Star Citizen Polaris Cargo Guide: 576 SCU & Logistics

The RSI Polaris carries 576 SCU of cargo in Alpha 4.10, split across two 288 SCU cargo grids.

That is substantial secured cargo capacity for a combat corvette, but the Polaris makes more sense as a fleet logistics platform than as a dedicated freight hauler. Its cargo can support fighter repair and refueling, carry ammunition and missiles, hold equipment and mission supplies, and support the ship's own heavy-ordnance workflow.

A Polaris loaded entirely with trade commodities still has the same rated 576 SCU capacity, but doing so gives up cargo space that could otherwise support carrier and combat operations.

For the ship's complete specifications, medical facilities, weapons, and general role, use the full Star Citizen Polaris guide. This guide stays focused on cargo capacity and how that space supports longer operations.

Polaris Cargo Capacity in Alpha 4.10

Current Alpha 4.10 live-derived data lists 576 SCU of cargo capacity.

The current configuration contains two separate 288 SCU cargo grids, one on each side of the cargo area. Live-derived data lists each grid at approximately 7.5 × 5.0 × 15.0 meters and identifies 16 SCU as the maximum supported container size on the grid.

The split gives a crew useful organizational flexibility. One grid can carry freight or recovered material while the other holds servicing resources, equipment, or mission supplies. The game does not require that arrangement, but keeping different resource types separated can make physical cargo easier to manage.

Is the Polaris a Cargo Ship?

It can haul cargo, but cargo hauling is not its primary role.

The Polaris is a corvette built around combat, patrol, carrier, and fleet-support functions. Its 576 SCU hold is better understood as operational capacity that can also carry commercial freight.

That distinction becomes more important as other ship systems are used.

A carried fighter may need fuel, RMC, ammunition, missiles, or countermeasures. The Polaris may carry additional compatible heavy ordnance. A multi-person crew may also want FPS equipment, mission supplies, or room for recovered material.

All of those demands compete for the same secured cargo-grid capacity.

For a crew operating the Polaris primarily as a mobile combat base, maximum commodity volume is therefore only one possible use of the hold rather than the obvious default.

The Two 288 SCU Cargo Grids

The left and right 288 SCU grids give crews an easy way to separate inventories according to mission needs.

A combat-focused organization might keep servicing resources on one side and reserve the other for freight, recovered cargo, equipment, or additional mission supplies. A longer deployment may benefit from leaving part of one grid empty so the ship can recover cargo without unloading its support inventory first.

This is an editorial logistics approach rather than a CIG-required storage system. The practical advantage comes from keeping physical resources predictable and accessible.

The Polaris interior guide covers how the cargo area connects with the hangar and other working spaces. For logistics planning, the important point is that the two grids support systems beyond simple commodity transport.

Cargo Supports Ship Hangar Services

The relationship between cargo and carrier operations became much more important with Ship Hangar Services T0 in Alpha 4.8.

CIG included the Polaris among the supported host ships and established a key requirement: servicing resources must be stored on the host ship's cargo grid.

Under the current T0 rules, refueling consumes physical hydrogen or quantum fuel commodities, repairs consume RMC, and rearming draws from compatible ballistic ammunition, missiles, and countermeasures stored on the grid.

Simply having a resource somewhere loose aboard the ship is not the same as having it available to the servicing system.

This turns part of the Polaris's 576 SCU into functional carrier infrastructure when the crew chooses to support a carried craft.

The Polaris hangar guide covers fighter fit and Hangar Services in more detail. From a logistics perspective, the key rule is that the cargo grid supplies the carrier system.

Planning Supplies for a Carried Ship

There is no universal cargo manifest because servicing requirements depend on the vehicle and its actual loadout.

RMC and fuel have broad support value, while ammunition and missile inventory need to match what the carried craft uses.

Current Ship Hangar Services rules require ballistic ammunition to match weapon size. Missile replacement is more restrictive when a rack still contains missiles, because the service must replace the existing type; an empty rack has greater flexibility as long as the replacement missile has the correct size.

A Polaris supporting an energy-weapon fighter therefore has different resupply requirements from one operating a craft with ballistic weapons and a heavy missile load.

The most efficient logistics plan starts with the fighter configuration rather than with a generic stockpile.

RMC and Repair Logistics

Ship Hangar Services use RMC for repairs.

Under the T0 implementation, the service does not simply perform a partial repair when insufficient RMC is available for the requested work. A crew expecting repeated fighter sorties therefore needs enough RMC aboard for repair service to remain useful.

That does not create a universal recommended RMC quantity.

Damage varies by mission and vehicle, while every SCU used for RMC is space unavailable for fuel, ammunition, freight, or recovered material.

RMC is best treated as a mission resource whose quantity depends on expected repair demand rather than as a fixed percentage of the Polaris hold.

Fuel Is Cargo Too

Hydrogen and quantum fuel used by Ship Hangar Services are physical servicing resources stored on the cargo grid.

They are separate from the Polaris's own internal fuel tanks.

A Polaris can therefore have enough fuel to continue flying while lacking the cargo-grid resources necessary to refuel the craft in its hangar.

For carrier-focused operations, those are two separate logistics requirements: the mothership's own endurance and the supply inventory reserved for the carried craft.

Ammunition, Missiles and Countermeasures

Rearming introduces more specific inventory requirements.

Ship Hangar Services can restock compatible ballistic ammunition, missiles, and countermeasures from the host cargo grid, but carrying the wrong item does not solve the supported craft's problem.

Ammunition size matters, and missile compatibility depends on the state and configuration of the rack being serviced.

A group that standardizes the loadout of its carried fighter can simplify this considerably because the Polaris can leave port with a predictable support inventory.

Groups that regularly change fighter loadouts need to adjust the mothership's cargo plan along with them.

Polaris Torpedo Logistics

The Polaris torpedo count currently exposes an important source-data conflict that should not be hidden.

CIG's 2024 Polaris Reference Sheet states 28 × Size 10 torpedoes total, and the current Star Citizen Wiki likewise describes four rotary feeders carrying seven S10 torpedoes each.

The current Alpha 4.10 live-derived API is less clean. Its aggregate rack data can display 8 missiles per S10 torpedo rack. However, the individual rack record simultaneously describes the rack as carrying seven S10 torpedoes, and its port list contains seven S10 torpedo slots plus one separate S1 inner-tube attachment.

For that reason, this guide uses 28 loaded S10 torpedoes as the best-supported ship-level count, while treating the 8-per-rack API summary as a current data-extraction or representation inconsistency rather than silently converting the Polaris to 32 torpedoes.

CIG's updated Polaris Q&A separately confirms that once the loaded torpedoes have been fired, the racks can be manually reloaded with a Multi-Tool tractor beam if additional compatible munitions are aboard.

CIG does not provide a current fixed reserve-torpedo capacity or specify an official SCU allocation for those additional munitions. From a practical logistics perspective, carrying spare physical ordnance aboard will affect how the crew organizes storage and other supplies, but that should be treated as an operational inference rather than a published reserve-magazine specification.

The Polaris weapons guide covers the torpedo system itself in more detail.

Cargo Handling Inside the Polaris

Current community-maintained Star Citizen Wiki documentation describes the cargo hold as having an internal Size 2 tractor beam and two freight elevators linking the cargo area with the hangar.

Current Alpha 4.10 vehicle data also exposes the separate left and right cargo grids and cargo-related elevator elements in the ship configuration.

Together, those features support physical cargo handling and the movement of resources toward the carrier area.

They do not make logistics automatic. The Polaris is a large ship, and organizing physical cargo still creates crew workload, particularly when supplies need to be moved while other players are occupied with combat or engineering.

The Polaris crew guide explains why flexible crew availability becomes useful when internal logistics and combat tasks overlap.

Trade Cargo vs Operational Cargo

A useful way to plan the Polaris hold is to distinguish commercial cargo from operational cargo.

Commercial cargo is loaded primarily because the crew intends to sell, deliver, or recover it. Operational cargo exists because the Polaris or a carried craft may consume or need it during the mission.

Fuel, RMC, ammunition, missiles, countermeasures, additional compatible ordnance, equipment, and mission supplies can all fall into the operational category.

The ship does not provide separate capacity pools for those uses. They compete for the same physical grids.

A Polaris filled completely with commodities maximizes commercial volume but leaves little secured grid capacity for support inventory. Filling the entire hold with mission supplies creates the opposite limitation by leaving little room for freight or recovered cargo.

Multi-role operations usually benefit from preserving some flexibility instead of maximizing either extreme.

The Hangar Does Not Add to the Rated 576 SCU

The Polaris hangar is physically large, but it should not automatically be added to the ship's published cargo capacity.

The 576 SCU specification refers to the two cargo grids.

Containers or vehicles that physically fit elsewhere inside the vessel do not become additional rated cargo-grid capacity simply because the geometry allows them to sit there.

Historical CIG Polaris guidance also distinguished the secured cargo hold from using the hangar as improvised freight space. Because physical cargo systems have changed considerably since those early design discussions, that historical answer should not be used as a definitive Alpha 4.10 loose-cargo rule.

The current safe distinction is straightforward:

physical storage space is not the same thing as secured cargo-grid capacity.

Logistics for a Combat-Focused Polaris

A combat-oriented Polaris does not need to leave port with all 576 SCU occupied.

The useful load depends on mission duration, expected fighter servicing, ammunition consumption, potential torpedo replenishment, and whether the group expects to recover cargo before returning to a station.

A short combat sortie may need relatively little support inventory.

A longer deployment with repeated fighter operations increases demand for fuel, RMC, ammunition, and missiles. Heavy torpedo use can add another physical logistics requirement if the crew carries compatible replacement ordnance.

Planning around expected consumption is more useful than trying to define one universal “best” cargo manifest.

Logistics for a Mobile-Base Polaris

Cargo capacity becomes more valuable when the Polaris is supporting several activities at once.

A mobile-base crew may want servicing resources for the carried craft, equipment for away teams, mission supplies, additional ordnance, and open cargo-grid space for whatever the group recovers.

This is where 576 SCU becomes more than a freight statistic.

The hold supports the hangar, combat endurance, equipment storage, and the wider mobile-base workflow described in the Polaris interior guide.

Alpha 4.10 Logistics Limitations

Current logistics systems still have gameplay friction.

RSI's Alpha 4.10 Known Issues documentation lists a Landing Services mobiGlas recognition delay in which the app may fail to update after the ship lands. The published workaround is to wait several minutes and then close and reopen the Landing Services app.

The same Known Issues page also documents carried ships inside a Polaris potentially despawning after a bed logout from the mothership.

Neither issue changes the 576 SCU specification, but both matter when the Polaris has been stocked specifically for long carrier operations.

Cargo planning cannot remove current persistence or service-recognition bugs.

Is 576 SCU Enough for the Polaris?

For its intended role, 576 SCU is substantial.

How quickly that capacity becomes constrained depends on how many different jobs the crew asks it to support.

A combat patrol with limited carrier activity may use only a fraction of the hold. A longer deployment that stocks repair materials, fuel, fighter ammunition, missiles, additional ordnance, equipment, and recovery space can consume the same capacity much faster.

The more systems the Polaris is expected to support between station visits, the more important disciplined cargo planning becomes.

Polaris Cargo FAQ

How much cargo does the Polaris have?

The Polaris has 576 SCU of rated cargo capacity in Alpha 4.10, divided between two 288 SCU cargo grids.

What is the largest cargo container supported by the Polaris cargo grid?

Current Alpha 4.10 live-derived data lists a 16 SCU maximum container size for each of the two Polaris cargo grids.

Does the Polaris hangar count toward its 576 SCU cargo capacity?

No. The published 576 SCU refers to the secured cargo grids. Physical room elsewhere in the ship, including the hangar, should not be added to that number as extra rated SCU.

Can the Polaris carry spare Size 10 torpedoes?

CIG confirms that additional compatible munitions aboard can be used to manually reload the Polaris torpedo racks. However, CIG does not publish a current fixed reserve-torpedo capacity or a defined official SCU allocation for spare S10 torpedoes.

Final Verdict

The Polaris's 576 SCU cargo capacity is best understood as logistics infrastructure rather than a reason to treat the ship as a dedicated freighter.

Its two 288 SCU grids can carry commercial freight, but they also support carrier servicing, equipment, ammunition, mission supplies, and potentially additional compatible heavy ordnance.

Ship Hangar Services make this particularly important because fuel, RMC, ammunition, missiles, and countermeasures must be available on the host ship's cargo grid to support carried craft.

The result is a ship where cargo planning directly affects combat endurance and carrier usefulness.

For the complete ship, use the full Polaris guide. The Polaris hangar guide covers fighter servicing and carrier compatibility, while the Polaris weapons guide covers the heavy-ordnance system that creates part of the ship's logistics demand. If you are deciding whether that operating complexity makes sense for your group, the Polaris review handles that ownership decision separately.