Reactor Chambers are blocks that provide special modifiers or abilities for your ship, set through the Reactor Chamber menu. If you're asking this question, you need to go and read my Reactors and Chambers Basics guide first, then come back here.
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In this guide, we will be covering every single chamber, their trees, their usefulness, and giving them a tier rating for combat-related chambers, as well as giving some useful tips for ship design. The tiers and advice in this guide should not be taken as a hard rule and is my own personal opinion.

StarMade uses a lot of unintuitive words to describe how chambers work. This section is to help you understand some of them.

ADD: This means the chamber ADDS its effect on top of other chambers beneath it on the tree, including the lower levels of the chamber.
Example: Shield Capacity 2 adds the +10% of Base Shield Enhancement, the +15% of Shield Capacity 1, and the +25% of Shield Capacity 2 for a total of +50% to shield capacity, rather than Shield Capacity 2 overriding Shield Capacity 1 for only +10% & +25% for only +35% shield capacity.

SET: This mean the chamber SETS a stat to this, rather than adding to any previous bonuses.
Example: Stealth Usage Duration Permanent sets stealth usage time to permanent.

MULTIPLY: This means the chamber MULTIPLIES its effect on top of other chambers beneath it on the tree, including the lower levels of the chamber. It is currently unclear whether this is additive (2 x (2 + 2 + 2) = 12) or multiplicative (2 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 16).

INCREASE: This appears to mean the same thing as ADD, but starts with 100% as zero rather than 0%.

DECREASE: This appears to mean the same thing as MULTIPLY, but when talking about multiplication values under 1 that would reduce the end value, and are displayed as a sub-100% percentage instead.

According to a volunteer developer, the game only has 3 enums- ADD, SET, MULTIPLY. It is unclear how exactly INCREASE and DECREASE work.

We'll be covering the chambers alphabetically in this guide. Up first are Defense Chambers. These chambers boost the power of your shields and armor.

While useful on its own, it's nothing special. It gets an S rating because it is a prerequisite for Shield Capacity, a borderline mandatory chamber. The bonuses of this chamber stack well with Shield Capacity, although the poorly named "Recharge Rate" increasing shield recharger energy usage is its one unfortunate con.

Extremely powerful and essentially mandatory for any combat vessel. Level 2 increases shield capacity by a whopping 50% total when adding up all the bonuses. This chamber has no cons except for the RC% it costs, which is very little, and the mass its blocks take up. This chamber is highly recommended.

While not as powerful as Shield Capacity, this chamber is still extremely useful. It reduces the amount of time it takes for shields to start regenerating at full speed instead of the reduced under fire rate. Excellent on any speed based build and highly recommended for shield based builds. Extremely cheap as far as RC% goes, making it a great place to dump those last couple points you have laying around.

Armor in the current meta is relatively weak compared to shields. However, standard armor blocks weigh less than shield capacitors and rechargers, and do provide decent protection in thick layers. Armor Base Enhancement does not provide large buffs, but it is necessary to run higher level armor boosting chambers, so it gets a B tier. Armor may be rebalanced in the future to be better, but for now it lacks strength and staying power, and this is reflected in the armor boosting chambers. The armor chamber tree is also very expensive, costing 40% for all combat-relevant chambers, compared to just 30% for the whole shield tree. Armor chambers are not recommended for anyone who is not making a heavily armor based build and generally not recommended at all.


Heat is the effect that armor is weakest against, so this chamber is a necessity for any armor based build. If you can only fit one armor chamber besides the base, it should be this one. Armor chambers are unfortunately very expensive for how bad armor is.


Kinetic is the effect that armor is second weakest against, so you'll likely want this chamber for any armor based build as well. Armor is, again, not very good, so this chamber is not very highly rated, but it is going to be necessary if you want to do an armor based build.


EM is the effect that armor is strongest against. However, because a large percentage of incoming damage is likely going to be EM, due to most players using shields as their defenses, you're likely still going to want this chamber on an armor tank, as it will further reduce the EM portion of incoming damage.


This chamber is more focused on utility than combat, but you may think it has some situational use. Maybe you can make a station in the heat zone of a star and get a leg up on people? Unfortunately this chamber is borderline useless. The only reason it doesn't get an F is because it technically does what it says it does. As an armor chamber, it only protects armor blocks, so any decorative or system blocks on the surface of your ship will still explode with full damage while in the heat zone of a star. Additionally, because it doesn't provide 100% protection, the sun damage will start blowing off chunks of your armor until it reaches your systems, at which point it will start dealing catastrophic damage to your ship. It's best to just avoid solar heat damage zones entirely until this feature receives some updates, no matter how tempting a sun base or mining those heat zone asteroids might be.

Up next are FTL chambers. These are used for enhancing your Jump Drive, Warp Gates, and for Jump Drive Inhibitors.


Every vessel that isn't a drone should have jump drive chambers. Traveling with just the reactor's built in JD is a slog. While the bonuses of the base are not great, it's necessary to obtain the more useful chambers down the tree.


While useful, it's generally not worth the mass and RC% cost except on specialized jump craft.


Very useful. Allows for a long burst of jumps and to quickly jump out of a dangerous jump landing without waiting for the drive to recharge. Levels past 1 are of more dubious utility compared to other RC% investments however. Good for short range combat repositioning jumps.


Extremely useful. Greatly increases the jump drive distance, especially at high levels. This should be the #1 priority for jump drive chambers in most cases. Anyone who wants to get anywhere with any sort of speed should have this chamber.


While it is a nice utility, it usually isn't worth the mass and RC%. Many servers turn this on for all jump drives as a quality of life improvement. A mouse hold macro is a more useful investment.


Very useful. Increased charge speed allows for much faster travel. The increased power cost may be an issue if your ship is permanently redlining its reactor, but is not an issue for most ships.

This tree gives you access to the Jump Inhibitor, which is an odd and slightly broken system. It costs very little power and has no real stats listed. It has a lot of utility for preventing people from fleeing in combat, but is probably better used on a drone (or a few) rather than on your main ship, because a level 9 Inhibitor can inhibit anything regardless of size difference. Unlike every other chamber tree in the game, the base itself can be upgraded. These upgrades don't cost any additional RC%, so there's no reason to pick anything but level 9.


A frustratingly unlabeled chamber that increases jump inhibitor range by some amount. Probably needed on a dedicated inhibitor drone but RC% cost prohibitive on a mainline ship.

Increases the range of long range warpgates on the station. Extremely useful for any station with gates.


Extremely useful for any warpgate station in a fixed gate network.


Very useful for reducing power costs on any warpgate station, but may not be strictly necessary or worth the RC% cost on multipurpose stations.


Allows setting a target sector in the warpgate computer rather than linking the warpgates with marker beams. This allows for greater flexibility. However, the mutual exclusivity with Warpgate Distance may cause it to fall short. Getting out and boarding the station to manually enter the destination can also be a hassle and a potential hazard.

Logistics chambers improve the performance of industry-related tasks on ships and stations.


It goes without saying that this chamber is absolutely required on any sort of miner. I don't care what you have to do, make it fit. You NEED this chamber on a miner. Note that the bonuses per level do not stack with each other, unlike most chambers. Bonuses only apply to raw ores and not salvaging wrecked ships.


This chamber would be of limited utility even if it worked, reducing the 5 second shield outage that occurs when you transport across 2 unconnected entities. The RC% and mass costs to dedicate to such a thing are way too expensive. However, this chamber is currently broken and prevents you from transporting to or from any entity that currently has it, causing a RuntimeException on the server.

For this reason the chamber gets an F- instead of a D.


Extremely useful on any factory station. Needed to offset the increased power cost of Factory Bake Time. Despite factories being allowed on ships, this chamber is for stations only.


Extremely useful on any factory station. Needs Factory Power Efficiency to offset the massive power costs. Despite factories being allowed on ships, this chamber is for stations only.

Mass chambers currently only exist to provide passive gravity effects for stations. Anti-gravity effects are instead provided by Mobility chambers.


Generates a linear gravity field for the station, pulling down ships and astronauts at 9.89m/s.


Generates a "radial" gravity field for the station. Pulls astronauts straight down, attempts to pull ships towards the center of mass of the station, with buggy results.

Mobility Chambers increase the agility of your ship. They cannot be used on stations.


Extremely useful. While Top Speed 3 can often be an unnecessary indulgence, having at least level 1 or 2 is bordering on mandatory. There's not that many things to spend RC% and this is an excellent sink for it. Synergizes well with Thrust Blast on ships with poor natural acceleration.


Basically useless. Small ships have more than enough acceleration to escape planets without this chamber. Large ships shouldn't be getting anywhere near the surface of a planet, and can use their jump drive to escape if they somehow get stuck on one. To make things worse, this chamber doesn't have any effect on the gravity from Blackholes/Wormholes. There is no niche for this. At least it's cheap.


Somewhat useful. This chamber is a bit of a noob trap. It sounds really good on paper, but small ships don't need it, and large ships typically fight at long enough ranges that they don't need it either. It's very expensive for RC% and the amount of benefit it provides is minimal. It's better to go with chambers that allow you to put distance between yourself and your opponent than to try and turn fight in knife fighting range.


Do not use this chamber. This is a joke of a chamber. I think Lancake put this one in to troll people. There is no reason to ever be changing your thruster config in combat. Figure out an acceleration profile and stick to it. The only reason I didn't give this an F is because it technically works.

Extremely useful. This chamber tree gives you access to the Thrust Blast utility, which gives you a very short, massive burst of acceleration in the direction you're currently thrusting in. Gets an A+ instead of an S because, while RC% affordable, it requires a lot of subchambers and thus mass to be effective. Mandatory for any speed based build. The more thrust you have, the more effective Thrust Blast will be.


Extremely useful. Allows a ship to accelerate from 0 to high speed in a split second, or to come to a stop just as fast by blasting backwards. Absolutely necessary for Thrust Blast to perform effectively. Mandatory for any speed build.


Very useful. Costs extra power but allows for even more rapid maneuvering. If short for RC% on a speed based build, you can drop either this or Multi Charge, but should ideally keep at least one.


Very useful. Allows for up to 4 thrust blasts in rapid succession, for very fast maneuvering. I rate it slightly higher than Thrust Blast Charge Speed because you're unlikely to need more than 4 blasts that quickly and it lacks an increased power cost, but both are very useful.

Power chambers increase the power generation of your reactor.


Extremely useful. Essentially mandatory for every ship and station, combat or not. The cases where this chamber shouldn't be used could probably be counted on one hand. It is extremely cheap and increases your reactor's power output by 10%. If you're not using this chamber you're probably doing something wrong. It allows you to make your reactor smaller, allowing you to make all your chambers smaller, saving you mass and volume, allowing you to have more shields, armor, thrust, and weapons in the same package. This is the best chamber in the game, in a league of its own.


Basically useless. There's nothing in the current game that meshes with it. There's no weapons or systems that would temporarily be drawing a lot of power but then go on a long cooldown. A lack of separate power capacity and regen means you'll never want to rapidly refill a low power tank. Perhaps in the future with other chambers that provide temporary buffs, with a weapon rebalance with much longer weapon cooldowns, and with deeper power pools like in power 1.0, this chamber could have a lot of use. For now it's just dead weight. Especially since it needs to be manually held down for 30 seconds to charge up.


Completely useless. This is the first actually functional chamber I'm giving an F to. Do not use this chamber. Having multiple reactors is a joke and is handicapping you. Maybe you wouldn't need an emergency failsafe in the first place if you hadn't dedicated a ton of your mass to a deadweight backup reactor. This is a chamber for clowns.

Recon chambers give you access to scanners, allowing you to view an entity's stats and system or ore locations, and to break enemy jamming and cloaking.


This chamber tree is mandatory if you don't want to be fighting blind against anyone with a jammer.


Borderline useless. You're trading 6% RC to save maybe 1% of your power consumption. It's not worth it.


Completely useless. Completely outclassed by Scanner Usage Duration Permanent. Do not take this chamber. It makes the power costs of the Scanner absurd on top of being completely irrelevant.


Extremely useful. Use this instead of Scanner Charge Speed unless you like being blind half the time for no reason. The running power cost is basically nothing.


Mandatory if running scanners. Might as well not even have scanners if you don't put this at level 5, because anyone jamming is definitely jamming at level 5.


Cool in theory but no real practical use. Shows you a ship's cargo blocks in X-Ray and sends you a mail with what they've got in it. Probably fun for pirate roleplaying though. Might be more useful in the future.


Cool in theory but no real practical use. Tells you how many ore blocks are left on an asteroid in the scanner panel. Since most miners past the early game can eat a whole asteroid in a handful of seconds, this is kind of useless. Doesn't even highlight the ore blocks in X-Ray like the Cargo Scanner.

Stealth is the largest and most complicated chamber tree in StarMade. It allows ships to hide their system locations, disrupt enemy AI accuracy, jam radar, and even cloak.


The fabled Stealth Drive. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), stealth is not very good in StarMade. If your enemy has the same or higher level of scan as you have stealth, they will still be able to see you, and stealth and scan both cap out at level 5. Since scanning can be permanent, this means a properly equipped ship should always be able to see a stealth ship. As such, stealth is mostly good for two things
1) Forcing your enemy to bring scanners, wasting their RC% that could go to other systems, if they think or know that you have stealth.
2) Clubbing newbs and noobs.
Hopefully with this guide there will be less newbs and noobs to club.


Mandatory if you are going to be running stealth, much for the same reasons as with scanners. Running it at only level 3 with Charge Speed and Power Efficiency instead just Permanent on its own only saves a few RC% for much less effectiveness and 2 extra chambers.


Borderline useless. Slightly less worthless than its scanner counterpart, but still bad. Just run Stealth Usage Duration Permanent instead.


Borderline useless. Slightly less worthless than its scanner counterpart, but still bad. If cloaking or jamming took any extra power like in Power 1.0 this might have had some use, but for now it's not worth it. Especially not with how much RC% it costs.


You need at least level 2 to jam, so you might as well go all the way to level 5. Maybe you'll get to seal club some newbie sucker who only went to level 4 with his scanners.


Doesn't work, so F-. Even if it did, it's kind of useless. AI don't have lock on time, they instantly lock, and slightly delaying player lock on time doesn't really matter. If it completely stopped missiles from locking it'd probably be overpowered. This is a chamber that needs to be majorly reworked with the rest of stealth or just removed.


What the Stealth Drive is actually used for. Everything else is just fluff. This turns your radar signature invisible, making you a nightmare to target. AI will struggle to hit you, players can't lock on to you with missiles, and it's a pain to hit you with manual weapons. It's also completely countered by scanners at or above your level, so you're probably not doing anything with it but clubbing newbs and noobs.


Turns you invisible! Cool but ultimately kind of pointless when Radar Jamming accomplishes the same thing in combat. Only useful for scouting unmanned bases and ramming unaware people with warheads. Yes, scanning counters it.

One important trick is remembering that you do not need to have all chambers activated at one time. By deactivating the root of a chamber tree, you can have a number of chambers that you swap between depending on what you are doing. The most common example of this is having a Jump Drive and Scanner tree, which are swapped between depending on combat circumstances. Swapping chambers will force all weapons and hot bar utilities to reload, but this is usually a minimal cost for the added benefits of having additional chambers to use.


In this example set up we have an active scanner and an inactive jump drive. Combat is over and we want to go home. We can deactivate our short range scanner base and activate our jump drive base.

This sort of chamber tree swapping allows you to pack more systems that you want for combat without sacrificing your scanning or jumping ability.

Additional Guides to help you learn more about the game.

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3127087336
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3135158484
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3146216665