All Starfield ships and how to design your own

What are the best Starfield ships? These interstellar space vessels are how you’ll travel between the stars. You’ll come across countless ships warping between solar systems; most friendly, some incredibly hostile. You’re fine to settle on your starting ship and make it your own mobile home, but you’re just as free to make your own if pilfering one from angry space pirates isn’t your style.

Not sure what you’ll be getting up to in a custom Starfield ship of your own design? By adding cargo modules, you’ll be able to make a good go of amassing Starfield contraband to rapidly gain Starfield money. You might also get a little too invested in the Starfield photo mode as well.

This is a pretty exhaustive guide, so we’ve got some quick jump links if you know what you’re here for. Keep reading for everything, or to find out where to find the best Starfield ships. However, skip ahead if you want to see some of the best community Starfield ships for some inspiration, or how to customize your Starfield ship.

Best Starfield ships

Here are the best Starfield ships and where to find them:

• Starborn Guardian – Complete the Constellation Starfield missions and start Starfield new game plus mode.
• Star Eagle – Complete the Freestar Rangers missions that end with “The Hammer Falls”. This ship has the best balance of stats.
• Econohaul – Buy this at Paradiso, Neon, and Red Mile for 94,975 credits. This is a well-balanced ship for earlier in the game than the late-game ships and has a decent cargo hold size.
• Narwhal – Available at Taiyo Astroengineering in the Ryujin Building in Neon for 455,400 credits. This ship gives you the best defensive capability and a high crew count.
• Stronghold – Purchasable at Akila City for 400,125 credits. This ship has great defenses and a long jump drive.
• Silent Runner – You can buy this ship at Hopetown HQ for 390,150 credits. It has the best base cargo capacity.

While there is a large variety of ships you can get for free by completing missions, there are just as many out there to buy or take over. The ships above might not be easily accessible from the jump, but by planning ahead and saving up, you can make it work.

All Starfield ships

The vast majority of Starfield ships can be purchased from technicians who staff the various spaceports at major Starfield cities. However, several rare ships can only be obtained by completing Starfield missions, either as part of the main quest or while assisting various Starfield factions.

Before you decide on which Starfield ship you want to add to your fleet, it’s important that you make note of its class. While any spacefarer worth their salt can pilot Class A Starfield ships, Class B and C ships can only be piloted at Piloting Rank 3 and 4, respectively.

Here are all the Starfield ships and where to get them:

Best community ship designs

Whether you need inspiration for your own designs, or like to see what talented people on the internet have done with their Starfield ship builds. These are the best community ship designs we’ve seen so far.

Serenity

The setting for everyone’s favorite canceled show, the Firefly-class starship isn’t much to look at, but she’ll get you anywhere in the ‘verse you need to go. This design even has a step-by-step guide here so you can recreate it at home.

Normandy

With the amount of Starfield romance options, you’d be forgiven for thinking this was Mass Effect. Well, now you can bring your own Shepard flavor to the Starfield universe with the rather fancy-looking Normandy.

Pelican

Get ready to enter the atmosphere with the Pelican – arguably the coolest ship from the Halo series. Militaristic, sleek, and built for battle.

X-Wing

Lead the charge for the Rebel Alliance with this faithful recreation of one of the most famous spaceships of all time. A bit bigger than Luke Skywalker’s go-to runaround, but just as cool.

Forward unto Dawn

Redditor Vanta Genesis recreated Halo’s frigate Forward unto Dawn, it’s an impressive 100m in length and the perfect way to explore space.

Batwing

Storm the skies in the Batwing, this slick design can be made by following the guide here.

Planet Express delivery ship

You can’t be a fan of the future space without being a fan of Bender, Fry, and the gang, so what better ship to replicate in Starfield than Futurama’s teal-colored Planet Express delivery ship? The very creative SP7R has shared a tutorial for the build over on Reddit, but be warned that it could take some time before you have all the parts to build it yourself.

How do I customize my Starfield ship design?

You can tweak how your Starfield ship looks and feels by heading to any Spaceport. Just land on a planet, and you should see a ship technician close between you and the end of the dock. They can sometimes stand beside a Trade Authority kiosk, too.

Interacting with a ship technician will load up a couple of ways to interact with your ships. You can either request that they repair your current ship, register a new ship and store your previous one, buy a whole new ship, or customize and modify a ship in your collection.

You can swap out certain systems and mobiles by paying the difference via a ship technician, but their inventory can be limiting. You’ll also sometimes need to invest in specific Starfield skills to apply the changes. Select Starfield companions will work just as well.

The default view will always swap a new part with its old counterpart, retaining your ship’s general look and shape.

Can I use my own Starfield ship design?

By entering the Ship Builder mode by pressing X on your controller, you can specify where you want each Starfield ship module to go.

This allows you to radically change the shape of your ship by stacking modules on top of each other, putting more between the cockpit and the hab rooms your crew uses, or adding more cowling to change the overall shape of your ship.

All Starfield ship stats

As Ryan Sears eloquently put it in the Starfield Direct deep dive, “Your ship is almost like having another character…” By heading to a specific location on most planets, you can tweak and customize a ship to suit your purpose.

From its outward appearance to its system parameters, the imagination (and credits) you put into your spacecraft will directly influence its capabilities and, in turn, where you’re able to go and what you’re able to do while you’re there.

When modifying or building your own ship, various values change depending on the modules you snap onto its frame. Here are the ship stats you can expect to tweak this way:

• Reactor
• Crew
• Jump
• Shield
• Ballistics
• Par
• Lasers

A simple example of this would be attaching the StorMax 30 Cargo Hold to increase your ship’s internal inventory space. Doing so will allow you to carry more materials back from an expedition, but you might need to adjust other parameters for your ship to deal with the extra weight.

Likewise, you can add more crew space by attaching additional Hab units to your ship. With more space for your team, you’ll be able to bring more NPCs along to help with things like your Starfield outpost efforts.

Can any Starfield ship design work?

Not necessarily; your ship has to be spaceworthy before you can take off. If there’s set to be something that’ll get in the way of your ship’s ability to take off, the ship design screen will list out various errors it detects in your schematics. You won’t be able to finalize your design until they’re all fixed.

What can I change about my Starfield ship design?

As well as the cosmetic design of your ship, there are a multitude of components you can add to your ship, most of which are required to take off from the landing platform. The ship components at your disposal are:

• Cowling
• Shield Generator
• Docker
• Fuel Tanks
• Grav Drive
• Weapons
• Hab
• Engines
• Cockpit
• Cargo Hold
• Reactor
• Bay
• Landing Gears

Can I paint my Starfield ship?

Using the Starfield ship design screen, you can change the color of various parts of your ship. In the ship design screen, you can press the J key to open the color menu – double clicking on a ship component will highlight the entire ship, where you can paint your entire ship in one go.

For more on Bethesda Softworks’ first new IP in decades, check out the Starfield planets you can travel to, the Starfield research projects you’ll want to take on, and the Starfield mods we suspect will keep this game going for lightyears to come.

Looking for more? While a good Starfield wiki can be a handy source of information, our new Starfield Database goes further. Starfield Db has full ship stats for the Starborn Guardian, Razorleaf, Wanderwell, and more, and offers you daily news, searchable databanks, and even interactive tools.