Starship FAQ

Which Unreal Engine versions are supported?

Unreal Engine 5.4, 5.5, 5.6, 5.7 and 5.8. See Requirements.

Does Starship work in multiplayer?

Yes. The whole pawn is network-replicated out of the box, for listen and dedicated servers, and single-player works unchanged.

Flight is client-authoritative: the machine piloting the ship runs the flight sim and relays its transform, velocity and cosmetic state (flight state, gear, door) to the server, which fans it out to every other machine. Possession, boarding and passenger seating are server-authoritative. Other machines interpolate toward the replicated transform instead of snapping, tunable with ProxySmoothingSpeed.

Is it suitable for competitive multiplayer?

Not for competitive anti-cheat. Because flight is client-authoritative, the pilot is trusted with the ship’s position. That is the right trade-off for co-op and session-based games, but not for competitive games that need to guard against cheating.

Do I need to change my character or player controller?

No. The interact binding is injected onto your character’s Enhanced Input, so your character Blueprint needs no changes. In multiplayer, board, ride and door requests route through that injected input and a runtime UStarshipRiderComponent on the character’s own channel, so the Character and PlayerController need no changes either.

Can I fly the ship without boarding it on foot?

Yes. Set Auto Possess Player on the ship to fly it directly. Leave it Disabled to use the on-foot board flow. See the Quick start.

Can I use my own ship mesh?

Yes. The flight system is mesh-agnostic. Assign your mesh to ShipMesh, add UStarshipEngineComponents and UStarshipLandingGearComponents, and wire the input actions. See Use your own hull.

If you don’t have a ship yet, BP_Starship comes with a complete lander mesh, vectoring engines, exhaust FX, landing gear and HUD already set up.

Can other players or NPCs ride along?

Yes. A piloted ship seats up to MaxPassengers riders (4 by default). Riders are welded to the hull and mirrored on every machine.

• Players board and leave through the same prompt the pilot uses.
• NPCs (and players) can be seated or released from Blueprint with BoardPassenger and UnboardPassenger, which run on the server.
• Anyone on or beside the ship is seated automatically at take-off.
• bPassengerExitRequiresLanded (on by default) keeps passengers aboard until the ship lands. Turn it off to let them leave mid-flight.

Does Starship need a gravity plugin?

No. Starship never links against a gravity plugin. It reads gravity through IStarshipGravitySource, resolved once at BeginPlay:

• By default, FDefaultStarshipGravitySource returns the engine’s world gravity, so the ship flies and levels in normal gravity and goes weightless in zero-g.
• Optionally, FGravityCoreAdapter looks up an external gravity subsystem by reflection. If it is present, the ship aligns to that directional gravity, such as a planet’s surface. If it is absent or cannot be reflected, the ship falls back to world gravity.

There is no compile-time dependency, so no recompile is needed either way.

What happens when I land on water or a steep slope?

It depends on what is below the ship:

Surface	Result
Water deeper than MinLandableWaterDepth (300)	The ship anchors
Ground steeper than MaxLandingSlopeDeg (20)	The ship anchors
Shallower water	The ship lands on the seabed
Flat enough ground	A normal gear-down landing

An anchored ship holds AnchorElevation (300) over the surface with the gear up, the door open and the engines hovering, so it won’t tip over on a slope or sink into the sea. Take off from an anchor with climb up, the same as from a landing.

How fast can the ship fly in space?

In SpaceFlight the cruise speed cap, MaxSpaceFlightSpeed, is 100000 cm/s by default, deliberately far above the atmospheric MaxFlightSpeed of 6000 cm/s. SpaceFlightAcceleration (20000 cm/s²) sets how quickly the throttle responds.

With bApproachAutoBrake on (the default), the ship probes ahead for gravity fields and slows down so it arrives at MaxFlightSpeed.

Can I turn off flight assist?

Yes. bStabilize is on by default, which makes thrust a throttle-cruise in Flying and SpaceFlight. Turn it off for raw Newtonian flight: thrust is an impulse, velocity drifts, and turning does not redirect it.

Can I control the engines, landing gear and door myself?

Yes.

• Engines: turn off bAutoPowerFromShip and call SetPower yourself. SetEngineActive turns an engine on or off, and UpdateFlightAlignment drives vectoring manually.
• Landing gear: turn off bFollowShipGear (or use the component on any other actor) and call SetDeployed. GetDeployAlpha reads a strut’s deploy alpha back.
• Door: call SetMainDoorOpen on the server. It is mirrored on every machine and fires On Main Door Changed.

How do I build a HUD for the ship?

Use the Blueprint events and queries. Events fire for every flight moment: On Flight State Changed, On Landing Started, On Takeoff Started, On Landing Gear Changed, On Main Door Changed, and the pilot and passenger board and leave events. For an approach-brake light, use On Approach Braking Changed on the ship’s ShipMovement component (select it in the Components panel and add the event from the Details panel). Queries such as GetFlightState, GetElevation, AreEnginesOnline and IsApproachBraking give you the values to display; GetElevation and IsApproachBraking are on the ShipMovement component.

In multiplayer, add the pilot and passenger HUDs in On Local Pilot Begin and On Local Passenger Begin. These fire on the owning machine; the engine’s Possessed event only fires on the server.

The included HUD widgets (for every flight state, including space flight and anchored) and the prompt widget are a working example.

Which platforms does Starship support?

You develop on Windows (Win64), and you can build for Windows, Mac and Linux. See Requirements.

Does Starship use any third-party libraries?

No. It uses only Enhanced Input and Niagara, which both ship with Unreal Engine 5.