Ships are the primary mode of transportation in the Settled Systems. Ships are used to traverse the harsh conditions of outer space, carry cargo and crew, land on planets and moons, and engage in interstellar combat.
Ships are fully customizable and can be both flown and walked through, docked at starstations, and crewed with your choice of NPCs.
Frontier is the first ship you'll be gifted in Starfield after completing the tutorial mission and meeting Barrett and beginning your adventure into the stars.
The Class C ship Abyss Trekker is great for moving quickly throughout space, rendering it a solid pick for speed and space combat. Although it has limited cargo capacity, it also has one of the game's most balanced overall ship systems in terms of fuel, its 25 lightyear jump distance, and base 96 missile and 162 ballistics stats.
The Silent Runner is the best ship for running cargo, with a staggering 6060 cargo space, over 1,000 more than the next-highest ship. It also has a 30-lightyear jump distance and a 34 reactor, making this thing a powerful beast of a machine that's also not too shabby in its shield and hull stats.
This powerful ship is a reward for Starfield's New Game+ mode and has a high laser damage rating and a decent jump range. It can grav jump 30 lightyears away, and its Solar Flare Beam and Gravity Torpedo make it extremely powerful in combat. The game will continue to reward you with upgraded versions of this ship as you play through more New Game+ games. Note that while this is a good ship, you cannot customize it.
You can allocate power to different parts of your ship such as boosting power to your engines to make the ship go faster, or powering up the grav drives to shorten the time it takes to make a jump. If you fancy the fight, you can move power to your Starfield weapons and shields.
There are Starfield skills you can pick up that can also aid in space combat. It's recommended if you're a fierce flyer and plan to conquer the solar system that you unlock Targeting, which helps you zero in on enemy ships and target subsystems. This can be useful if the enemy allocates power to their engine or grav drives for a quick getaway, or if you want to bring down their shields to attack. Once successful, you can loot ships for goodies and turn the remains into scrap.
In the Ship Builder, you can add parts (called ship modules) to your ship, move modules around, delete things, and just generally design ships to suit your needs and taste. Choosing to add a component opens a new menu with all of the ship modules available at this location, broken into categories.