If you’ve ever stared at a row of docked ships at a space station and wondered how to switch ships in No Man's Sky without fumbling through 10 menus first, you’re not alone. New players often miss the clear, simple steps for swapping vessels, because the game hides very few tutorials for basic quality-of-life actions. I spent my first 10 hours of play flying back and forth to my freighter every time I wanted to swap my fighter for a hauler, before I figured out there are far faster ways to do it. This guide covers every possible scenario for switching ships, from basic docked swaps to remote summoning, plus fixes for the most common bugs you might run into.
How to Switch Ships in No Man's Sky: Basic On-Ground and Station Steps
The simplest way to switch ships works when you’re in the same physical location as the vessel you want to use, whether that’s a planetary landing pad, space station dock, or your freighter’s hangar bay. First, make sure the ship you want to access is registered to your fleet – you can’t swap to a random unclaimed NPC ship unless you first buy or repair and claim it. That rule applies to crashed ships you find on planet surfaces too, even if they look abandoned.
Once you confirm the ship is yours, just walk up to the cockpit and press the interact button. On keyboard and mouse, that’s the E key by default, on Xbox controllers it’s X, on PlayStation it’s Square, and on Nintendo Switch it’s Y. You’ll automatically swap to the new ship, and all your currently carried ship inventory will move over with you. If the new ship has less storage space than your old one, any overflow items will be automatically moved to your freighter inventory, so you don’t have to worry about losing rare resources or expensive upgrades mid-swap.
This method works for every ship in your fleet, as long as you’re within walking distance. If you keep all your most-used ships parked in your freighter’s hangar, you can swap between them in 10 seconds flat any time you’re on board. I keep my combat fighter, exploration ship, and high-capacity hauler all parked right by the freighter entrance for exactly this reason, so I don’t waste time walking across the hangar when I need to swap fast.
Switching Ships Remotely Without Being Near Your Vessel
You don’t have to be right next to a ship to swap to it, which is a game-changer for mid-exploration runs where you need a different vessel fast. The only requirement for remote summoning is that your freighter is present in the same star system you’re currently in. If you haven’t summoned your freighter yet, you can pull it up with your quick menu in 2 seconds, as long as you’re not in a restricted area like a planetary settlement core or deep inside a cave system.
To summon a ship remotely, open your quick menu (X on keyboard, down on the D-pad for controllers) and navigate to the “Summon Vehicles” tab. You’ll see every registered ship in your fleet listed, with small icons showing their type so you can easily tell fighters apart from haulers or explorers. Select the ship you want, and it will spawn right in front of you, as long as you’re on a flat enough open surface or in unobstructed space. The summoning costs are negligible too – only 10 units of tritium per summon, which is less than you’ll get from mining a single small asteroid.
There are a few small limitations to keep in mind. You can’t summon a ship if you’re inside a building, deep underground, or in the middle of a storm so severe it’s causing electrical interference with your scanner. If you get an error saying the ship can’t spawn, just move a few meters to a flatter, more open spot and try again. If you’re in space, you can summon the ship directly next to your current vessel, then hold the interact button to board it immediately, no need to fly back to a station first.
Adding New Ships to Your Fleet Before Switching
You can only switch to ships that are officially registered to your fleet, so if you just found a rare S-class ship at a trading post or a crashed high-tier hauler on a frozen planet, you’ll need to claim it first before you can swap to it. For ships sold by NPCs, just pay the listed purchase price in units or nanites, and the ship will be added to your fleet right away. For crashed ships, you’ll need to repair the launch thrusters and pulse engine first before you can claim it for free and add it to your roster.
As of the latest game update, you can have up to 12 registered ships in your fleet at one time. If you hit that limit, you’ll need to scrap an old, unused ship to make space for a new one. To scrap a ship, fly it to any space station and talk to the ship scraper NPC near the dock entrance. You’ll get a payout of units, resources, and random upgrade modules for the ship, depending on its class and condition. Scrapping low-class ships you don’t use is a great way to earn extra nanites early in the game.
Before you switch to a new ship for the first time, there are a few quick checks you should do to avoid headaches later:
- Check the new ship’s inventory capacity to make sure it fits all your regular exploration gear, like mining upgrades and shield boosters
- Transfer any high-value upgrade modules from your old ship to the new one to keep your travel speed, shield strength, and mining power high
- Make sure you have enough tritium and launch fuel in the new ship’s inventory to make a quick escape if you land in a dangerous area with aggressive sentinels or extreme weather
- Rename your new ship in the ship menu so you can easily identify it later when summoning remotely, instead of scrolling through 10 generically named vessels
The most common mistake new players make when claiming a new ship is forgetting to get in it at least once to register it to their fleet. If you buy a ship and then immediately fly off in your old one, the new ship won’t show up in your summon menu until you’ve boarded it for the first time. I’ve made that mistake twice, and spent 20 minutes panicking that I lost the S-class fighter I just spent 12 million units on, before I realized I just forgot to sit in the cockpit once.
Fixing Common Issues When Switching Ships
Even if you follow all the steps correctly, you might run into occasional bugs or errors when trying to swap ships, especially after a new game update. The most common issue is ships not showing up in your remote summon menu, which almost always happens because your freighter is not in the same star system as you. Just open your quick menu, summon your freighter to your current system, and your full fleet list will pop up again immediately.
Another common issue is missing items after you switch ships. If you swap to a ship with smaller inventory and can’t find some of your resources, don’t panic – the game never deletes your items. Overflow goods will either be in your freighter inventory, or in the overflow tab of your exosuit inventory if you don’t have a freighter yet. You can access your freighter inventory from anywhere using the quick menu, so you can move items around even if you’re not on board.
If you can’t interact with a ship you just bought or claimed, that’s usually a small temporary bug. Just reload your last auto-save, which you can do from the pause menu in 2 seconds, and the issue will be fixed 9 times out of 10. There’s also a multiplayer note to keep in mind: if you’re playing in a friend’s co-op session, you won’t be able to summon your own ships unless the host has enabled fleet sharing in their game settings. If you can’t swap ships in a multiplayer game, just ask the host to toggle that setting on.
Don’t let confusion over ship switching slow down your exploration of the galaxy. Once you get the hang of how to switch ships in No Man's Sky, you can swap between your fast fighter for sentinel combat, your large hauler for trading runs, and your quiet explorer for scanning rare flora and fauna in seconds. You don’t have to stick to one ship for every task, and swapping around to match what you’re doing makes the game far more enjoyable. If you run into any other issues swapping ships that we didn’t cover here, drop a note in the comments and we’ll help you figure it out.
