Starfield: "You Are Not Authorized To Pilot This Ship" Explained

As they set out on their spacefaring adventures, players may find ships, board them, and get behind the wheel, only to be met with the message "." This message generally appears when players try to pilot ships other than their own. They may have a variety of reasons for doing so: maybe they just want to test out a specific module, or one of 's ship decorations. Or maybe they've realized the profitable potential of stealing and selling ships in .

But no matter why the "" message appears, it's inevitably frustrating. It's a barrier to progress, and the brief popup alone doesn't make clear how to get around it. That's not even to mention that the message is more likely to appear on some of 's best ships — the high-class freighters and tricked-out fighters that players are most likely to desire. But as frustrating as it can be to run up against an unauthorized wall, there's a fairly easy (if potentially time-consuming) way to get around one.

After 2,000 hours one Starfield fan has to manually log their findings during space exploration, pointing out a glaring error in the game’s mechanics.

The most common reason for the "" popup in is that the player character's Piloting level isn't high enough for them to safely fly the ship they're attempting to commandeer. Players can view their Piloting levels by opening the Data Menu (Tab on PC, Menu on Xbox) and navigating to the Skills screen in the upper-right corner of the wheel. Piloting can be found in the first tier of the Tech tab, the rightmost option on this menu, and the player can see how many levels they've gained in it by rolling over its icon.

Every ship in has an inherent class that matches up with a certain Piloting level. In essence, the player character must be at or above a certain level in order to gain authorization to fly certain ships. A ship's class is determined by its reactor, the most vital component for space travel. When building a ship in , players can only use parts at or below the level of the