View source for Comm-Link:Engineering - Ship Components Systems

[[Ships]] are the heart of [[Star Citizen]] and your personal ship will be the heart of your Star Citizen experience. It will be your home, your mode of transportation, your line of defense against pirates, [[Vanduul]] raiders and the dangers of vacuum itself… and what’s more, it will be an expression of your personal style and gameplay preferences. Every sci-fi fan has dreamed about customizing their own Millennium Falcon or manning the stations on their own bridge of the USS Enterprise, blasting off on adventures in space against evil empires and mysterious aliens. These fantasies are at the heart of our ship customization system: when you build a ship, we want you to feel like that ship is yours; that it’s not just a carbon copy of every other Aurora or Freelancer that you encounter. You will have a sense of pride when you pilot your craft, knowing that while there may be many like it this one is your own, unique in the universe.

[[File:Ship Hornet top modules.png|thumb|left|[[Hornet]] Top Modules]]

To accomplish this, we’ve spent a lot of time drilling down from the initial ship document that we released during the crowdfunding campaign. We’ve been working out what makes up a ship, how ships can be upgraded and how they balance against each other. There’s still a lot of work to do, but we’re far enough along that we wanted give you a glimpse into how these systems work.

Combat in Star Citizen is fast paced and dependent on player skill. There is no auto-attack or random dice rolling and pilots will not be able to buy their way to victory. One of the most important rules to remember is that the most expensive parts may not be the right tool for the job, and that even the most decked-out ship can be bested by a skilled pilot in a lesser craft. Our job was to create a system that honored this promise: one where upgrades meant building a ship that speaks to your personal preferences rather than one that’s simply the acknowledged all-around best option.

What we decided was that this style of play demands a different approach to items. You won’t necessarily find that “level 2” laser cannons are objectively better than “level 1” laser cannons. In fact, you won’t find the word level anywhere in the game – except maybe next to an elevator shaft. One of the benefits to this is that there is absolutely no level scaling. All the items in the game are there for a reason. They fill a role, and accomplish a specific task. In many ways, our equipment system has a lot more in common with legendary table top battle simulations than it has with modern fantasy [[MMO|MMOs]].

That’s not to say every laser cannon is the same or every neutron gun is equivalent. There are going to be different grades of equipment. As in real life, some companies will provide very basic versions cheaply, while others will provide expertly designed and constructed versions that are harder to come by. You make the choice between the affordable, readily available SpaceMart laser that may break down more, generate more heat and be less efficient… or the hand-constructed German-engineered version from a master weapons builder that will set you back a stack of credits in return for an especially reliable, efficient gun. (And you don’t even want to know how the laser cannons built by [[Joker Engineering|Joker]] could end up working!)

[[File:Ship Hornet front modules.png|thumb|right|[[Hornet]] Front Modules]]

What this all boils down to is that at its core, ship modification is a game of resource management where players will juggle space requirements, power consumption, heat load, signature, mass, CPU resources, durability and the cost and availability of parts. We’ve created a system that allows you to manage all of these individual pieces in intricate detail, but also build a unified whole that will behave the way you want it to without micromanagement during the actual combat.

We should also note that it is our intention to make all of this optional. The great challenge of game design is building something that is easy to pick up but difficult to master. You never NEED to drill down this deep to enjoy Star Citizen. If you’re itching to get out there and fight or explore or trade, grab a factory model, add the few parts that you absolutely need, and head for the stars. If you’d rather control every aspect of your ship’s functions and tweak every element of its performance until it’s just right for you, then we’re giving you that option here! As with everything else in Star Citizen, choice is the watchword: you play how you want, and we just supply the tools. We believe that many of our users will be interested in this system since so many of you build and tweak your own PCs… and doing the same for your starships feels like a natural next step!

What makes up a ship?

Here’s a look at some of the hardpoints and equipment that make up the ships of Star Citizen

* '''Hull:''' Hull is where you can mount additional armor for protection, reduce your mass for better handling or modify your cross-section to limit your signature.

* '''Power Plant:''' Power Plants supply the power that the rest of your ship will consume. It’s the foundation on which all other systems function.