How to Target Engines in Starfield

On your journey across the stars, you’ll bump into plenty of monstrous aliens, noble scientists and shady characters with ulterior motives, but you’ll also come across a great deal of hostile spaceships trying to put you six feet under. While the game does a satisfactory job of running you through the basics of piloting, it’s easy enough to gloss over the small stuff. So, if you’re curious as to how to target engines in Starfield, here’s the ins out outs of what you’ll need to know.

Targeting Enemy Engines in Starfield

First things first, you’ll need to unlock the Targeting Control Systems Skill from the Tech skill tree in order to use your ship’s targeting functionality. Thankfully, it’s one of the first tier skills, so you won’t need to unlock other ones to get to it. Once you have this skill unlocked, you’ll be able to target specific systems of hostile spaceships.

Next, during a ship-to-ship combat encounter in space, you’ll want to lock onto your target by hovering your reticle over the enemy ship. It takes a few moments for your ship to lock on to your target — usually, around four or five seconds or so. (Though this can be sped up if you invest further points into ranking up the Targeting Control Systems Skill.)

Once you’ve got a lock, a prompt will appear on your screen that reads “Target Lock“. When you see this press X on your Xbox controller or R on a PC to initiate targeting mode.

From here, you’ll be able to target the enemy ship’s specific systems by pressing left or right on the Left Stick and firing your weapons with RT, LT, and the Y button.

So, if you’re looking to disable your adversary’s engines, you’re going to want to focus your fire on the ‘ENG’ system. Luckily, time will slow down in this targeting mode, much akin to VATS in the Fallout series.

Once you’ve disabled an enemy ship’s engines, you’ll be able to dock and board the ship and take down the crew.

And on that note, we conclude our guide on how to target engines in Starfield. For more, here’s how to escape space combat quickly, how to power up your Grav Drive, and a general overview of the flight controls. As always, feel free to explore our related coverage down below before you go.