Star Citizen Ship Upgrade

As you walk up the stairs in Star Citizen, things start to get complex and more lethal. Ships are the main mechanism of the game that not only allows you to travel but also engage in space combat, earn a living, and pretty much do a lot of things. With the basic Ship you have from the start, you can’t deal with the next level of these things and require another route of upgradation. You might not know about upgradation in Star Citizen and for that reason, we managed to compile Star Citizen Ship Upgrade Guide to help you out go a notch up the ladder. So, without any further delay, let’s hop into the details.

Ship Manager

Everything starts from the management section and if you don’t know where to manage your ships, you pretty much can’t upgrade them. From the Vehicle Loadout Manager or Ship Manager, you can do the upgrades of various things. To access it, you will have to press F1, it will open the MobiGlas Window and click that icon with Ship on it to access the Vehicle Loadout Manager.

You can select various owned ships from the Right Side. Keep in mind that the ships with red locks mean they are in Read-Only Mode and can only be read about, you can’t change anything in them.

Note: It is important to know that these ships are only displayed when they are all currently stored at the location you are in. If they are somewhere else you will have to go there and open Vehicle Loadout Manager to access them. To know if the ship is here or not, you will see a small red lock next to it, meaning it can’t be accessed because it is either destroyed, wrecked, or for the reason above.

Below, we have all the Vehicle Loadout Manager Tabs in detail. This is the same for all the ships except Mining Ships like the Prospector which has that Utility Tab as well to manage lasers and sub-components.

Systems Tab

In the Systems tab, you can change the Quantum Drive, Shields, Powerplant, Coolers, and things like that. When highlighting a certain item, you can see an explanation of certain items in detail. Nearly every component has its Grade, Size, and Class, which can be seen below for each one.

Components Size

1. Size 0 Components are meant for Vehicles that are for Ground use like hoverbikes and so on.

2. Size 1 Component are meant for the Small Ships

3. Size 2 Components are meant for Medium Ships

4. Size 3 Components are meant for the Large Ships

5. Size 4 Components are meant for the Capital Ships

Class Labels

Class Labels are military, competitive, civilian, industrial, and stealth. Each one has relatively few changes in the overall stats that aids in the differentiation.

Ship Grades

Ship Grades determine the component quality; Grade A is the best and that leads to Grade D being the worst one so far. When you highlight a component, you can see that a component has a specific number below. It is in reverse, as the lower a number is, the better the component will be. You can put it in a specific manner; Grade A represents Number 1, while Grade D represents Number 4.

Vehicle Missiles Tabs

When talking about the weaponry tab, things get a bit more complex and detailed. We will divide the things and explain them in detail here;

Missile Rack: The Missiles are stored in a Rack on the Ship named Missile Rack. There is a number on the Rack that indicates the Size of the Rack, how many missiles it can hold, and what is the size of missiles in that Rack.

Guns/Mounting Point: For this specific category, you need to keep an eye on the Mounting Points. Click on it and the highlight will appear. You can see that the names of the points are given after their location on the ship. Below, you can see the Size of the Mounting Point. You can place the Gimbal Mounts for much better and assisted aim, at the cost of smaller Ship Weaponry.

Paint Tab

If you are one of those people who want to flex on your fellows, then Paint Tab is the most important of the bunch. In this tab, you can change the look over of your ship physically and that is all to this tab.

Miscellaneous Tab

In the Vehicle Loadout Manager, you can see various categories including the Miscellaneous Tab. In this tab, you will see a mix of various things that aren’t available in any other Tab. There isn’t much here in this tab except the details we just mentioned.

Most Essential Ship Upgrades

Out of all the Upgrades, some things are essential for you to climb up the ladder in Star Citizen. It is important to mention that Star Citizen is continuously changing with each update, so things might change a little up. Still, the concept is something that stays there on the spot, so it will help you out understand Star Citizen Ship Upgrade.

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You can purchase Star Citizen aUEC at a budget-friendly price from here.

Quantum Drive

It is the most important Upgrade to the ship you can go for. The default or the Stock Ship Drives are exceptionally slow and aren't much. In Star Citizen, the only thing you can’t get away from is exploration. You will always have to take your Ship out of the Hanger and explore the verse to move forward.

Quantum Drive, on the other hand, is the only way to quickly get away from one point to another. In terms of Quantum Drive, you should be looking for two things mainly;

Speed: This is the measure of how quickly you will travel in the state of Quantum or how fast is the drive.

Fuel Efficiency: While traveling on the ship, how much fuel will be used in a certain distance, or how quickly the fuel tank gets emptied.

In both of these things, the Atlas is considered the best all-rounder, as its speed is quite good and its fuel efficiency is reasonable as well.

Weapons

Traveling the Space, you will come across various enemies, and sometimes when you have to earn some aUEC you will do missions that involve Ship Combat. For that scenario, the Weapon Upgrade is essential.

The Stock Weapon Loadouts are not that great, especially when you are out there exploring the verse or doing bounty missions to earn a living. For the Upgrades in Weapons, you should be looking for;

Burst DPS: This is the maximum amount of damage that is done to the enemy if you hit every shot before the capacitor runs out.

Range: The amount of distance that weapon/projectile can travel and hit the target, doing damage.

Fire Rate: How fast the rate of fire is of specific weapons. You can call it the speed of the weapon with its rounds.

In our recommendation, Laser Repeaters are a good choice because they deplete the shield first and then attack the armor of the ship directly. They are good with both the long-range and close-range while allowing you to catch agile ships easily.

Most people go for Ballistics, but the problem is that they don’t have enough ammo and their cannons are exceptionally slower to catch any faster or skilled player. Finally, the Shotguns have the lowest range and can only be useful when used at a close range, which is not possible all the time.

Shields

In Star Citizen, the only thing that saves your Ship from Enemy attacks is that beautiful Shield. Yes, you do find it going down from time to time very easily, but it is because of no upgradation. The stock Shield is not that great and can only provide defense against smaller ships with poor weapon choice. Anyone with a little better playstyle or loadout will take that shield down along with you in seconds.

Here you should be looking for that;

Pool HP: It determines the amount of damage a shield can take totally before going down.

Regen: After being damaged, how long does it take to regain the Shield.

Damage Regeneration Delay: The time required before Shield Starts to Regenerate after taking damage.

Physical Absorption: It is the measure of damage a Shield can take before the damage hits the Hull. Here, the ballistic rounds are taken into consideration as they penetrate the Shield and sometimes hit the Shield Armor Directly.

The best Shields are currently referred to as FR Shields, namely the FR-66. They have good health, regen, and don’t get down often in combat. An update might roll soon that will change the working of the shield, so stick with that update to learn more about changes.

Buying, Selling, and Fitting the Ship

In the Star Citizen, you can directly buy items and fit them into your Ship, but they should be docked at the current location you are in. You can also transfer these items to places where you usually spend more time.

If you are pirated or something goes wrong with your reputation, you can lose these items in the transfer process. In another way, you can fir the ship directly from the purchase point and then fly to the location yourself, then claim them.

So, to upgrade a ship and fit the component directly on the ship, you need to head over to the Vehicle Loadout Manager in the MobiGlas by pressing F1. From there, you can select a ship that you need to fit the component onto, head over to the Systems tab, or an upgradation you need to perform.

There are various upgrades available, select the one you like Quantum Drive, Shield Generator, Power Plant, and so on. Further, on the right, you can select certain things in the genre and it will automatically mount the ship selected.

Finally, click on Save changes and Equip, so that you finalize the upgradation. Even if the ship is destroyed, the upgraded components will remain on the ship, until you perform another upgradation.

Final Verdict

Most people forget to Upgrade their Ships in Star Citizen, resulting in constant pushbacks like getting killed in combat, not being able to do missions, and can’t explore the verse efficiently. The process is relatively simple, you just need to open the Vehicle Loadout Manager and know which things to change from time to time. For that specific reason, we have here Star Citizen Ship Upgrade Guide to help you with everything related to Ship Upgrades.