Star Citizen Ship Components: Sizes, Compatibility and Planning a Loadout

There is a particular pleasure in making a familiar ship suit you better. A different shield generator, a quieter build or more headroom for the equipment you actually use can give the same hull a new lease of life. The frustrating part is discovering that the component you brought home cannot fit—or that the new guns fit perfectly and still refuse to fire.

Choosing ship components in Star Citizen means matching the hardware to both its mounting point and the ship around it. Size gets you through the first check. Power, cooling, access and the job you want to do decide whether the change is worthwhile.

Type and size come before the grade

Start with the slot you are replacing. A shield-generator mount needs a shield generator of the supported size; an empty cooler slot is not somewhere to add another power plant. Nor can several small slots be combined into one larger mount. The ship determines the available component types and sizes.

Size describes the equipment’s fitting category. Grade compares performance within the component system. An A-grade part is not a way to squeeze a larger component into a smaller ship. The familiar A-to-D grades are useful for narrowing a choice, but the letter alone does not explain its power demand, heat behaviour or suitability for your loadout.

Weapons also use numbered sizes, but their range is different from the main system components. Do not take a weapon’s size as evidence that a shield generator with the same number will fit, or that the two have comparable demands. Check the relevant mount, not just the biggest number in an equipment list.

Choose for the ship you fly

A military component can be appealing when keeping equipment alive under fire matters most. Greater durability and output can come with greater resource demands, though, so a collection of individually attractive parts is not automatically a good complete build. The power plant and cooling arrangements have to support what you install.

A stealth-focused pilot has a different priority. Heat and signature deserve attention alongside raw output. Changing one part does not make a ship invisible: the rest of its equipment and the way it is operated still matter. It is more useful to ask how a replacement helps your intended approach than to assume every military component is an upgrade for every role.

For a hauler, dependable operation and a manageable loadout may matter more than extracting the most aggressive combat setup from the hull. A fighter pilot may accept different compromises. Neither needs to replace every stock component immediately. Start with a limitation you can identify; replacing healthy equipment simply because it is standard can leave you with a more complicated ship and no improvement you actually needed.

Why guns can fit but remain greyed out

Star Citizen distributes power to groups of systems as well as individual components. Weapons, shields and thrusters can draw from their own pools, and the weapon pool has a limit set for the ship. A proposed loadout can exceed that limit even though its weapons are physically compatible with the mounts.

That is the difference between fits and works as intended. If guns become unavailable after a change, inspect the weapon-pool demand and available allocation before assuming the equipment has vanished or broken. More output from a different part elsewhere in the ship is not a reason to ignore the pool limit.

Flight mode matters too. NAV prioritises travel and restricts combat systems; SCM is the appropriate starting point when checking combat operation. A weapon disabled by the current operating mode does not need replacing. Our power-loss and engineering guide covers the fault-finding side when systems stop responding.

Plan the installation before moving the parts

Spare ship components in local inventory belong to a location. Equipment stored at another port is not immediately available beside the ship you are working on. Bring the ship and its replacements together before trying to change the loadout; otherwise a perfectly suitable part can appear to be missing simply because you are looking from the wrong place.

Physical access is a separate question. Ships are at different stages of their engineering implementation, so a component on a diagnostic display is not necessarily reachable through an interior panel. Check the actual ship and variant rather than borrowing an installation sequence from another hull.

Accessible Size 1 and Size 2 components can be replaced in flight; Size 3 and Size 4 replacements require a hangar. Carrying a spare is only useful if it is compatible and you can reach and handle the mount. There is no benefit in hauling a large replacement around on the assumption that every component can be changed by hand during a mission.

For a crewed ship, this is worth settling before departure. A pilot concentrating on an approach and a crewmate working below decks can support each other, but neither can overcome an inaccessible mount through enthusiasm alone. Solo pilots also need somewhere sensible to stop before leaving the controls to handle equipment.

A repaired component is not a fresh replacement

Repairing damaged equipment can keep you moving, while replacement changes the part itself. Those options should not be confused when preparing spares. A Cambio SRT, or a Multi-Tool with the Cambio-Lite SRT attachment, needs RMC in its canister to perform a repair; carrying the tool without material leaves the job unfinished.

Field recovery also has limits. A destroyed component can be brought back to a reduced working state, but not restored to full health that way. If it is destroyed again after that recovery, it cannot be repaired aboard the ship a second time. That is a strong reason to head for proper servicing instead of assuming the same emergency repair will keep working indefinitely.

For a long trip, compatible spares, usable repair supplies and space to handle them are a more practical preparation than filling the hold with assorted equipment. The right selection depends on your ship’s access and the journey. A small craft with cockpit-based engineering controls does not offer the same repair routine as a vessel with walkable machinery spaces.

Save the loadout through the current recovery system

Changing equipment and recording the configuration for a later insurance claim are separate jobs. The Alpha 4.8 recovery system introduced ship snapshots through ASOP terminals; the Vehicle Management App no longer performs that loadout-saving role. An older guide that finishes with a VMA save can therefore leave out the part you need for recovery.

Snapshots are not an unlimited backup of everything aboard, either. Ammunition, missiles and bricked items are among the exclusions, and a new snapshot replaces the previous one for that ship. Use our repair, refuel and recovery guide for the fuller explanation before relying on a claim to reproduce your configuration.

If an item genuinely disappears after a loadout change, treat that differently from a size mismatch or a part stored elsewhere. Missing equipment remains a documented issue. Do not keep buying replacements on the assumption that another attempt must solve it.

One particularly avoidable trap concerns ship naming: the current known-issues guidance warns that renaming can delete fitted or added items. Remove non-stock equipment and customisation before naming a ship. A name can wait until the equipment you worked to assemble is safely out of the way.

A good loadout is one you understand well enough to maintain. Once the components fit, the demands make sense and the configuration is properly recorded, you can enjoy what you changed—and know where to look when the next trip is less peaceful than planned.

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