u/M24Chaffee

2 and 3 aren't photography material but you get the point.

Context: there was a POI where I could see dead Ecliptics, and as soon as I tried to go in some 12 cockroaches jumped out of the ground. After I sprayed everything I had from afar, I used Sense Star Stuff and there were still two remaining. Now imagine what I'd have seen if I used the power before entering.

Anyway, I'd never seen a planet with such an intense and unique atmosphere color before. I was extra surprised when the planet had life. Still a lot of wonder to find in the galaxy.

I'll let the images and their captions speak for themselves. The circular thing (that doesn't even provide a connection point, which is also very annoying) was bugging me like hell. I finally decided to sacrifice some performance, grav jump distance dropping from 28LY to 23LY which isn't even such a huge change... and my beloved Polaris looks MUCH better now.

You really got to sometimes embrace the looks even if it means sacrificing some functionality.

The circle thing at the tail end of the grav drive of my ship always annoyed me, but that was the best I could install.

But installing a different grav drive that provides maximum jump distance of 23LY instead of 28LY, in exchange for getting rid of that circle and replacing it with a cool glowing orb, and also looks like the whole tail fins and the grav drive are connected? Absolutely worth it.

Doing the The Perfect Recipe quest. It's a sweet little quest. I love it when a game with huge scale and big stakes focuses on the smaller slices of life. So there my character goes, hunting an alpha Ashta, removing its huge scales and making a big steak out of it.

I wish the chassis could be like 0.5 habs longer, but it's what it is. I'm not very satisfied with how it looks but I think I did my best within the self-imposed constraints of keeping the ship's length within 60m and having the cockpit on the ground level, to preserve the unique identity of the Razorleaf.

I haven't personally been in all the available houses in the game, but my favorite thus far is the Stretch Apartment. Just the right size, warm and welcoming interior, etc.

And when I purchased the house, did some decoration and then went out to do other stuff, there it was: the top of my beloved Kepler's Comet. Right there waiting for me to take it to another adventure.

I know I agree with Mr. Ngodup, I made the right choice.

Continuing what has become my whole theme at this point, I have another ship that I've made only superficial changes to the exterior but completely reworked the interior. It's the Spacer Hyena, restored to the original Crossbow colors, and the habs all changed up and the bridge replaced with the Nova Galactic Drake bridge. Also some changes to the landing gears.

This time, I'm reworking a ship with a much, much wider interior than usual, so I took the chance to add large mess halls. And the most satisfying thing for a ladder-hater like me is that I was able to put not even one but TWO double-decker habs without sacrificing rooms with functions.

I've put the detailed layout in the shipbuilder and an interior tour.

And the best thing: if you noticed, not only can every part of the ship, all the way from the bay to docker to the pilot's seat, be walked to without needing a ladder... there is not a single ladder in the entire ship. And it still doesn't feel inconvenient. It feels like a significant achievement considering the ship's size and having 4 levels if we consider the bridge as a double-decker hab.

Finally, again as I always do, I tried to make the layout as sensible as possible. The 1st level contains the infirmary for whoever is injured and the science room for studies. 2nd level is the huge mess hall and engineering bay one one side, living quarter and all the other work areas on the other. 3rd level is the base of the bridge, with the top of the staircase on one side and the captain's quarter on the other, for the captain's immediate access. And then the 4th level is the actual bridge.

I was immediately wowed by the Crossbow as soon as I saw it, so it's lovely to modify it to a version I'm this happy with.

Right now, my favorite is the Narcissus. I've been running across them and noticed the really sleek shape, and I like Stroud ships. I like the Stroud theme of using a lot of structural parts that form sleek shapes and cover up the habs. Also they presumably contain functions like wiring and tubing. I like the shape of the Kon-tiki bridge too. Such a beautiful ship.

I ended up not buying one though, because I already have the Star Eagle and Kepler S which are primarily Stroud ships (and my modifications kept them that way). Hopefully I get one for a new character.

My favorite used to be the Orca and the unique variant the Narwhal. I didn't buy one, but I captured the Crimson Fleet version of it. I hated its absolute dogshit interior and had to modify the hell out of it, and I'm still not happy with the ladders. I'm assuming the store version's interior is mostly the same.

This one is really not all that creative or even particularly modified from the original, but I still like how it turned out and felt like sharing my process with it. Or rather, this post is less about sharing the ship itself and more about the kind of fun I have with the shipbuilder.

If you recognize my username you may know that I'm not particularly creative with ship designs, but really care about the internal space. Program adjacency and separation of spaces depending on purpose and/or hierarchy, how traversable every part of the ship is, whether a ladder hole on the floor get in the way of traversal, whether the docker placement is sensible and not in a high-security low-traffic hab, etc. I even care about having at least one toilet in the ship, if you can believe that. And I'm a strictly vanilla player except for some Bethesda-approved mods, so it's very difficult to lay out the ship in the way I want, but when I do manage to get it right it's all the more rewarding.

My favorite ship manufacturer based purely on the ship designs is definitely Stroud-Eklund, and receiving the Kepler S was a great treat. It's a beautiful ship that I really enjoyed modifying. I tried changing it completely, then changed it back, then tried adding my own spins.

One thing I noticed about Stroud ships that they use a lot of structural parts to cover up the habs. This means comparatively less room for habs and thus lower functionality, but much more protection for the habs. I don't know how much those structural parts translated to hull HP in the game, but that doesn't matter. It's a sensible design to cover up those habs that people live in them. Also surely the structural pieces aren't just solid metal slabs. They must have in-universe functions that aren't represented in the game, like wiring, fuel tubing, ventilation, stuff like that. Stroud ships are probably less utilitarian but safer and more robust. At least I don't think I've heard NPCs complaining about Stroud ships' reliability like I heard for Deimos and HopeTech.

So, originally I used the rear space of the Kepler S to house the 3x2x1 Mess Hall piece where everyone can hang out together, but I decided to sacrifice that and use Stroud Cowling 3LA-PT parts to create a smoother cross-section and cover up the hab. The theme I went for was "the captain's small private mobile home, where the hierarchy and crew roles disappear and everyone is just family". So the main deck is the living area and the lower deck is functionality. I tried a few combinations, like a Living Quarter hab plus a Captain's Quarter hab, and settled at the 1x3x1 All-In-One Berth for the main deck and 1x3x1 Engineering Bay for the lower deck.

And it turned out perfect. There's not a single annoying hole on the floor and ladder that gets in the way except for the landing bay hatch that's closed all the time, so the whole place is just a really nice, spacious living area. The ladder well sits in the far rear end of the main deck, totally out of the way in front of the toilet. It's a cozy little moving home for the captain's found family.

I also swapped the rear Taiyo landing bay with the Nova Galactic bay. Rear Taiyo bays are cool but I really hate having to run an extra 60m every time I want to take off from a city.

Compare this layout with my other ship, the Star Eagle-class Polaris. That ship is a gunship for Ranger missions, so I placed habs with functionality and hierarchy in mind, like the mid deck having a workshop and the top deck being a captain's quarter separated from the rest of the ship. Both ships are primarily Stroud ships with similar size, shape, structure and functionality, so they started off feeling rather same-y even with different weapon loadouts. But I considered their different roles and identities, which affected how I approached building their interiors. And now they're very distinguished, so I have tangible reasons to swap between the two ships.

The extra neat thing with this design is that the arrangement of the reactor and the Stroud Cowling 3LA-PT parts makes it look like there's actually an internal connection between the reactor and the nacelles. This has absolutely no gameplay effect, but a lot of vanilla ships actually do attach engines directly to the reactor (e.g. the Frontier) so making it look like there's an actual connection between the reactor and engines is something I care about as well, and I'm really happy with the outcome.

Finally, the ship's name is Kepler's Comet. :P And it just so happens that my longest-serving non-Constellation companion is Andromeda Kepler, whom I'm basically considering my First Mate.

Again, most of the things I considered have absolutely no gameplay effect beyond some minor convenience, and if you find that ridiculous I'm absolutely not going to argue. But I found that considering these stuff made me have so much more fun with the game's shipbuilding. It's really rewarding and downright addictive.

Taking selfies of me doing some space combat around a ringed gas giant gave me an idea.

I've uploaded my Star Eagle a few times, but now I finally feel I arrived at a place where I'm the happiest I can be with my ship and don't have anything more to change, except swapping and moving around some weapons and stuff.

I tried to make the ship live up to the "eagle" motif while avoiding making the bird theme too on the nose. My favorite bit is how the rear side spoilers invoke the image of an eagle's tail feathers, and the radiators attached inward on the engines feel like wing feathers, and those "tail" elements are in a perfect diagonal angle.

Then, I ditched the 30T Hauler cargo holds the ship originally came with, and replaced them with 4 da Gama cargo holds. This did significantly reduce my cargo size, but I try to maintain less than 2000 cargo units anyway so it wasn't a big deal. And in return, the da Gama cargo holds line up almost perfectly with the Taiyo landing gears, creating this very elegant bottom profile that leaves an arch under the wing, like an eagle with its wings on the ground.

Overall the outside shape of the ship is just PERFECT for my tastes from every single angle. The only thing that I'm unable to fix is the front of the wing habs being flat against the Deimos side fins. With the Taiyo landing gears in the way I don't think there's anything I can do, unfortunately. But that's okay.

I also took great care on the interior as well. Ever since the double-decker habs were introduced I like to make the ship's entire interior traversible without any ladder, and any hab that does need a ladder should have a clear separation of purpose, like the captain's quarter. So, walking into the first floor shows the ladder, and behind it is an infirmary which makes sense since a space cowboy's activity may involve rescuing civilians and the cowboy might need to heal themselves. Then up the staircase is three paths towards both sides and up. To the left (starboard of the ship) is the living quarters for the crew, to the right (port) is the workstation, and up the ladder is the captain's quarter where the captain gets rest in a hierarchically separated part of the ship, plans navigation, and holds crew meetings in the office. Very satisfied with what I was able to achieve with the internal structure as well. The only weird thing is that the position of the docker ladder makes it so that entering the ship via the docker leave me on the bottom of the stair, not on the second floor.

I've been really enjoying my space cowboy run (I have a really great, unintentionally created story about them by the way, if you're into creating background and lore for your player characters you might like this read) and I was really looking forward to modifying the Star Eagle, so I'm really happy with where I finally landed.

The Orca, and the unique variant Narwhal, is one of my favorite Starfield ships.

While trying to make a Stroud-only ship with a Kon-tiki tower bridge I had this silly idea of emulating the shape of the Orca with strictly the parts available on the Stroud-Eklund Staryard.

It's unfortunately impossible to achieve similar levels of smooth, but as silly as it is, I quite like this result. I decided to call it the Melvillei, after the extinct whale Liviyatan Melvillei named after the author of Moby Dick.

My best-written OC by far, Caerhyserath is a dragon who has integrated into the human society and works as an adventurer, specializing in defense commissions. At 40 years old she's barely reached adulthood. She makes her draconic nature no secret, and shows very different behavior compared to humans.

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She stubbornly refuses to engage in violence, always preferring to dissuade and disarm. Not because she thinks there's anything wrong with it, but because if she lets the blood get to her head she usually ends up causing damage (and death) she'll regret later.

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Strangely, Caerhyserath is never seen in her dragon form. Not only does she exclusively live and fight in human form, even when she has to rush to save her friends she never undoes her polymorph. Some, mostly other dragons, find this behavior very strange and suspicious, some of them going so far as to suspect she's not a dragon at all but a human who usurped a dragon's power.

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But she's not hiding her true form or anything, and seeing what she really looks like explains everything about her.

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Arts by:

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hibana_ztlv (https://x.com/hibana\_ztlv)

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MM12165 (https://crepe.cm/@MM12165)

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Pirata (https://x.com/pirata\_ex)

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This is a bit of an unusual upload because the external design is barely updated, and it's almost only the internals that I changed.

The Orca, and its unique variant the Narwhal, has easily one of the most beautiful appearances among all vanilla ships the game has to offer. At the same time, its internal structure is absolute dogshit. To quote a review on a different ship from a different space game that I think applies to the Orca as well, it's a ship "whose interior organizational strategy was likely derived from taking a handful of spaghetti and throwing it onto the floor".

Like come on, if you want to go from the cockpit to the docker you have to go down one floor by ladder, move to different rooms, and then go up a ladder again?

So, motivated by my disappointment after finally getting one of my dream ships, I decided to improve the interiors so that the path inside doesn't look like a handful of pasta. Also, a ship like this should make use of habs at least 2 units wide.

After a lot of tinkering and reloading, I finally got one that I'm happy with, with a single ladder connecting all three decks and straightforward navigation.

I previously posted an attempt at modifying the Star Eagle to fit my tastes, with a lot of drastic modifications. I still continued to tinker with it, but somehow eventually ended up coming back to a design that's much closer to the original, except that the nacelles are attached closer to the chassis instead of with the flimsy connection made with fins and radiators.

My favorite part is definitely the radiators and tail spoiler creating the image of feathers, and the diagonal angles of the two pieces lining up perfectly in the top profile, still without making the "eagle-shaped spaceship" too on-the-nose.

I love the Taiyo landing gears so I'm very happy I was able to find a way to put them back.

I finally have the Star Eagle again, which I've been really looking forward to revamping because it felt really unappealing to my aesthetic tastes.

Ever since the double-decker habs were added, I always try to use them and make sure the cockpit, bay and docker are connected without needing a ladder (unless the cockpit is a top cockpit with built-in ladder of course), and the Star Eagle was no exception. It made it extra hard to achieve a shape I was happy with though.

I wanted to 1) have some 2x2x1 habs for once, 2) invoke the image of an eagle diving with its wings half-folded but not make the avian look too on the nose, 3) try the idea of two Ares engines facing each other to create the image of tail feathers, 4) use long nacelles. I wish I could have made the nacelles trail far behind the main chassis like the Y-wing, but that restricted the interior space too much so I had to compromise. Overall I'm happy with where I landed. Feels a bit blocky but I don't think I could have done better, definitely not with those 2x2 habs.

I'm more or less happy with where I landed now. After adding some more equipments and weapons I think my Star Eagle is ready for some ranger activities.

Some other builds I derived inspiration from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7bnmQTufWo

https://www.reddit.com/r/StarfieldShips/comments/1tjz35l/tried_to_give_the_star_eagle_a_facelift

https://www.reddit.com/r/Starfield/comments/1t1vkap/updated_vanilla_ship_collection/#lightbox

I'm very inspired to build an outpost here with no functionality like resource extraction, just a vacation home.

The predators here look very creepy though, so I'm not sure if I actually will.