However, if you don't need more cargo, the Atlas is useless. The only reason you might pick something else is to avoid the penalties to sensors and avoid slowing down your fleet, but both of those concerns are usually moot by the time you're purchasing one of these. It only takes up one fleet slot, it carries more cargo than anything else in the game, and is efficient in terms of supplies per month. If you want to move cargo, the Atlas is simply the best option in the game. However, if you happen to equip most of its bays with bombers and abuse its recall system, the Astral transforms into the best ship-deletion vehicle in the game. So, under normal circumstances, with a balanced fighter complement, the Astral is just competent, but not mindblowing. The Astral fires back with the welcome addition of two large missiles, but sacrifices the flexibility of having two independent targeting orders. Two Herons beat out an Astral for raw damage, two Moras beat it out for staying power, and both alternatives are still cheaper. *: Modifier indicating that the rank can fluctuate up or down depending on circumstances. : Modifier indicating that the rank can decrease under certain circumstances. +: Modifier indicating that the rank can increase under certain circumstances. Best as a starter option or last resort.Д®X: Unique entity that cannot be evaluated comparatively. Generally serviceable, but not exceptional.Д: Mediocre, either by being sub-par at everything or by being overshadowed at its own specialty. A solid choice throughout the game.Д¬: Either a jack-of-all-trades but master-of-none, or an ultra-specialized option that excels in one area but sucks at most everything else. Typically the best option for a given role.Д«: Generally competent might be specialized, but remains useful outside of its specialty. Extremely OP clearly better than everything else.ДЄ: Unambiguously powerful, enough that it can be considered best-in-class. S: Powerful to the point that it breaks the game. The purpose of this experiment is to illustrate how well the current set of ships stacks up in the grand scheme of things, which might be a resource for players, but also serves to give insight to modders pertaining to how powerful their ships ought to be in order to avoid being too weak or too strong. For most cases, an unbiased player would choose a higher-tier ship over a lower one for the same role. Here, I categorize the ships of Starsector in terms of their general usefulness.

Starsector ships just run