How to design and build an unbeatable ship in Starfield

It's not cheesing if it works.

A ship sits on a rainy landing pad in Starfield.
Screenshot by Dot Esports

When you’re designing your ship in Starfield, you’ll have to keep in mind that several missions require you to succeed in space combat. As such, you’ll need the right build to waste some enemies in the stars.

Recommended Videos

At least starting out, space combat in Starfield can be rough. The enemies all seem to have you outgunned, it can be hard to come to grips with the omnidirectional movement in orbit, and it can be easy to get swarmed. You could be forgiven for just writing the entire system off and sticking firmly to terrestrial fighting, but before you do, it’s worth giving a somewhat unorthodox shipbuilding strategy a try first.

With one key principle in mind, you can make your ship functionally invincible and breeze through any fight. Crimson Fleet who?

Starfield‘s invincible ship design

As it turns out, enemy ship AI in Starfield will exclusively target the center of mass in space battles. It’s a decent strategy for landing hits on players and taking out their vital ship systems, but all it took was one enterprising Reddit user to ask “what if there was no center of mass?” A bit of tweaking in the Ship Builder mode, and we had our answer: a horrific-looking hollow cube that is nonetheless completely untouchable from all sides.

It doesn’t look pretty, true, so this is a strategy to avoid if you’re going for a more stylish ship build. If, however, you value function over form and don’t mind looking very silly at the landing pad, the invincible hypercube may just be the way to go.

The build itself hinges on using habitat modules, termed “habs” for short, to construct a structure without a center. You can buy these in bulk from any Ship Services Technician—really, the only hard part here is making sure that it meets all the criteria to be considered a “ship” by the game, which means incorporating all of the necessary modules like a shield generator, a Grav Drive, and a cockpit so you can actually fly the thing. It may be hellish to get around inside the ship with hallways stacked on top of hallways, but this is the price you pay for piloting the best ship in the Settled Systems, and I’m sure that frustration will melt right away the first time you get through a space fight unscathed.

While the example above takes the shape of a cube, any hollow shape will work with this exploit, meaning that if you want to fly around in an invincible donut of death, you’re more than welcome to. Just try not to get too annoyed by all the ladders you’ll have to climb to navigate your creation.

Author
Image of Grant St. Clair
Grant St. Clair
Grant St. Clair has been gaming almost as long as he's been writing. Writing about games, however, is still quite new to him. He does hope you'll stick around to hear about his many, many opinions- wait, where are you going?