Starfield - How To Increase Ship Crew Size

You're probably wondering how to increase a ship's crew size in Starfield. Depending on certain factors, your spacecraft can only have a certain number of companions or crew members aboard. Going beyond that limit can lead to dire repercussions, or you might need to dismiss and reassign your recruits. Our guide discusses the mechanics that affect Starfield's maximum ship crew size.

How to increase ship crew size in Starfield

There are three factors that affect the Starfield ship crew size:

• Ship Command skill
• Combined and complementary crew capacity in a ship's cockpit and habs
• Combined crew capacity in a ship's reactor, weapon, engine, and shield modules

Bear in mind that the limit is the lowest value out of these three. As such, if you want to have five crew members on your ship, you need to make sure that your vessel has modules that further increase the limit, while also taking note of the Ship Command skill's level.

The Ship Command skill

Ship Command is a tier 4 Social skill, and one of the best in the game. Each rank increases the maximum number of allowed crew members by +4/5/6/8. You can level it up further by completing its tally: destroying or boarding vessels when you have a certain number of crew members in your ship.

Combined cockpit and hab modules

We have a ship upgrades and modules guide that discusses this mechanic in detail. Moreover, you can't just install all sorts of parts from the get-go. That's because top-tier options might require a higher Piloting skill or Starship Design skill.

For the sake of clarity, ships can have multiple habs, but only one cockpit. Here are our suggestions for these modules:

• Cockpit: Kon-Tiki B-500 Bridge (sold in the Stroud-Ecklund shop in Neon) - +6 crew stations.
• Hab: Stroud Battle Station 2x2 (sold in the Stroud-Ecklund shop in Neon) - +6 crew stations.

Combined reactor, weapon, engine, and shield modules

The last factor that affects Starfield ship crew size involves multiple modules. Here's what you need to know about them:

• Reactors - Limited to one per ship; you can buy the SF, Pinch, or Fusor variants that give +3 crew capacity.
• Weapons - Each weapon grants 0.5 crew capacity. You can have only three model types, but you're allowed multiples of each variant. An example would be multiple Dangan Pb Cannons, KE-20 Cannons, and Mauler 104L Cannons. You can't add a fourth model, such as a Spark 750 Suppressor.
• Engines - You can have multiple engines, as each module adds +0.25 crew capacity. However, you can't go over the power limit (i.e. represented by pips in the upper-left corner of your screen). You'll have to decrease the number of engines, or get a better reactor.
• Shields - A ship can only have one shield module, and the part adds +0.5 crew capacity.

More detailed computations

To add more detail as to how Starfield ship crew size works, we opted to start from scratch. We removed every part of a ship, and we only included those that grant crew capacity. Take note that our Ship Command skill was at rank 4 (up to eight crewmates).

This is the first example:

• Reactor group: We have one reactor (+3), six weapons (+3), one shield (+0.5), and two engines (+0.5). These have a +7 value.
• Cockpit/hab group: We added a Kon-Tiki Bridge (+6). We did not include a hab yet.
• Total = Six crew members. This is because the cockpit group had the lowest capacity (+6).

Here's the second example:

• We continued with the above setup, and we added the Stroud Battle Stations 2x2. On its own, it grants +6.
• Reactor group: +7
• Cockpit/hab group: +12
• Total = Seven crew members. Even if the cockpit/hab group combined for +12, it's the reactor group that lagged behind at +7.

Here's the third and final example:

• With the above setup, we added two more of each weapon model. These have a +3 total.
• Reactor group: +10
• Cockpit/hab group: +12
• Total = 10 crew members. For some reason, even though the Ship Command skill allows for up to eight active crew members, we went above this cap.

Gallery

Does the above setup work? Well, it bears mentioning that other modules, such as landing gears, fuel, and grav drives still need to be added, not to mention any unforeseen errors. As such, the above was mostly to check how the computation is done.

In any case, that's all you need to know about how to increase ship crew size in Starfield. Don't forget that certain modules or parts might only be viable for Class-B or Class-C reactors. Likewise, you have to take note of the engine's throughput and the vehicle's overall mass. It's like upgrading your PC: you can't just get a high-end graphics card without considering your motherboard or CPU.