Starfield Shipbuilding; "How to make easy and always perfect interiors" 

Awesome! The game really needs to give us more control on doors and ladders, but this is a good work around!

The two biggest design flaws of the ship builder are that: 1. You cannot manually turn on/off connection points, despite that being possible in the outpost builder, and 2. There is only a single module with a staircase, despite a 200 year old colony ship having stairs throughout the entire thing. Ladders were a horrible choice to make the only vertical connection option for 99.99% of the ships. And, of course, not being able to see the interior of hab modules, to preview both the layout and how the doors and ladders change things, was just dumb.

I really wonder what the devs were thinking by obscuring what each hab contains and not giving people control on how they connect.

The easiest way for Bethesda to fix is give us the ability to manually put ladders and doorway, and that include seeing the inside of the ship when building

I rebuilt the interior parts of the Kepler R with all of this mind, when I realized that connections are biased to go through the companionways. So I now have a 5 deck ship with a single ladder and almost all module doors off of that single core. I stuffed the reactor and grav drive between some of the modules in order to help direct the traffic too.

You re a life saver man, i was fucking up my rooms so many times with ship being a maze, time to jump bakc in again

Taiyo has alternative hab modules that don’t have side ports. Making layout much easier.

This is incredibly helpful! I really appreciate you taking time and explaining this.

The "sub decks" are also a great place to slap down your ship's innards like the shield, reactor, grav drive, cargo, and fuel if you're trying to make a really sleek design. Put em there and then cover it with cosmetics and you're good. Only issue I have with this method is that I don't like having a ladder that goes more than one level up at a time. It's awkward to jump up and the animation takes so long since your characters stops at every deck regardless of if you want to.

This is nice in theory, and this does look very nice and neat... However, there is a slight problem in that this will result in a massive ship, and doesn't really work if you don't want that large a ship... A good alternative is the Taiyo habs, as many do not have door connections along their sides, allowing for only the bulkheads at either end being the only means of access... I do prefer the look of the HopeTech habs myself, but failing all else, I have resorted to using Taiyo habs to ensure doors only appear where I want them...

Fantastic design! It's crazy to me that this much thought is necessary to make it work perfectly when Bethesda could just make a quick, easy fix. I mean all it'd take is adding a view mode in the ship builder that hides the tops of the hab modules and let's you look inside each layer and add doors and ladders yourself. Oh well, until mods are released adding that, this is a great alternative!

Thanks for this! It made a huge difference to my ship-building ocd. I was going nuts trying to make all the habs work without losing the bathrooms to doorways. lol

So, I'm not a huge fan of the layout. It's still not as easy to navigate as others I've seen. I still subscribed to your channel though. Here's why: NOBODY is breaking down the technical side of ship building. They're just saying "Copy my ship". I want a RU-vid channel that does a deep dive into cosmetics and mechanics. I wanna know how it all works, even concepts I don't like because I may need those concepts to elevate my whole ability. I found that channel here. I can't wait to see more. I'd love a video on paint schemes that work well, or how to blend color or make more intricate part by part color schemes to create truly unique ships. That could be a whole episode. Or blending ship manufacturer parts. Or Weapon systems that match playstyle. Or maybe different styles of ship, a large battle cruiser, a small class c fighter jet, the cargo flagship, maybe some medium sized vessels or ships tailored towards game styles, like I'm a Homesteader. What Habs might I consider to help me towards my goal of scanning everything in the game? To say Im excited to tune in is an understatement because this is the first video I've seen like this. Big thanks.

I'm dissapointed to discover that after many hours in the ship builder that I must compromise my exterior design just to get the doors to connect properly.

This is a great workaround, whish I'd thought of it!! Will redo my already-redone Claymore II with the help of this video - thanks!!

Excellent work. This is so helpful! Thank you!!!

Many thanks Brother, was struggling a bit on flow, kept seriously losing and glitching my crew, lmao. Huge help, man, liked and subbed!!

I did something like this with the stacked 1x1 leading up, but this really explains it and helps me understand why it worked and how to refine it.

Thank you. I do not have a lot of free time to play and I really did not want to spend it figuring this out.

Great video. I painstakingly spent alot of time and credits constantly going in and out of the ship after modifying until I got my desired effect. In a similar way to this video, 3 decks with no touching modules.

I actually found a specific order of hab units in a single deck design which allows for all doorways to be spawned in a line. So, from the cockpit you exit, turn either left or right and all hab units are connected in one path. It all comes down to the objects within the hab modules. Some are door blockers and cause them to offset, so you just need to re-order them in order to properly align them.

Potentially cool idea for a future Mod...: A new Outpost Module that acts kinda like a Ship Large Landing Pad, but instead of being landable and take off-able for Ships, it's like a huge Holodeck in an enclosed structure where you have 2 Seat with Console doodads on them... The first one would act functionally like the Ship Builder except have the addition of the Ship Parts ya select through outta the ENTIRE Ship Part availability except they'd display like Holograms and a little Camera Drone you could toggle control of on and off that ya could use to fly around inside the Hologram of your currently deployed and positioned Parts and it'd have a PoV and FoV to scale of if ya were actually walking in the Ship Build so ya could actually SEE how the Interior is lookin so ya can discern what ya might or might not wanna change. Blueprints of these Designs could then be saved to be loaded into the actual Ship Large Landing Pad Ship Builder. The second Seat would be specially designed to be able to configure into a mock up of all the available Cockpits available and the Seat would emulate the Cockpit Seat's Controls and load up saved Blueprints. From here, the Seat would run in a way like Real Life Flight Simulators and you could try out flying the Blueprint through various kinds of simulated circumstances so one could look for any potential design errors or unforseen problems with how you went about your Build... for example if you wanted to get a feel for that Cockpit Model and its positioning in the Build plus your view, if you're satisfied with that Ship Blueprint's Combat Maneuverability, if ya feel like ya are having any trouble with maneuvering and lateral thrustering around Asteroids, etc.

If you want a more compact ship and still chose your layout you can place the habs down in the order you want to walk. The game choses what hatch to use to connect the interiors when you place them, not when you finish the build. It can take some trial and error but you can mostly pick what habs connect to what. Took me hours the other day to figure that out. I still dont have its method figured out really. When ever you change the hab layout you have to pull all of them back out and separate them so none of them are connecting. Then place them one at a time in order you want to walk. The game still can chose odd hatch placements and ladders. Modders will have this figured out in days when the Creation Kit comes out though.

Ah man... so helpful!! Thanks a bunch!

Pin drop moment as soon as you zoomed out, i have been using this cockpit and the hopetech tube/hab things to force a clean interior, what you have here is a dead clever work around!

Very nice. I never considered the use of those passage sections. Makes a lot of sense. I did something quite similar, though less ambitious. I wanted a central mess area my people could congregate in along with four hab modules. I arrayed them with a Nova Galactic 2x3 mess central, a 1x1 storage off to either side of that, and a pair of wings off of that created by a 3x1 and 2x1 living quarters on each wing. The mess has a 2x1 control room coming off of it forming a 'neck'. At the fore end of that neck, there is a 'slim docker' atop it. Just below that part of the neck is the rearmost portion of an armory, the front of which leads to the Ares bridge afore. Of to either side of that section is the front end of both a workshop and the captains cabin (the tail ends of those extending to the rear). The captains cabin I want personal easy access to for the bed. I want easy access to the workshop (Deimos so it also has the science lab) and in theory the armory if it wasn't so buggy as to be useless. Directly below that section that leads up to the higher deck, is the entrance to the top access landing bay. My ship can hold a crew of 11, has just two decks and only the one ladder. That ladder connects to the docking and the landing bay as well. My crew have ample room in an arrangement that makes at least a tiny bit of sense. My ship mind you is somewhat flat, very Star Trekie. I've dressed it up nicely though, doesn't look bad at all.

Really helpful video. Thanks very much!

Another tip, if you want to build a tall section and you want the ladder in a specific place, start by building all the habs in ladder stack first and cap both ends with a bay that you use a ladder to enter at the bottom and a ladder access port on top. You can then follow this guys concept to fill out the floors and you ladder so remain the same.

very nice interior. would love to see a new battleship build with this interior. keep up the great starfield content!

Did not know about the hab spines from hopetech, so thank you for that, this will help me heaps.

Thank you for this video!

My idea, which I'm scared to try because of the lack of control, is to have one stairway connecting decks 1-3 and one from the 2-deck cockpit. Definitely will try your method, thanks of the video!!

Central ladder habs are a good idea. Thanks for the video.

Great info. Thanks for the tips!

If you ever get lost on your ship, be aware that the compass that sits next to your O2 sensor will always have north to the front of the ship.

u dropped this king 👑😘

I've resorted to doing this too... to force the ladders and doors to go where I want them. Only problem is, the passages are absurdly heavy for what they are!! However, I wish we had L and T shaped passages to give us more options too. Good stuff, cheers xD

A very useful and worthy Ship Building Tutorial, Yet you suffer from that annoying tick inflicted on many Content Creators, you go spaz with the mouse pointer, its constant freeze-frame. Please don't rush a tutorial, you only need to slow the pace by a couple of mins, and it stops it being headache inducing. Kudos.

The option to choose where doors go and where ladders go AND where they are inside their hole, is a MASSIVE oversight.

Wishe there was a 2x2 vertical stair module or something

Gotta say thanks for this - could not figure out the logic of how connections/doorways worked, but have always been interested in shipbuilding. You made this very easy to understand.

This was badly needed, I was considering figuring out how the game attaches things and making a video about it myself.

Great video. I like the way you think. I have only dabbled with modifying an existing ship but plan to dive into a scratch build soon. I was too busy getting to NG+10 but now I’m on my final universe.

I build my ships using the _"Double-H frame"_ style and try to minimise ladders to just the one. Maybe two depending on the one from the landing bay. And a tip I use for building if I've not got a base set up is to build using a second ship. So one ship is used for flying, and the second looks naff. Has no shields or weapons until I find the ones I'm after, but is purely my build ship till I manage to get to the places where I can use all the parts. Then I really start building.

Thank you for this!

Once I got the bridge with a staircase I honestly don't care where the ladder is. I just built it so the entry to the ship is on floor 1 and I have just two floors. I have a walkway out into the wing, but really my ship is already bloated. The parts I really need are bed, cargo and pilot seat. While the workshop etc. are nice to haves. It can be fun to build it huge, but in reality it is just a hassle to find your way if you have to build large structures like you do.

I use Taiyo pieces alot since you can control their side connections really well. Plus they merge and look really cohesive so your ship wont look so moduler.

i always put computer core and computer control and captain room i think near the cockpit to make it more realistic.... before u enter cockpit you will walk in a room full of computers

I just went to Titan and rebuilt my Frontier into a Nova Galactic parts only, 3-floor ship with all the 2x3, 2x2, and 2x1 modules right next and on top of each other. Miracle happened and all the doors connected where they made sense. The only thing I couldn't control was one wild ladder in front of a shower in the 2x2 living quarter. Ugly but that's only one unexpected ladder. I did the "cursor over the port and attach new module" trick so I thought that told the game where I wanted my doors. I deleted all the habs and attached from scratch when I tried to correct the connection. So what I am trying to say is, tight connection is possible just keep trying lol.

that's nice, will definitly try to rebuild my ship now. Thanks.😺But i wish that we just had a setting to prioritise ladders in certain modules

I really wanna see more of these layout displays with the cut away. Has an awesome blue print feel too it

The inability to manually place doors/ladders or lack-there-of is probably the most frustrating thing about ship building. I discovered what you did with the layer stacking in specific ways to avoid connections and whatnot. Ships become like 2-3x larger, but at least the interiors make sense!

Great video! It just makes me angry that it has to exist when bethesda could literally have given us a way to choose where the doors are placed...

My brain hurts why does Starfield make it so difficult. Only been playing for two weeks so much to learn with building ships. Only level 17 though.

Very nice video, a central ladder is a great idea - until you fall down it :D

My eyes have been bleeding trying to get good ladder placement on a big ship. Turns out the solution was literally the most simple one. Just have 1 ladder. Don't even allow it to give you more ladders lol. The brain at 3am is really dumb sometimes. btw for anyone on PC there's a mod on nexus that speeds up ladder movement.

I was like who the hell designed my interior, it was me...

I just wish they would have made actually stairs in some modules, but seems to all be ladders.

Your can't fight the dragon of bad design, but you can ride it...

thanks carde! I'm curious tho as to how the ship looks like with this habs design. Do you happen to have a video where make a full ship with this design?

The placement of ladders and doorways in ship building is the single most frustrating mechanic in all of Starfield.

I've stopped caring too much about a big ship. I just really hate dealing with ladders. I made a large 1 floor ship and it worked well but in the end...i just decided to add a bed and bunch of crew stations...and that's it. Habs are cool but I can scratch that itch with outposts and with more benefits.

I'm experimenting with this exact same layout you have here, as I really like the Cabot bridge, but for some reason, the deck 2 companionway doesn't give me access to the next module and the two spine habs connecting to the cockpit...

Really hope they add stair or ramp options instead of ladders. The only ladders I have on my ship are to the airlock and the hatch. I’m using the bridge that’s 2-stories, but it’s only got 2 crew slots and it’s the only option for stairs.

In the moment I put 1x1 habs for ladders game stop to try put ladders inside my other habitation modules, even when it was one on the top of another.

I hate the lack of door indicators, since some habs dont spawn doors on all connectors. Ive made ships where you cant access a room at all because the places I expected a door were just walls. I couldnt enter my captains quarters at all on one ship.

Great vid ) btw, you CAN do loops inside. I even rec a vid (it's on my page) about it for another youtuber )

I hate using this deck because the game prio's the cockpit stairs over ladders which makes zero sense from an RP perspective. You definitely would not want the entire crew using the cockpit for through traffic.

Finally, a video that fits my display... LOL..

My level 2 is closed because it registers the lower level of the cockpit. So I’ve tried to change orientation but the only thing that works is if I remove one of the spines, breaking the connection from the cockpit.

We really need an interior editor and 2, 3, even 4 leveled 1x1 or 2x1 habs that have built in stairs / ramps to avoid ladders

Thank you, I will try this out. I am having a lot of build bugs and it is quite frustrating. 1: Ole Frontier ship that wont let me sell it. 2. a vaarun class C that i looted and its bay wont let me E enter ( inaccessible and its called pirate ship not its registered name) so I have to enter cockpit first. 3. 100% bought a A class ship to delete parts and remake with C. it saved but when i try to ship build, it has auto red unassigned part. 4: Won another vaarun C ship, only removed/ added weapons and upgraded the storage, the entry dock is fine except for a graphic glitch where its permanent 1/2 open..lol. All this is telling me that you are correct, that the pathing needs to have only one option other wise ya gonna have problems! ( that doesn't really explain my #4 though lol. Great game cant wait for mods AAAAAAND a feature to build ship with out loose misc/ aid items to F up your inventory when you switch home ships.

God I wish what you’re calling stairways were actually stairways, ladders are hell in this game. I have a similar build where my bridge is on top of the singular ladder in my ship. I just power boost pack half way up and then go to sleep while I climb the rest

For some reason, whatever I do, level 2 of this ship design immediately removes the doorway between 2x1 hab and 1x1 central ladder companionway as soon as I add the 2 story bridge.... Everything else stays locked and connected with proper doorways.... Any thoughts?

I think it's funny, after playing a hundred hours or so and not watching videos I have started to subconsciously move towards this type of design for all spaceships. It's simply because it causes less problems. I just wish we can choose our own ladders and stairs. I also wish we could do ramps. Because I doubt a cargo spaceship would not have a ramp at the rear of the ship to get to different levels. Because forklifts would not be able to move through ladders since they are just too big. But does not matter as there is no door big enough in game for a forklift even though you would think there would be one in a cargo spaceship.

Balancing interior and exterior design and function is frustratingly fun to me

I followed guides like these and it worked only until first edit of the ship, I just added some windows and bam, whole ship got rearranged, random ladder appeared and some doors were removed...they really should just add option to place doors and ladders

ive spent the last week in starfield litterally doing nothing other than trying to build a ship from scratch using that nova galatic cockpit without generating ladders, and also not using the corridoor connectors since I dont like overusing them. I sometimes question why Im still playing...

You can connect 2x1 modules however you like, they will be connected, all in one line and you don't need any companionways or any HopeTech connection habs - that's where video is wrong. But only if there are 2x1 habs and no companionways or any 2x2 or 3x3 or 2x3 habs. You just making it more complicated for no apparent reason. Unless you really want to connect 2x2 habs on the same deck, but this will make ship extra THICK. So what you want to do, is to build ship with 2x1 habs or follow the rules. Rules are: If you want to place wider or bigger habs connected to your cockpit, you need to use companionways and put them on different decks, because they won't be connected on one deck. With this (in video) 2 deck cockpit if you put any big hab, make sure to have companionway somewhere to create access and in the same place you need to put docking bay to create shaft with ladder. Each ship can have only one full ladder shaft to all decks, so plan your ship with one section of deck where every hab will be interconnected. Here is how i do it. I just recently built amazing ship with though out interiors using this exact cockpit in a video. I put cargo hall on the lower deck of a ship, and connect landing bay with it. So they are at the same level. Than i put 2x3 mess hall right above cargo hall. This will create a first part of ladder shaft in the place on the second deck where mess hall is. Then i put companionway (very important) in any area of 3rd deck above mess hall, so it would have connection with deck 2 (mess hall) and 1 (cargo hall). Wherever i put this companionway, that's where ladder shaft will appear. After that it is appropriate to put docking bay right above that ladder shaft. That's your 3 deck connection via ladder shaft. So, you enter ship, immediately see ladder shaft in front of you, and you can get access to each next deck. In my build Mess hall is 3x2, which mean it's completely isolated from any deck and can only be accessed via this exact ladder shaft. Which make sense, because it is placed right above cargo hall and is in the middle of a ship to where you can get access with ladder shaft. You can of course connect it with other parts of ship, but in this case ship might get into danger zone of 80m+ long hull. So to minimize that, i isolated mess hall like that, i saved about 2 additional tiles of ship for future. Deck 1 - 1x Cargo hall (3x2) trough which i access the ship, Deck 2 - 1x mess hall (3x2) connected to ladder shaft, 1x living quarters (2x2), 1x living quarters (2x1) which are not connected to mess hall on the same deck, but mess hall can be accessed via ladder shaft, 2x engine rooms (3x1) placed on the sides of ship, on the left and right side which are connected via nova-galactic "bridge" hab, so they are not connected to the hull entirely, but can be accessed via "bridge". Sorta like very thick Normandy. So basically on deck 2 i have crew compartments and immediate access to engines and ladder shaft. Deck 3 - 1x Armory (2x1) connected to the cockpit (creates a sense of security before entering ship's bridge), 1x Workshop (2x1) on the left side of Armory and Control hab with 4 crew (2x1) on the right side of Armory, then i have 1x Captain quarters (2x1) with immediate access to ladder chaft and 1x Core computer (2x1) and 1x Infirmary (2x1). In this build i have 3 Decks, ship main hull is 3 tiles wide + structures and other details, ship's sides (engines) are connected via bridge and are 1 tile wide + 1 tile from bridge. So basically it's 5 tile wide, but still looks sleek and with amazing structure and silhouette. Height is 2 decks visually, but 3 decks practically, all thanks to landing bay which is connected to hull horizontally. I used 3rd deck (that's practically 4th but visually still 3rd) for structures to give more character and silhouette. Looks amazing from exterior and in interior.

where do you get the hopetech hab spines? would have been nice to know where to get those.

Wait your build would cause a conflict between floor 1 and 2 since you have a 2x1 hab on top of each other next to your companionway, right?

I'm having trouble building sideways since it seems all modules are only oriented forwards/backwards.

I can't believe how angry I got when I realized he was calling ladders stairways.

Can we not use stair cases do we have to use a ladder

the parts are also level based. You see more parts at level 60 than you do at 20. Better to chill out and buy a good ship then wait until your leveled to go building your own.

Maybe I missed something, why doesn't the 2x1 on deck 1 (bottom) and the 2x1 on deck 2 break the flow? it looks like they are stacked right on top of each other, no? Does the companionway/central ladder just negate the game's desire to make a connection in those habs?

Appreciate the tip, but the games puts ladders in there, not stairways. But ya, I’d rather NOT have a long ladder because I find them clunky and slow. I’d rather have tiny ladders everywhere so I can boost jump up them to the next level. How do we guarantee NOT having stacking ladders?

May the algorithm bless you lol

I wish u could literally just walk in your ship and just PICK the different options it wouldve been way more engaging and cooler.

in my experience as long as you have one companion per level or every other level, the game will prioritize putting the ladders there

Why the heck didnt they name it ladder deck instead od companion way. Also what are the hallway spines you use? I havent seen them before?

now if you put windows on the habs you will loose front doors on the 1x1 companionways with the ladder

So i just built this ship for hours just for half of it to not spawn?

How are you enjoying the new update?

there is a difference between a stairway and a LADDER.²Bethesda needs to give us the control of where to put our doorways Like it does in outpost building.

Imo you should never have to try out-thinking the mechanic to get what you want, it's just plain bad design when that's the case. Not sure how to fix it, perhaps they can update it so when we select a hab we can "block" certain access ways from being used in order to get the paths we want

Can you show what the ship looks like stacked?

Where can I find the hab spines?

I tried this layout but game says the docker module doesn't connect to cockpit

Thats not entirely true, if you connect the landing point to the bridge to the dock first, that will be the main connection area the game makes. Then adding other modules onto that won't give you new ladders. That way you can make better paths through your ship.