Summary

  • Some Starfield players have been encountering a bug that makes the landing bay door on their stolen ships inaccessible.
  • While the issue has seemingly been present in the game since its release, a new player report indicates that the bug breaks the game in some additional unexpected ways, like making one's crew disappear and locking a variety of quests.
  • Anyone who encounters inaccessible landing bay doors on their ship is advised to reload the game instead of trying to circumvent the lock, which is technically possible but won't help with other side effects of the bug.

Some Starfield fans have recently taken to social media to report an unusual bug that makes ship doors inaccessible, on top of breaking the game in a variety of other unexpected ways. Their experiences extend the list of known Starfield bugs that the fandom has uncovered to date.

The initial player reports detailing the issue date back to the first half of September, indicating that the problem has been present in the game since day one. The bug itself locks stolen ship Landing Bay doors by labeling such modules as "inaccessible," a designation that's normally reserved for purely cosmetic doorways that cannot be lockpicked or opened using any other means. As a result, this Starfield ship bug effectively prevents players from entering their hijacked spacecraft.

starfield planet crashes into moon bug porrima iii red mile
Starfield Glitch Causes Planet to Crash Into a Moon

A Starfield player experiences one of the game's most bizarre bugs, as the planet of Porrima III inexplicably crashes into the moon they were on.

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Starfield's Inaccessible Landing Bay Door Bug Is More Far-Reaching Than First Thought

However, one newly emerged player report indicates that the issue is much more far-reaching than that. Taking to Reddit, user tossaway3244 explained that their testing suggests this Starfield bug removes the stolen property designation from a hijacked ship, thus breaking the game in some additional unexpected ways. Among other things, the issue will reportedly lock all ship-related quests that require the player to take any kind of action with their vessel, simply because the game no longer recognizes any ship as actually theirs.

Although switching one's home ship in Starfield and using console commands can both reportedly circumvent the issue with the inaccessible landing bay door, tossaway3244's testing suggests that doing so will not resolve the underlying problem. For example, the lack of a home ship will make the player's entire crew disappear even if they manage to force their way into the bugged vessel. On PC, the bug is also said to break a wide array of mods that interact with the protagonist's spacecraft, including Rysel's Call your Ship and wSkeever's Ship Remote Control.

The Bug Reportedly Only Affects Stolen Starfield Ships

In conclusion, tossaway3244 warned fans against trying to use any kind of fixes to circumvent the inaccessible landing bay door bug if they encounter it, positing that reloading the game is the only way to avoid further complications that will completely break their playthrough. Since both their findings and past player reports on the matter indicate that the problem can only materialize after modifying a stolen vessel using the ship builder, saving the game before hijacking a ship and again before modifying it should be enough to avoid losing significant progress to this Starfield bug.

Bethesda has yet to confirm that it's aware of the problem. Should it manage to address the bug in the future, its fix will likely first roll out to Steam users in the form of a Starfield beta update before making its way to all players, which is how the studio has handled the game's patches so far.

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Starfield Tag Page Cover Art
10 /10

Starfield
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Action
RPG
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Systems
PC-1 Xbox-1
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Top Critic Avg: 85 /100 Critics Rec: 83%
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Released
September 6, 2023
ESRB
M For Mature 17+ Due To Blood, Suggestive Themes, Use of Drugs, Strong Language, Violence
Developer(s)
Bethesda
Publisher(s)
Bethesda
Engine
proprietary engine
Cross-Platform Play
no multiplayer
Cross Save
no
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WHERE TO PLAY

SUBSCRIPTION
DIGITAL
PHYSICAL
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Starfield is the first new universe in 25 years from Bethesda Game Studios, the award-winning creators of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Fallout 4. In this next generation role-playing game set amongst the stars, create any character you want and explore with unparalleled freedom as you embark on an epic journey to answer humanity’s greatest mystery.
The year is 2330. Humanity has ventured beyond our solar system, settling new planets, and living as a spacefaring people. From humble beginnings as a space miner, you will join Constellation – the last group of space explorers seeking rare artifacts throughout the galaxy – and navigate the vast expanse of the Settled Systems in Bethesda Game Studios’ biggest and most ambitious game.

Genre(s)
Action, RPG
How Long To Beat
20 Hours
File Size Xbox Series
101 GB (September 2023)
Metascore
86