Starfield is looking like a real sci-fi wonder from Bethesda, with spaceships at the heart of the much anticipated adventure. These space cars aren't just for show, either. From Bethesda's pre-release interviews and presentations it's clear that there are a lot of granular stats making up the various Starfield ships.
Starfield factions: Find a cause to quest for
Starfield cities: See the big spaces in space
Starfield companions: Collect cosmic comrades
Starfield traits: Give your hero some history
Starfield ship customization: Make your spaceship special
You will also have the opportunity to customize your ship with colors and modular parts to your heart's content. There are already a ton of options, and we saw lots more at Starfield Direct in June. Maybe you're interested in a ballistics-heavy bruiser for space combat, or a heavy freighter to haul all those unnecessary items you picked up. Maybe you just want to see what kind of ungodly mess of ship parts you can force Todd's game to make. The choice is yours.
Need help preplanning how to balance combat, defenses, and aesthetics with your future ride? Don't worry, we've got you covered with everything we know so far about how Starfield's ships will work so you're good to go when it drops in September.
How do you customize your ship in Starfield?
Making your ship feel your own is the most important step for anyone looking to be a capable space traveler, and so far it looks like players will have plenty of ways to express their intergalactic style. It all begins with a visit to the ship technician, who can be found at any spaceport and will let you buy, sell, and modify your ships.
There are lots of different ship parts, many made by different manufacturers with their own style. Each has its own cost, health, and mass rating, and some are even locked behind certain player skill unlocks. There's even a color picker for editing the exact hues on each piece.
In the ship design menu, players can tinker with a blueprint schematic with dozens of specs to help tweak it. Confirmed parts include: cockpits, cowls, cannons, engines, fuel tanks, landers, and reactors. Each part and paint job has a listed price though, so be prepared to save up for something nice.
The different parts don't just change the way your ship looks on the outside, but how they work inside. Add modules to install crafting stations, weapon storage and display, captain's quarters, habitat spaces for crew, and more. And it looks like you can build your ship pretty much however you want. At Starfield Direct we saw a ship that was assembled and colored to look like a giant mech, and another Starfield developer built ships that resembled animals, like a huge platypus.
Starfield ship stats
On the ship customization screen, Starfield shows players 11 pieces of essential data that communicate vital information about your rig. Here is a list of all of the main stats, from left to right:
- LAS
- BAL
- MSL
- Hull
- Shield
- Cargo
- Crew
- Jump Range (Light Years)
- Mobility
- Top Speed
- Mass
Our best guess so far is that these acronyms likely stand for lasers, ballistics, and missiles for weapon types. The hull and shield likely contribute to your ship's health. There's a number for how many crew members can fit on the ship, how far you can jump through space, how easily the ship moves through space, how fast it can go, and how heavy the ship is.
In addition to these identifiers, there is a small block in the top left that details the Reactor and Equip power, and six other bars. Those are listed as:
- W0
- W1
- W2
- ENG
- SHD
- GRV
These traits are a bit more obfuscated from the short clip Bethesda showed. We can make an educated guess and assume these are three weapons, an engine, shield, and potentially a gravity boost.
Is there ship combat in Starfield?
It's been confirmed that you can pilot Starfield ships in first person à la No Man's Sky, but how about fighting? Yes, there is also confirmed space combat in Starfield.
In an interview with IGN at Summer of Gaming 2022, Todd Howard said "[Starfield ships have a] little bit of FTL there in terms of putting how much power into three different weapon systems, then your engines, and shields, and the grav drive is what lets you jump, and sort of get out of some situations that you have to put power to."
Here Howard confirms multiple weapon systems, which could all handle differently. While we don't know all the specifics, there's a huge potential for different classes and builds like a tank, glass cannon, or utility ship.
