Starfield: How to Increase Cargo Capacity

In Starfield, your ship’s hold limit is one of its most important stats if you want to always have room for more loot. Increasing it is an easy task and one you’ll want to do often, depending on what you want to use your vessel for. Adjusting it down is a little more involved, but only in regards to the design of your craft and, again, its purpose. Hauling boats will need more, fighters less, and so on. Here’s how to increase cargo capacity in Starfield.

How to Increase Cargo Capacity in Starfield

There are two main ways to increase cargo capacity in Starfield. You can add cargo bays in the ship builder or get a new ship altogether. I’d contend that the former is the better option if you have the money and want to take the time to adjust your ship layout. The latter is best if you want a quick upgrade that can come with free loot.

Related: How to Check Your Ship’s Inventory

From there, find a free anchor point on the ship to accommodate a new bay. In most cases, these anchor points are on structural or habitat parts. You’ll need to place one or more of those if you want a place to add a hold.

Once you add one (or however many you want), you can exit the ship builder provided your systems are listed as Nominal in the bottom right corner. If your ship has too much mass (something cargo holds, add a lot of), the shipbuilder can give you a mobility warning. Your ship will have a lower top speed.

You can add bigger, better engines to deal with both problems. However, doing so requires both the money to buy the engines and the reactor to run them properly.

Related: Starfield Ship Combat Guide

Getting (Commandeering) New Ships

In my experience, for the first few hours of your time in Starfield, simply taking ships for your own from pirates and Spacers is the easiest way to increase cargo capacity. Early on, you won’t have the money or easy access to the parts to fully trick out your ship. Capturing an enemy ship will allow you to skip hours of wrangling the ship-building system. Plus, dogfighting is fun. And free loot is nice. Ignore the part where you blow all the other ships out of the sky.

That’s how to increase cargo capacity in Starfield. For more on Bethesda’s massive galaxy, check out our guides on where to find Caelumite, how to get the Mantis space suit, and more in our guides hub to the game.