Highlights
- Destroying ships in Starfield creates landing zones on nearby celestial bodies, adding to the game's interesting features.
- Ship combat mechanics in Starfield open up once the player invests points in the Piloting skill, unlocking advanced features.
- The auto-generated Spaceship Debris landing zones have consistent wreckage but vary in loot quantity and quality based on the number and level of destroyed spacecraft.
Destroying ships in Starfield creates procedurally generated landing zones on the surface of whatever celestial body is nearest to the resulting wreckage, as recently spotted by one highly attentive fan. The discovery of this feature adds to the already substantial list of interesting Starfield realizations made by players since the game's early September debut.
Like many galaxy-spanning RPGs out there, Starfield features elaborate ship combat mechanics allowing fans to partake in space dogfights. The system opens up once the player invests a few points in the Piloting skill, consequently unlocking access to more sophisticated vessels, as well as advanced features like module targeting and ship thrusters.
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But what many players might not have realized is that destroying an in-game ship will make the game spawn its crash site on the surface of whatever celestial body the spacecraft was orbiting prior to its destruction. This Starfield feature was recently highlighted by Reddit user sterrre, who demonstrated it in a brief gameplay clip that saw them trigger one such spawn on Thren, the third moon of Montara in the Cheyenne star system. To do so, the player merely destroyed one Crimson Fleet Haunt II ship that appeared once they entered Thren's orbit, which immediately prompted the game to generate a Spaceship Debris landing zone on the nearby moon.
Following some extra experimentation, the player concluded that the auto-generated wreckage is always the same, no matter the type of ship that was destroyed. Likewise, the game will create a single landing spot per fight, irrespective of how many vessels the player manages to down in a single skirmish.
However, the quantity and quality of the loot that can be found in the wreck appear to vary based on the number of destroyed spacecraft, as well as their overall level, according to subsequent player reports. In other words, the auto-generated Spaceship Debris landing zones might very well be worth checking out after firefights in some of Starfield's hardest star systems filled with high-level fleets, but should otherwise be safe to ignore.
Since hundreds of fans recently voted to send this discovery to the front page of the r/Starfield subreddit, it would appear that a decent portion of the game's player base was previously oblivious to this feature. Reflecting on their discovery, sterrre opined that they'd have preferred if the system offered a bit more variety in terms of the types of crash sites that it could generate, but still labeled the feature as a pleasant surprise. The modding community will likely be able to expand on this functionality once the Starfield Creation Kit is out in early 2024.
Starfield is available now on PC and Xbox Series X/S.