Starship quick start

This guide takes you from an empty level to a ship you can fly, land, take into space and board on foot. It assumes Starship is installed.

1. Fly the included ship

1. Drop BP_Starship into your level. It is a Blueprint of AStarshipPawn, and it is ready to fly as-is: the lander mesh, vectoring engines, exhaust FX, landing gear and HUD are already set up.

2. Make sure the Enhanced Input assets are assigned: the input mapping context and the thrust, strafe, climb, roll, look, stabilize and interact actions. Sample assets are included.

3. Set Auto Possess Player on the ship so you fly it directly. (To walk up and board it instead, leave it Disabled; see Board it on foot.)

4. Press Play. Thrust to fly, and climb up or down to change altitude. Release the controls and the ship holds its position in the air.

Below FlyingElevation (5000 by default) the ship is Hovering: it holds altitude, stays level with no tilt or roll, and moves relative to the camera. Climb to FlyingElevation and it switches to Flying: it turns to fly where you look, with full tilt and bank.

See it all working first

The demo level is pre-wired. Open it to board the ship, fly, land on water, cruise into space and see the landing gear and vectoring engines work, in single-player and in PIE multiplayer.

2. Land and take off

1. While Hovering, descend to the hover floor, MinHoverElevation (1000 by default). The ship won’t descend below it on its own.

2. Keep holding descend. After LandHoldTime (1 s) the ship commits to the landing and moves down to its rest height, LandedElevation, over LandingDuration (1.5 s). The landing gear deploys and the ship is Landed.

3. To take off, hold ascend. The engines spool for TakeoffDelay (1 s), then the ship lifts off.

Where you land matters. Over deep water, or ground too steep for the gear, the ship anchors instead: it holds a hover just over the surface with the gear up and the door open. Shallow water lands on the seabed. Take off from an anchor with climb up, the same as from Landed. See Landing on water and steep ground.

3. Fly into space

1. Climb high enough that gravity falls away. The ship enters space.

2. With the engines online, the ship is in SpaceFlight, a fast zero-g throttle-cruise. Push thrust to wind the cruise speed up, pull it to wind the speed down, and release to hold the current speed.

3. Steer where you want to go. The held speed travels along the nose, so the velocity follows the ship as it turns.

4. Head back toward a gravity field. With the approach auto-brake on (the default), the ship probes ahead and sheds speed, so it arrives at MaxFlightSpeed instead of slamming in at cruise speed.

A ship that starts in space (spawned or parked there) is Floating: its engines are cold, it ignores input and it drifts. Hold climb up to run the engine-start sequence (the door closes and the engines spool, with no ascent), and the ship enters SpaceFlight.

4. Board it on foot

1. Leave Auto Possess Player on the ship Disabled, and play as your own on-foot character.

2. Walk up to the ship. When your character overlaps its InteractionVolume, the “Press [key] to Pilot” prompt appears. The key text is read live from the bound Interact action.

3. Press Interact. You take control of the ship, and your character is attached to it with its movement disabled.

4. Land, then press Interact at the “Press [key] to Disembark” prompt. Your character is detached at the interaction volume and gets control back.

Your character needs no changes: the interact binding is injected onto its Enhanced Input. The InteractionVolume is movable, so you can place it where it suits your hull. Other players who walk up to a piloted ship get the same prompt to board as passengers; see Piloting and passengers.

5. Use your own hull

The flight system is mesh-agnostic, so you can build any hull from the components.

1. Make a Blueprint from AStarshipPawn and assign your ship’s static mesh to ShipMesh.

2. Add **UStarshipEngineComponent**s for the engines. The included BP_HoverEngine (hover thruster) and BP_HyperEngine (main/cruise engine) presets show both roles set up. To make an engine swivel, raise its MaxPitchDeflection or MaxYawDeflection; both are 0 (locked) by default.

3. Add **UStarshipLandingGearComponent**s, one per strut, and place each on the hull: its transform is the mount point. Assign an upright sleeve mesh (EncloseMeshAsset) and leg mesh (FootMeshAsset), or start from the included BP_LandingGear. Set DeployDuration to match your LandingDuration.

4. Wire the Enhanced Input actions: thrust, strafe, climb, roll, look, stabilize and interact.

5. Wire the Blueprint events you need for your HUD, such as On Flight State Changed and Show Prompt / Clear Prompt for the board prompt. The included HUD widgets and prompt widget are wired to these events on BP_Starship.

Settings to tune first

Setting	Default	What it does
ForwardThrust / StrafeThrust / VerticalThrust	4000 / 3000 / 3000	Thrust accelerations (cm/s²)
Mass	1000	Scales thrust into acceleration
MaxHoverSpeed / MaxStrafeSpeed	2000 / 1500	Hover speed cap / lateral speed cap
MaxFlightSpeed	6000	Speed cap while Flying or Floating (cm/s)
MaxSpaceFlightSpeed	100000	Cruise speed cap in SpaceFlight (cm/s)
bStabilize	on	Flight assist: throttle-cruise when on, raw Newtonian when off
MinHoverElevation	1000	Hover floor: the ship won’t descend below it on its own
FlyingElevation	5000	At or above this elevation, Flying is enabled
LandHoldTime / LandingDuration / TakeoffDelay	1 / 1.5 / 1 s	Hold time to commit / vertical move time / take-off spool delay
MaxPassengers	4	Passenger seats

Thrust and speed settings are on the ship’s UStarshipMovementComponent. Passenger and networking settings are on the pawn.

Where to next

• Features covers the flight states, vectoring engines, landing gear, passengers and multiplayer.
• Troubleshooting covers ships that ignore input in space, landings that end in a hover, and engines or gear that don’t move.