbers. The first was FF05242D, which spawned a Spacer Scarab Class A ship. Not the right one. Registered and sold. Second on the list was 0033CA65 which spawned a Spacer Hyena III, which looked similar, and good enough for me.

Now, this is going to spawn the ship in the ground, at least partially. So next, disable collision to find the entrance hatch or door.
Type:
tcl
and now navigate around until you find the hatch or door that needs to be opened.

It'll probably say "Inaccessible" so you now need to unlock it. Enter the console, and click on the door. You'll get some code pop up. You may not have actually selected the door, so use your mouse scroll to cycle through what's possible until you get one that says "Door" or "Hatch".
Type:
unlock
and now the "Inaccessible" tag should go away. Importantly, don't do anything yet. Click on the door until the code for your selection goes away. Now, close the console and open the door/hatch to enter the ship.

Once you're inside, find the pilot's chair and then turn collision back on.
Type:
tcl
and now you should be able to sit in the pilot's chair and take off to claim the ship!