Starships

Starships are the medium by which players will move through the Starlink universe. The entire game can be completed using a single ship, though several are available for purchase, both as physical devices or as digital downloads. Having multiple ships is advantageous in combat, because if the current ship is knocked out, another ship can be brought in and the fight continued. (This is commonly referred to as having multiple "lives.")

### Ship attributes and classes

There are five fundamental ship attributes:

* Speed is the maximum speed of the ship.
* Handling determines how easily the ship turns.
* Defense is the defensive shielding. It doesn't include the other defensive layers such as armor, active shields, and elemental shields.
* Energy refers to the power supplies for charging up the offensive weaponry. Those aren't used for any other purpose. The more energy, the more quickly you can fire a weapon. Each side of the ship has its own energy system.
* Weight affects handling, but perhaps more importantly it determines how easily your ship can be knocked about when hit by enemy weaponry. It also determines how high the vertical thrusters can lift the ship.

There are four ship classes with different strong points:

* High Energy class ships are optimized for offense, producing extra weapon energy to allow for rapid firing.
* Tank class ships are heavy and emphasize defensive shielding.
* Performance class ships are light-weight and optimized for speed and handling.
* Rocket class ships are optimized for raw speed, but their somewhat heavier weight and relatively poor handling and energy can be an issue.

### Wings

Although ships are usually seen with one wing attached to each side, they can in fact have zero, one, two, or three wings on each side, with multiple wings being chained together. Wings aren't necessary for flight and there's no requirement for symmetry. Wings provide improved stats (15 units) for energy, defense, handling, or speed, depending on the wing, and increase the weight of the ship.

When a ship is selected at the start of the game, it's automatically fitted with the default wings for that ship. At all later times, however, when a new ship is selected, only the fuselage is changed. It's left to the player to change the wings if desired.

### Weapons

A weapon can be mounted to the outermost wing on each side, or directly to the fuselage if no wings are fitted on that side. All ships must equip weaponry to have offensive capabilities other than ramming, with the exception of the wings for the Nintendo Switch-exclusive Arwing which have built-in laser cannons. Wings can be configured to have their weapons pointing backward. It's not much of an issue with the usual configuration of one wing on each side, but the wing choices affect the position that the weapon fires from.

In the unusual case where the same weapon type is mounted on both sides, both will fire any time either fire button/trigger is pressed. This can only occur when playing with physical toys where duplicate weapon toys are available, and with the laser cannons in the Arwing wings when no weapons are fitted. Otherwise, "dual-wielding" of weapons is done by mounting a Mk.2 version of a weapon on one side and the standard version on the other side; in that case they're separate weapon types so they'll respond only to their respective fire button/trigger.

### List of ships

Below is a table of currently known starships. Note that the Arwing is exclusive to the Switch version of the game, along with the four characters piloting it.

The table below outlines the default specifications for each of the currently known ships. All ship stats and weights are **without wings equipped.**