Star Citizen: How to Upgrade Ships
Even in Its Alpha State, Star Citizen Is Home to a Lot of Ships, and Developers Do Try to Add New Ones with Every New Major Update. However, What Makes This...
Even in its Alpha state, Star Citizen is home to a lot of ships, and developers do try to add new ones with every new major update. However, what makes this catalog even more valuable is the customization options that you get for each ship.
Veteran Star Citizen players don't really look at the basic stats of a ship, instead, they look at the capabilities of the ship for upgrades. Hopefully, upgrades mostly come at an affordable price in the game.
How To Get New Parts
The sole process of upgrading ships is quite easy, but what matters the most is to know what kind of parts and gears are compatible with your ship and how upgrading them would improve its performance in a certain area.
The customization options for each ship are different, but overall, you can change parts like Quantum Drive, Cooler, Power Plant, Weapons and Weapon Racks, Missiles and Missile Racks, Shields, Thrusters, and even the paint of your ship. Except for the last one, which is categorized among the cosmetic items and can only be acquired with real-life money, all other parts are purchasable using in-game currency.
In Star Citizen, each ship part is categorized based on its size. The bigger the size, the better the performance. So, smaller and cheaper ships usually feature Size 1 or Size 2 parts, while bigger ships could even have Size 9 parts. Knowing the size of your ship parts is quite important, as you will get to choose your new part from the options available in the same size. You can never upgrade the size of the parts. The best tool for knowing all the details about all the ships in Star Citizen is a database website called Erkul. This website tells you all the details about each part of your ship, from the size of the parts to all the available options to improve each part. You can even find the location where you can purchase your desired part with its live price. Keep in mind that some parts in some ships are not upgradeable.
For example, Missile Racks and Weapon Racks are among the parts that are only upgradeable in certain ships. Upgrading a Missile Rack will actually allow you to change the size of the part, but it doesn't mean an upgrade. For example, a bomber ship might have a Size 5 Missile Rack, but the base version is equipped with 4x Size 2 missiles rather than 1x Size 5 missile. In this case, you can change the Missile Rack to allow the ship to live up to its potential power. If you see a small lock icon on Erkul next to a ship part, it means that part cannot be upgraded. You can purchase new parts from different stores scattered around stations and major cities. Each store is usually focused on a certain series of parts. Once you purchase all you need, it's time to install the new parts.
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How To Upgrade Ships
Land on a station or city and store your ship via a Fleet Manager terminal. Now, boot up MobiGlass and open the tab with a ship icon called "Vehicle Loadout Manager". From the drop-down menu on the top corner, select your ship. The ships that have not been stored in the same station as your location, cannot be modified. After you select your ship, a number of new tabs will appear in the left column.
Each tab simply shows one part of your ship, and if you click on it, you will see the available options to install. In this example, we are upgrading MISC Prospector, which is a mining ship. As you can see, in the tab for Mining Arm, there are two options.
For installing the new part, all you need to do is to select the part and equip it. Then, click on the "Save Changes" button in the bottom corner to apply the changes. Usually, it should be applied instantly or within a few minutes, but if it takes too long, you can simply log out and log back in to apply the change. Keep in mind that you can only upgrade ships that you own. Rented ships cannot be upgraded.
Sometimes a part of the ship might be capable of carrying submodules. For example, a Mining Arm can actually be upgraded with modules even more. As you can see, we have already upgraded our Helix-1 Mining Arm with two modules. All mining-related parts can be found inside refinery stores. One last important tip is that you can even swap parts between ships. This means if you have two ships with the same part size, you can swap their parts with each other.
In order to know if a part already belongs to another ship or not, you need to pay attention to the smaller text beneath a part's name called "In Use". If the number in front of "In Use" is more than zero, it means that part has been installed on another ship of yours. Also, it's quite important that when you change an existing part with a new one, that original part remains in the inventory of that station, and you cannot access it from anywhere else.
Sarah Jenkins is a veteran tech journalist with over 12 years of experience covering artificial intelligence, mobile innovations, and digital ethics. Her insights have appeared in leading technology publications worldwide.
