Your Guide to Starfield Ship Building

Before you jump into all of Starfield‘s incredible interstellar gameplay, you must get your spaceship set up and ready.

Here at Overclockers UK, we’re taking you step-by-step through all the different parts of spaceship building and customisation in Starfield, ensuring that everything on your pre-flight checklist is all ticked off. 

Starfield Ship Building Step-by-Step 

Your spaceship is at the centre of all the gameplay in Starfield. Without a sturdy cockpit to sit in, you can’t embark on your thrilling adventures to hunt down those rare artefacts, gather mysterious fauna, or even set up camp at other settlements.  

Before you become a spaceship captain, you’ll need to level up some of your skills first such as starship design and piloting. Without a high enough piloting skill you won’t be able to control certain ships such as B and C class. Next, you’ll also need to visit a ship technician, who you can find at every spaceport across the galaxy. Here you can purchase, sell, and modify your spaceships to ensure you’ve got everything you need for your next mission. Don’t forget that all important crew to keep your ship functioning in tip top shape!  

It’s important to remember as well that ship building isn’t cheap. It’ll require plenty of credits to make all those important upgrades and cosmetic features you want.

First up, let’s go over the spaceship essentials.  

Spaceship Essentials 

To take to the stars, you need some essential spaceship components. This includes: 

• Engines  
• Cargo Hold  
• Cockpit  
• Landing Gears  
• Bay  
• Fuel Tanks  

Each aspect of your ship plays a vital role in spaceflight. If you don’t have a certain component, you are limited in what you can do. For example, no cargo hold means you can’t plunder all those various worlds you visit. 

Spaceship Stats

Your spaceship will feature specific stats that tell you key information about your ship. This includes health, flight, cargo load capacity, fuel consumption, and how far you can travel between star systems.  

When designing your spaceship, you’ll need to make sure your ship’s stats are balanced and suit the type of craft you’re trying to create. Adding new modules or components to your ship will affect the overall mass, making your ship heavier and ultimately harder to fly. A speedy high-powered fighting craft needs to have top-quality shields for increased health, be able to travel far, and hold lots of fuel. However, if you want to create the ultimate cargo ship for all those artefacts and resources, your storage space will need to be pretty hefty to keep up with all your gathering. 

The most important ship stats are class, mass, mobility, and cargo. All of which have an impact on gameplay.

Class

There are different classes of ship which is determined by its reactor. When you make any modifications to your ship you’ll need to ensure that your reactor matches them. For example, for B-class parts, you’ll need a B-class reactor.

Spaceship Customisation

Adding your unique touch to your spaceship is essential for any space traveller. Starfield comes with plenty of customisation options for your spaceship for you to experiment with. This includes modifying the colour, adding new ship modules, and much more. Certain customisations will feature their own cost, health, and mass rating, with some even being locked behind player skill levels. You’ll need to venture further into the galaxy if you want to get your hands on some very special ship modifications.  

There are two ways you can customise and modify the components of your spaceship. You can simply select the individual piece you wish to upgrade, such as the weapons or shields. Alternatively, utilise the intelligent ship building mode, for greater control over your modifications.  

Ship Building Mode

In the in-depth ship building mode, you can customise every single aspect of your spaceship, whether you want to upgrade the systems, the layout of your ship, or even its style and colour scheme. Some modifications will offer you huge advantages, such as longer space jumps, more room for your expanding crew, or improved cargo holds so you can hold more bounty.  

What’s more, you can add dedicated modules that alter what you can do inside your spaceship. Want to display all your powerful weaponry? You’ll need a weapons module to store and show them off. Or perhaps you want to utilise all your precious resources and craft on-the-go? Add a crafting module!  

Any new modules, upgrades, or parts of your spaceship simply snap together like huge mechanical pieces of Lego, for that realistic ‘NASA-punk esque’ look and feel to your spacecraft. To add any new module to your ship, simply look out for blue highlighted snap points. 

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