Starfield’s May Update Was Good, But One Key Ship Building Feature Still Needs Improvement

Summary Ship building customization in Starfield has improved with individual item placement.

Frustrations with random ladders and doors in ship interiors hinder full customization potential.

Starfield's habs lack unique utility functions, but mods could be a way to improve the situation.

The May 2024 update to Starfield has been a step in the right direction for the game, but there's still a way to go before it can ever fulfill its full potential. Starfield's grand ambition has been subject to plenty of criticism with its launch, with a number of disappointing design aspects dragging down its ideals of space-faring exploration. As is the going rate for Bethesda games, mods may end up picking up a lot of the slack, but the official version of the game still needs to be strengthened for that to really work.

One area where the update did make meaningful progress is Starfield's approach to ship building. While customizing ship exteriors has always been fun, there originally wasn't much going on in terms of interior options. The update made it possible to place individual items and interior decorate rather than simply selecting from pre-arranged styles, introducing the possibility of truly making a ship one's own. This Ship Decoration mode brings some of the best features of outpost building into the ship creation experience, and the game is definitely better for the change.

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Ladders & Doors Are Still Annoying In Starfield

Ship Building Customization Has Some Serious Limits

Although it's certainly exciting to tweak ship interiors for the first time, it also has to be acknowledged that the feature still doesn't feel fully realized in some key ways. The biggest might be the game's frustrating approach to spawning doors and ladders, which doesn't offer the control over these fixtures that would seem like a given. It's easy to end up with a ship interior that just doesn't make a lot of sense due to errant placement, and they can actually take the place of utility features that could otherwise occupy those spaces.

This isn't necessarily a frustration for everyone, as puzzling together a Starfield ship interior that actually works can be an interesting challenge on its own. It definitely feels like a roadblock to truly custom design, however, and one that doesn't always work in the service of realism. The "NASA-punk" style of Starfield has its merits when the turn away from Bethesda's usual flavor of fantasy and sci-fi results in an interesting sense of grounding, but being able to build an interior with random ladders getting in the way of more practical design doesn't do much to help that.

Starfield Habs Should Have More Unique & Relevant Uses

Interior Design Doesn't Have As Much Real Impact As It Should

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On a more wide-reaching level, it feels like habs in Starfield should also have more fully-realized utility functions. Although some Habs have traditionally provided basic upgrades like expanded crew capabilities, it's always been a system that stops short of thorough implementation. The existence of a few habs that provide upgrades necessary for any good ship was never an interesting design incentive, and this approach can make choosing what habs to include an obligation rather than an actual experiment in customization.

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Unsurprisingly, the community already has answers to this situation that Bethesda doesn't seem to, and Reddit user some-muppet-online points out some possibilities for more interesting hab applications. Brig habs, for example, serve a purely decorative function, but they could be a perfect accessory to bounty hunter gameplay by making it possible to routinely transport prisoners across space. This is one example that feels like it was probably related to cut content during development, so it's always possible that this particular idea could be fleshed out in future updates or the upcoming Shattered Space DLC.

There's still no confirmed release date for Shattered Space, but the window was released narrowed to a Fall 2024 timeframe based on comments from Starfield director Todd Howard himself.

There's also just been a general lack of clarity surrounding the purpose of most habs in Starfield. The fact that some have relevant utility and others don't makes it difficult to understand which ones to place, especially when the utility that's there doesn't often fulfill the most logical or effective possibilities for a hab's concept. Offering better in-game explanations when selecting habs would be a start, but it's a problem that would also best be addressed by overhauling the hab system to make usefulness both more specific and more common.

A big part of the RPG experience is leaning into a particular kind of playthrough, and this is where a more fleshed-out hab system could really shine. Making it easier to design ships for specific applications could make the process more rewarding and keep different playthroughs feeling distinct. The bounty hunter example works just as well here, as being able to build a ship designed around catching outlaws and ferrying them to their fate would be a memorable option. Other options could gear ships toward research missions, medical strengths, or cargo transport.

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There's Hope For The Future Of Starfield Ship Building

Mods Might Do Whatever Bethesda Doesn't

The obvious answer to current Starfield ship builder frustration lies in mods, as tweaking functionality and features in this area is something that's generally fairly feasible in the modding sphere. Additions that work off of Starfield's recent change to ship building might take some time to start appearing in full force, but there are already some interesting options out there. Ship Decoration — Crew and Passenger Slots, uploaded by remosito on Nexus Mods, add some utility to custom ship decoration possibilities, and modder Skons tweaked JimSoon's Place Doors Yourself to maintain compatibility with the May update.

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It's definitely worth taking a moment to appreciate how much additional fun Ship Decoration offers in Starfield, which is something that the remaining failings of ship building in Starfield can't take away. At the same time, there's no reason not to ask for continued improvement to the game, whether that ends up coming from Bethesda's official updates or community mods. Starfield's getting closer and closer to the state it should have launched in, and getting things right could finally make it a game that even skeptics and disappointed players could enjoy spending exploring.

Sources: some-muppet-online/Reddit, remosito/Nexus Mods, JimSoon/Nexus Mods