Ship building is a major highlight of Starfield, but one feature could transform it into a more comprehensive and engaging experience. Building on the settlement customization experience introduced in Fallout 4, Bethesda brought even more unique construction opportunities to Starfield with both outposts and ships. Whether trying to maximize a ship’s capabilities or focusing on the aesthetic of an excellent-looking spacecraft, it’s easy to lose hours in perfecting a creation. However, spending large amounts of time working on a Starfield ship can have the side effect of making the limitations of the system increasingly obvious.
As a feature that is ultimately one side mechanic of an expansive game about space exploration, it’s not surprising that Starfield ship customization isn’t the be-all and end-all of shipbuilding. Ship parts can’t be fully rotated, a system that makes sense for certain components like engines that might require a specific direction for function but feels limiting with others. On the flip-side, customization also ignores many physics concerns, making it possible to build weird Starfield ships that couldn’t possibly withstand the rigors of spaceflight for very long. For those focused on the visual aspects of creation, this could be a plus, while simulationists might prefer a more realistic approach.
Starfield Ship Interior Customization Is Lacking
Starfield ship interiors are determined overarchingly by habitats (habs for short) that can be purchased inside the ship builder function. Habs can be purchased from five different manufacturers — Deimos, HopeTech, Nova, Stroud-Eklund, and Taiyo, with each featuring different interior appearances. Nova is the only company with fully unique environments, as the others are split into pairings that only swap color options within the pair. The only real customization inside a Starfield ship is achieved by hand-placing items, although any such decor will be tossed into the storage bin every time a ship is modified.
Tweaking Interiors Would Improve Starfield Ship Building
Being able to choose where doors and hatches are placed in the interior of a ship could open up arranging the best ship upgrade options in Starfield in a way that the fully pre-fab system fails to. There’s nothing specifically wrong with the habs on offer, but being beholden to corporate designs is hardly the perfect space fantasy. Ideally, this could be assisted by a first-person mode within ship-building to check on custom placements. Placing knick-knacks could use a similar overhaul, as the storage bin issue can make interior design a somewhat demoralizing task for anyone who likes to change things around frequently.
With effectively endless possibilities for exterior combinations, the restriction of interior design to distinct hubs falls short of the cool Starfield ship-building potential on display. Although expanding this aspect wouldn’t be a purely necessary addition to the game, it would help to flesh out the options for an environment that appears more often than any given planetary location is likely to. The Starfield ship builder is a fun aspect of a game with plenty of variety, but opening up the interior options would truly fulfill its potential.
