These Starfield ships are ugly but nearly unbeatable

Too often in Starfield, the hum of my ship’s engine is drowned out by a sudden flash of explosion. My ship breaks apart in a single crack like a Lego. This is entirely my fault for a singular reason: I’m a terrible pilot. It’s possible that my shields were made from paper. In searching for tips to improve my flying, I found a solution that doesn’t require me getting good — simply create a ship that’s basically unbeatable due to its monstrous design.

Starfield players are sharing their ship designs on Reddit and other social media platforms, using the game’s robust shipbuilding tools to great success. Largely, this is showing off their sick designs, but two Redditors in particular have created these incredible, totally ugly ships that trick enemy ships so that they’re unable to actually target the structure.

Solace_of_the_Thorns posted the ship, called the Fat L or L-Wing, and called it “effectively immune” to enemy damage due to its asymmetrical L shape. “While puttering around space and fighting some pirates, I started questioning enemy AIm,” they wrote. “How do NPC ships target the player? They lead you? Are they aiming directly at the player? What do they shoot at? Wouldn’t it be funny if they aimed at center-mass?”

It turns out they are. They first created a hollow rectangle, but upgraded to the Fat L. There’s some theory involved:

So – your ship has a “midpoint”. Calculate the midpoint by finding the intersection of the two furthest points along the X-Y-Z axis. For most ships, this will be approximately the middle of the ship – but if you create an asymmetrical abomination like the above, it’s not. The Fat L has a midpoint that’s above and to the left of the ship. The Fat L is offset, and the midpoint of that ship actually lies in outer space.

If an enemy is targeting a particular ship, they will aim at the middle. Because the Fat L’s midpoint is in space, the missiles will just zip right past. The ship can still get hit by stray shots, but anything targeted head-on won’t. “Basically it’s a stupid-as-fuck and crazy-effective,” Solace_of_the_Thorns said.

It looks terrible. But it’s worth the effort! Solace_of_the_Thorns uploaded a video of the action. In the clip, you can see the main HABS ship, piled up high. Starfield’s habitat modules like living areas. From the side, there’s a super thin, long arm structure to make it L-shaped.

The second unbeatable abomination of a ship that maxes out the ship builder’s length, width, and height restrictions to create a structure that’s Just the square outline. Imagine the L shape, only much more difficult to navigate. The square ship was created by Reddit’s Morfalath. It is basically an endless series of rooms that are squared together. Somewhere in there, there’s a cockpit, engines, and landing bay. Finding these important ship parts is like playing I-Spy. It’s a beautiful terror.