Starfield mod lets you pilot your ship by remote control, even when you're not on board
Summon or dismiss your ship while exploring a planet, and have it take off or land when you're not in the cockpit.
The best part of Starfield is undeniably your spaceship, which can be customized or built from scratch to look like anything from a cute little ladybug to a massive Star Destroyer.
So it's kind of a shame you don't have more control over your ship in Starfield. You can fight battles while hovering in orbit, but once you're inside a planet's atmosphere, all you can really do is watch your ship land and take off in a cinematic sequence. Our mobile space bases should be able to do more than that, shouldn't they?
Now they can. The Summoning of Ship mod by modder wSkeever gives your character something every futuristic space traveler should have: a multipurpose remote control. Now you can take off and land your ship while you're not even on it. Or, while you're on it but not sitting in the cockpit. Cool.
With the mod installed, you can take out your remote control and summon your ship to your location, whenever you are on the planet you're exploring (provided there's a decent amount of flat ground or a landing pad nearby). Just poke a button and look up: you'll see your ship come cruising in for a landing right at your feet. That's better than calling an Uber.
Having your ship come to pick you up isn't really a necessity in Starfield, since no matter where you are on a planet you can fast-travel back to your landing spot. But if you're overencumbered or if there are enemies nearby, fast-travel is disabled, so I could see this remote landing feature coming in quite handy. Also, it's just cool to push a button and see your ship come zooming in from orbit and land right in front of you. No Man's Sky lets you summon your ship, so why shouldn't Starfield?
You can also use your remote to make your ship take off and fly into orbit while you remain on a planet. That makes a lot of sense: I wouldn't leave my spaceship parked on a planet in the Starfield universe. Parked ships get stolen all the time! (By me.) It feels much safer to have it orbiting high above while you're adventuring on the ground, and only call it in for a landing when you need to make a quick getaway.
Maybe the best part of the mod is being able to turn off gravity while you're inside your ship. Now when you're offworld you can float around in zero-G, which certainly feels more realistic than your ship somehow generating its own gravity field. I just hope you don't mind the mess of every single object in your ship (crew and companions included) hovering around and then clattering to the ground when you land or turn the gravity back on.
The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
Here's a look at the mod's features in action:
The Summoning of Ship mod is available here on Nexus Mods and requires another mod, Plugins.txt Enabler, which itself requires the Starfield Script Extender mod. Looks like you've got a lot of stuff to install to get your ship's remote working, so stop wasting time and get to work.
Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.