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Warning: This is mostly a capture of a stream-of-consciousness
Reddit post, so please forgive errors and partial structuring.
Contents
Troubles?
If you're having trouble with ship building…
- You may be trying to build large, complicated ships too soon
- You may be using ship parts mods or ship building mods way too soon
- You may need more info on balancing mass versus maneuverability
- You may need an outline of how to approach ship part selection
It's better to be comfortable with the vanilla ship builder before
adding mods, and the first mod to add, after door auto-placement has
driven you nuts for a while, is Place Doors Yourself (PDY).
Maps of the Habs, Because: Doors
Note that the ship builder doesn't let you see inside habs while building,
so you really need something to tell you which spots in which habs make
good connection points. With, for example, the Frontier, if you connect a
hab to the Frontier hab on the front/left or front/right you lose the
research lab or the bed, respectively. Both of which are kind of
important. This soft of thing applies to lots of habs, and to most - but
not all - ship mods. So the more habs you have to choose from, the more
you run into accidently obliterating parts of them you want with doors.
I don't actually remember where I got these,
so please let me know if you're aware of the original author.
Here are some example ship habmaps.
Exploring Parts And Ships
Key Aspects of Building Ships
- Focus on core ship parts, not the ones added by mods, which often have
quirks or more complicated positioning requirements or lack habmaps
- Crimson Fleet Rearmed, for example, is fantastic, but mixing those
parts with normal parts is extremely weird from a positioning
perspective, especially for bay and landing gear, plus it expects you
to figure out its quirk
(like not having vertical hab connections as of last 2025),
so hold off if new to ship building
- Focus on all class "A" Reactor, Weapons, Engines, and Grav Drives at
first
- The Reactor class must be equal to or higher than the highest
Weapon, Engine, or Grav Drive class
- There are good reasons to have a class C Reactor yet still have class
B or A Engines (notably the 3015s) or Weapons (notably the
Obliterators)
- The class A 3015 Engine is the fastest in the game, so for any ship
with small cargo space, this is the engine you probably want
- You must (barring mods) not build more than 40m from your ship's
center
- With mods you can build larger ships, but landing bay placement can
get weird between the landed ship and the landing pad
- You can build surprisingly tall ships, but the odds of running out of
places for landing gear increase
- Landing gear can be a constraint - you'll unlock gear with higher
capacity, up to 4 (800 mass) pretty quickly, where you can stuff like 14
of them under a 4x4 ship, for 9600 ship mass liftoffs, or more under
larger ships
- Capturing a ship with these 800 mass thrusters is pretty handy at low
levels
- The hardest thing to add to ships tends to be cargo, which has the
most impact on other aspects of the ship, so don't start by trying to
make a class A ships with 4,000+ kg of cargo. Instead, start with small
cargo sizes, like a few hundred
- You can add additional containers inside your ship that aren't
counted against the ship's cargo capacity and don't affect
Maneuvering, but they also aren't linked to cargo for crafting - you
have to grab the items manually :-)
- (it's possible that some containers might link to benches you
built in your ship, i.e. weren't part of the hab, need to test…)
- Place Doors Yourself is essential if you want to control door placement -
i.e when the ship builder isn't putting them where you want it to and
you're tired of it's... um... creativity. However, this only applies as
ships grow, and PDY is nearly useless on small ships
- The icons used on connection points are subtly different, with weapons
only vs inter-hab connection points. To allow for a door, you have to
connect two habs' at their respective inter-hab connection points (and,
if using PDY, also add the door type)
- Yes, there must be a walkable path from the cockpit to the landing bay
and to the docker
- This means your habs should all be connected and your cockpit,
docker, and bay need to be connected to your habs. The ship builder
connects habs automatically if you don't have PDY enabled, but if PDY
is on you must place doors manually between habs (and for
windows)
Guidance on Parts
- The new (2026-08) StorMax 70 Cargo Hold and other game changes
obliterate the 1000 kg cargo mass threshold for using the 3015 engines
while keeping 100 Maneuverability.
- The 70 has a cargo-to-mass ratio of 6.5, 36% higher than the ratio
of anything else
- This means that 212 mass for 1000 kg (Polo 2030 e.g.) now gets you
3 x StorMax 70 for a 1365 kg base cargo
- Buoyant Insulators, also from this update, dramatically
lower ship mass, including cargo, improving Maneuverability
- With the BI, you can put 6 x StorMax 70s, for a 2730 kg base,
almost three times the pre-skills / pre-skill base before
- With skills, you can push your cargo capacity over ~4,000 kg,
still with speed 180 and 100 Maneuverability
- The only downside to them is they are limited to port/starboard
connections only without mods
- For truly heavy ships, you want a B or C reactor and huge engines,
specifically for maneuvering thrust
- That Slayton SAL-6830 that can be unlocked by a quest is great for
this, but comes at a huge cost to the rather hidden factor of boosting
and boost recovery. Simply put, they suck for boosting,
and boosting is how you evade missiles
- General points to keep in mind:
- Mass is the enemy of Maneuverability - cargo is usually the largest mass
- Cargo can easily be the single largest mass in a ship
- When picking parts, one can pick options one step above the
minimum required, so as to reduce expense on the next upgrade,
which also makes backing off easier if you end up with too much mass,
as well as saving credits in the long run
- For similar parts, more connection points is usually better
- If hull (ship health) isn't a concern use less massive parts
- Some ships will refuse attempts to rename them, or revert them after
you leave the builder
Using the Ship Builder
Overview of the process in the Ship Builder
- Add all the parts you want to add, don't bother attaching them yet
- Delete ship parts you don't want
- Then assemble them - focus on how habs are connected first, then the rest
- If you can't attach everything, an extra hab or structural part may help
- Be sure to assign your weapons, but if you have few than three, you
can ignore the harmless warning about it
The Process
- Pick… This just means drag your parts, loose,
into the ship builder from the side menu
- Your cockpit first since it adds to your cargo size
- Upgraded versions of a cockpit are more efficient at adding more
cargo than any cargo part, so they're always a win from an
efficiency perspective (note: mods may have exceptions)
- Your additional cargo size, pull in cargo parts early so that
maneuverability is more accurate when picking engines and other
massive parts. See the raving above about the StorMax 70
- Your reactor. Unless you're building a ship specifically to be
small, you basically want the most powerful reactor you have access
to, so make sure it's in your pile of parts in the builder.
Also ensure the reactor is within the scope of your Piloting Skill
- Your shields. Regen rate matters if you can avoid getting shot
long enough for it to kick in, but if that doesn't happen much with
your own combat style, you can ignore regen
- Your grav drives. Skills and crew improve your jump range so if
you may not need the range-30 drives to jump 30. Using less
massive drives helps your maneuvering
- Your fuel tanks. For a small ship, 100-200 is fine in the early
game, where you're still exploring incrementally. Later on, or for
larger ships, you'll want more for those cross-galaxy jumps (mostly
for convenience)
- Your habs. Habs with built-ins are quite nice, but you can go into
ships (outside of the Ship Builder) and decorate them with most of
the same facilities: beds, research stations, workbenches, etc.
Later you'll likely want habs to allow more crew and passengers, etc
- Your docker and landing bay. One of each
- It's convenient to have a forward facing landing bay, ideally in the
middle to front half of the ship, centered,
to match up with "front" of landing bays and pads.
However, you can put them in all kinds of
weird places and it's fine as long as it doesn't stick off of the
sides of the landing pads
- Docker placement is more nuanced. For example, in
space-capturing ships without the
StAStF
mod, you benefit
from a forward facing docker, because it makes it easier to find
and dock with your original ship. However, due to Starfield
liking to put you on 50% speed at undock, you have to turn
immediately to avoid hitting, for example, the spacestation you
just left.
With StAStF,
putting your docker anywhere is fine,
mostly being a choice about your view while docked and the
aforementioned forced thrust at undocking.
There is something to be said for the drama of
being able to see the ship you're docked with.
- Your engines. Ideally push your maneuverability up to 100. If not
possible, higher is better - preferably at least 70. Anything
below 50 would benefit from more turrets instead of just fixed
weapons
- Your landing gear. You need 1 thrust unit per 200 mass units, so
those big 4 thrust thrusters support 800 mass each.
Many light ships only ever need one big thruster
- Your Weapons. Or keep a lot of Reactor power free for escapes
- Always have a least one set non-missile weapons for ship captures,
shooting space mines, etc
- Large magazine missile systems are often great with 1 pip of power
- Turrets often work fine with 50% power
- You can have multiple sets of similar weapons, but they can't
be of the exact same model
(so SC-1 and SC-2 missile quads together are possible)
- EM weapons are surprisingly optional at the highest difficulties
until your ship
(thanks to Terran Armada addition of Ship Optimization Terminals)
becomes too overpowered
- Your Equipment One of each type, or only the strongest one works
- The Buoyant Insulators. Specially highlighted for good reasons
- This "equipment" device lowers your ship mass 20%,
directly boosting Maneuverability
- If you have access to it, add it before exploring other massive
components like cargo, engines, fuel tanks, etc.
- Check feedback from the Ship Builder UI
- Adjust anything you need to, some examples being:
- costs more credits than your have
- your maneuvering is bad, remove cargo, use less massive or fewer parts,
or upgrade drives
- lighter choices of Reactor (C/40 -> B/39 can save almost 60, e.g),
Grav Drive (try to stay above 23, calculated with your skill/crew
bonuses, to be able to make the required grav jump needed anywhere,
30 is the actual limit),
Fuel Tanks, and Shields
- Assemble everything This is all about connecting connection points
- Note: Connection point icons differ for generic, doors, and weapons
- Start with the cockpit, habs, docker, and bay, which must all connect
- Don't obliterate hab fixtures you want to keep by having
openings replace them
- Keep in mind that engines have to go somewhere, usually on the back,
when doing your hab layout
- landing bay and landing gear bottoms must all be aligned to match
vertically
- weapons may need some added structural parts to mount
- you may want to add some structural parts to have places to
mount engines, weapons, and equipment
- if using PDY, you must add parts (first in the Habs menu)
for openings between habs and windows, but do that last
- you can often just stick the grav drive, reactor, and cargo in random
places and be fine
- Check feedback from the Ship Builder UI about misalignments, ship
size overruns, etc
- Adjust as needed
- Commit your new design
How to Get a Ship
- Free! No effort!:
- The Frontier (Reactor A/14)
- Wanderwell (A/18) from the "Kid's Stuff" trait if you have it
- (mumble mumble…and that other one…) ;-)
- Quests:
- Razorleaf
- Star Eagle (A/29) - one of the near-best A Reactors
- Kepler S (B/18)
- Kepler R (C/24)
- UC Prison Shuttle (A/14)
- Dagger (Vulture's Roost)
- Datura (A/20)
- Dumas (B/18-22?)
- (this list is probably not exhaustive)
- Capturing: Hugely helpful at bypassing lots of incremental ship
upgrades, which cost a fortune. Capturing some huge ship with serious
Reactor in the "east" galaxy dramatically advances things, and is great
for giving you free ship parts above what you may have unlocked already
- Ground captures are easier, often trivial when the ship is just… empty
- Space captures are more involved, especially since Bethesda keeps
making it more difficult to capture a ship and keep it when you
return through the docker to your original ship. Currently you have
to start a Grav Jump in the new ship - then abort it - then redock
with and enter your old ship - then check that your new ship is still
in your inventory. This silliness can be solved with the mod Sit to
Add Ship to Fleet, but it's good to do the vanilla dance a few
times first just to say you can. :-)
- EM weapons are great for ship capturing, especially at lower
difficulties when otherwise you'd probably just detonate your target
otherwise. Counterintuitively, on the highest difficulties your
enemies are sturdy enough to take more non-EM weapon fire, making EM
a more nuanced choice, and also making it much easier to capture
ships with Guardians
- Update: With the game-breaking level of overpowered weapons possible
in Terran Armada, even on max difficulty enemy ships can be too easy
to destroy, making EM weapons meaningful again
- One can ground capture a starborn Guardian after Walter's
Artifact quest, then fly it while saving up the 300-350k credits for a
full ship overhaul.
You must be already on the wing (or similar) while the Guardian is
still landing to open the door (lower sill) in time to enter one.
Combat in them requires a totally different skill
set (close range, stunning ships, using a stunned ship as a shield,
dealing with weapon regen, etc), but capturing ships with them is oddly
satisfying (and easier on higher difficulties… um… after you adapt)
- Buying ships: A super expensive way to access ship parts you
haven't unlocked yet. Useful at low level when you usually don't
have enough credits to use it, nearly useless at high level
when you can build a ship custom better than any you can buy
Example: Evolving the Frontier for speed first
Here we assume we also want to retain the classic elements of light ship
- 180 base speed
- 100 Maneuverability
The phases:
- Early game:
- 3x Obliterators
- 1-4x SC-1 missiles (huge magazines), set for 1 pip of power
- Midgame:
- 4x Obliterators
- 2nd set of (different) missiles, also set to 1 pip for power
- 2+ x White Dwarf 3015 engines
- 1x or more StorMax 70 Cargo Holds
- Late game:
- Reactor C/40 or B/39
- 4x 3015 Engines
- 1500 unit shield (for regen) or 1600 (for slight higher base defense)
- around
1,000kg 4,000 kg (Armada update) of cargo in StorMax 70s
- Buoyant Insulators
- 6x Obliterators (full set)
- 4x SC-2 (upgraded from the SC-1 missiles)
- For the third weapon, missiles, EMs, or particle turrets
- Note that particle turrents work well at half power
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