Starfield ship customization lets you build and upgrade any spaceship you like from a bank of parts and components that will dictate weapons, engines and other stats. Whatever ship you create will function according to the building blocks you've unlocked, bought and used. It means players can affect a ship's speed, jump distance, armor and plenty more by construction - picking and using different pieces in a modular system that will see you balancing choice and compromise.
So it's not just a cosmetic system then, and you'll have to juggle resources and budgets to trade off between what you want, and what you actually can afford or create in Starfield. We'll go into all the details you need here, and cover everything we know so far about ship customization to make sure you're ready to build a ship in Starfield.
How Starfield ship customization works
Starfield ship customization is a modular system that lets you join together sections and rooms that all add certain functions. So you can bolt on engines, cockpits, shields, weapons, storage and so on. These components let you access key abilities and options but, more importantly, feature stats you'll have to account for as you balance your choices.
Starfield crafting and research seems to govern personal weapons and general gear but ship building involves buying parts from vendors from what we've seen so far. Choices will mostly likely change depending on what Starfield factions you visit, or which Starfield star systems you've accessed. The components and modules shown off so far have various corporate logos emblazoned on them, so expect different manufacturers have different characteristics - faster but weak, slow but strong, better firepower etc.
The versatility of of this system means you can make anything within the rules and budgets - sleek-looking fighters, bulky warships, squat cargo carriers and so on. If you want to forgo weapons or shields to add more engines and use speed to avoid a fight, that's looks like a viable, if dangerous, option. Plus, you could potentially rip things out and sell them for cash as long as you had enough left to take off with.
However, there is one limitation: certain components require ranks in a "Starship Design" skill to either buy or use. So certain Starfield skills progressions will affect your ship crafting.
Starfield ship stats
Starfield ship customization stats cover the following core aspects of design:
- LAS (Laser damage)
- BAL (Ballistic damage)
- MSL (Missile damage)
- Hull
- Shield
- Cargo
- Crew
- Jump Range (Light Years)
- Mobility
- Top Speed
- Mass
Hull and Shield obviously represent health bars for your ship, Cargo is how much you can store onboard, Jump Range governs how far you can travel between star systems, while Mobility and Top Speed affect flight. Some stats are a little less clear but LAS, BAL and MSL very likely refer to weapon and damage types, specifically Laser, Ballistic and Missile.
Beyond that, there are some slightly more uncertain ones. Some modules, like cockpits and habitats, include Crew stats but we don't know yet if that means they need crew to run, or simply cap the number of people it can take. Mass, on the other hand is part of every module in Starfield. Adding new components raises mass while lowering Jump Range and Mobility, suggesting that the heavier your ship is the harder it'll be to fly.
Starfield ship Reactor and Power Distribution
Alongside core stats for each ship, there's also an indicator for a "Reactor" along with "Equip Power", representing the amount of energy your ship's reactor is generating against how much is actually being used. There's a bar horizontal to it that indicates total energy production, and six vertical indicators above:
- W0
- W1
- W2
- ENG
- SHD
- GRV
We can make a good estimation of most of these meanings - three varieties of weapons under W0, W1 and W2 (likely Laser, Ballistic and Missile) and how much power they draw, along with the energy drain on Engines and Shields. It's GRV that's a little more obscure - but the descriptive text on the Fuel Tank component tells us that interstellar jumps from system to system are done by the "Grav Drive", which seems pretty likely to be what GRV stands for.
Starfield Ship modules and components
Below we've listed all the types of ship modules and components we've seen used, customized and utilised in the Starfield ship building system, along with the stat blocks attached to each one. The brief glimpses of the vendor stores indicated a large variety of options for each component, with at least eleven types of landing gear alone.
Cockpits
This module is obviously going to be the module from which the ship is operated, as the footage shows the player character sitting in the Cockpit chair before taking off.
Starfield cockpit stats
- Cargo
- Health
- Crew Slots
- Mass
Engines
We've seen two different copies of the same engines being stacked on the back of a ship, suggesting you don't just buy a single option - you can add as many as you're allowed. However, we've also seen adding Engines lowering the Jump Range while the Top Speed didn't change at all. What we have seen change with engines is Mobility. That might suggest separate modules for acceleration and speed, assuming the engine we saw being used wasn't a special case.
Starfield engine stats
- Class
- Engine Thrust
- Manoeuvring Thrust
- Engine Health
- Health
- Mass
Fuel Tanks
Fuel Tanks specifically store the Helium-3 needed for the ship's Grav Drive, used for the long-distance light speed jumps from system to system. Larger tanks allow for further, or more frequent jumps before refueling.
Starfield fuels tank stats
- Grav Jump Fuel
- Health
- Mass
"Hab" Habitat Module/Control Stations
"Hab" modules are the connective pieces around which your ship appears to be built. That includes a larger "Control Station" section, which is also a Habitat Module clearly with a central role in the ship's functioning. Crucially, these hold space for crewmembers on your ship.
Starfield Habitat Module stats
- Health
- Mass
- Crew Slots
Landers
These components are the landing gear/legs for the ship that allow you to touch down on new worlds. We saw a few of these being tinkered with, some of which had different levels of skill requirement.
Starfield lander stats
- Health
- Mass
Cowls/Cowling
Cowls or Cowling for your ship appear, so far, to be basic decoration with a few stats attached. So they might also have an armor function on your ship's exterior. Either way, their only statistical effects we've seen so far are adding small amounts of Mass and Health.
Starfield cowling stats
- Health
- Mass
Cannons
One cannon has been seen clearly so far, the Mauler 104 - a stout-looking piece of artillery placed on top of the Cockpit. The actual stats associated with the weapon don't seem to indicate its firepower clearly, so it might be inferred by changes to the "BAL" stat along the bottom.
Starfield cannon stats
- Class
- Reactor Power Req
- Health
- Mass
Lasers
Lasers in Starfield look pleasingly 'real'. The Dragon 221P MW pulse Lasers we've caught a glimpse of seem like light focusing camera lenses rather than fancy zap guns. They seem to have similar requirements and stats to the cannon overall.
Starfield laser stats
- Class
- Reactor Power Req
- Health
- Mass
Reactors
Reactors appear to be one of the most expensive parts of the ship. Considering they will power and enable almost everything else, it's not hard to see why they're a big deal. The Crew Rating stat suggests that NPCs will be required to keep a Reactor in good form, and the unique Repair Rate stat sounds like it'll be able to fix itself (or it just represents how fast your crew can do it).
Starfield reactor stats
- Class
- Power Generated
- Repair Rate
- Reactor Health
- Health
- Crew Rating
- Mass
Customizing Starfield ship cosmetics and appearance
Players can, at the very least, recolour and paint their ship's hull, with options for colour hue, saturation and brightness. So far we haven't seen any options for purely cosmetic self-expression beyond that - so don't get too hopeful for colourful murals on the hull or fuzzy dice hanging from the mirror..
Starfield ship builds
It's clear that ships will be built both for a purpose, and from the limits of what you can afford or use. The "perfect ship" doesn't really exists, only what's right for any given player at any given time. You'll have to balance elements like firepower, defence, flight, cargo capacity and jump distance according to what they want to achieve. Some of the ship builds we were shown included:
- Laser-focused, balanced defence build
- Cargo freighter with high Hull and Mass
- Weaponless, shieldless ship with high Jump Range
