Star Citizen Polaris vs Carrack: Combat, Crew, Hangars & Which to Choose

Choose the Polaris if your crew regularly fights large ships and operates a carried fighter. Choose the Carrack if your sessions center on scouting, surface deployments, and a mobile expedition base.

The Polaris brings 28 loaded Size 10 torpedoes, a combat-oriented hangar, and more medical and cargo capacity. The Carrack combines a Pisces hangar and rover garage in a smaller expedition hull. Neither ship makes full use of its distributed systems with one player aboard.

Evidence and version boundary: Ship specifications below are extracted from version-locked Alpha 4.10.0 game-data records maintained by the community, not independently tested Alpha 4.10.1 figures or CIG-certified specifications. The 28-torpedo count is separately corroborated by an RSI reference PDF. Ship Hangar Services T0 rules come from CIG's Alpha 4.8 Q&A; the known issues cited later are from the Alpha 4.10.1 support page. No independent Alpha 4.10.1 flight or servicing tests were performed for this comparison.

Polaris vs Carrack: Core Specifications

MSRP and claim figures are historical snapshot fields, not verified current checkout prices or permanent insurance terms.

Combat: Anti-Large-Ship Strikes vs Expedition Defense

The Polaris's defining weapon is its battery of 28 loaded S10 torpedoes across four launchers. RSI's reference PDF explicitly states 28. A separate community-extracted rack summary reports eight missiles per rack, but its detailed port list  contains seven S10 missile slots and one S1 internal attachment. Counting that attachment as an eighth S10 torpedo produces the misleading figure of 32.

The Polaris's five manned gun turrets, additional remote weapons, and seven automated point-defense turrets support the torpedo system in different ways. In a large-target PvE operation, an allied fighter can investigate contacts or occupy smaller escorts while the corvette looks for a torpedo firing opportunity. Without enough players to operate the heavy weapons, turrets, and engineering stations, much of that combined capability is unavailable at the same time.

The Carrack has four twin-S4 turret positions in the 4.10.0 data: three manned and one Gimballed Slaveable remote turret. The extraction reports a pilot-available twin-S4 battery from the remote mount, although that is a data-derived configuration, not an independent 4.10.1 handling test. The remaining turrets need operators. A Carrack left in orbit to support a ground team can keep gunners aboard for defense, but it has no Polaris-style heavy torpedo battery. Against a dedicated warship, its expedition role and more limited heavy offense are meaningful constraints.

Hangars, Vehicles and Ship Hangar Services

RSI's Polaris promotional material describes a hangar that can accommodate, repair, and rearm a medium-size fighter, using the RSI Scorpius as an example. Earlier official design material also described facilities for a single fighter, light bomber, or support ship. Neither description establishes an official compatibility list for every similarly sized craft.

Launch clearance, recovery, and access to servicing matter more than whether a particular ship can be squeezed into the bay once. The Polaris Hangar Guide  treats unusual fits separately from manufacturer-supported use.

The standard Carrack is paired with a C8 Pisces and an URSA Rover according to RSI's included-vessels documentation . A crew can leave the Carrack as a medical and cargo base while the Pisces shuttles a scouting party, then use the Rover for a surface objective. That workflow relies on the two vehicles having different jobs rather than on the Carrack winning a weapons comparison.

Ship Hangar Services T0 — official Alpha 4.8 implementation

CIG's Alpha 4.8 Ship Hangar Services Q&A  identifies the Polaris and Carrack as supported hosts. T0 allows appropriately landed, compatible vehicles to request repair, refueling, and restocking.

The host must have the necessary resources on its cargo grid: hydrogen or quantum fuel for refueling, RMC for repairs, and compatible ammunition, missiles, or countermeasures for restocking. Loose supplies elsewhere in the ship do not satisfy the documented grid requirement.

The vehicle operator must be seated and use the Landing Services interface. Repairs are all-or-nothing if the host lacks sufficient RMC; fuel can be supplied up to full tanks or in a chosen amount. Ballistic ammunition must match weapon size. A partially loaded missile rack requires the same missile type, while an empty rack can take a compatible missile of the correct size.

T0 has no combined All Services option, so repair, refuel, and restock are selected separately.

The community-maintained archive of the CIG Q&A  provides readable text where the original official page does not expose its article body to all crawlers; it is not an RSI-hosted source.

A Polaris stocking a fighter for several sorties needs grid space for the actual fuel and ammunition used by that fighter, not just freight. The Carrack must likewise carry suitable resources for any serviced craft or ground vehicle.

The Alpha 4.10.0 cargo-grid data reports a 16-SCU Box Size field for both ships. That field should not be treated as an independently verified blanket restriction on every object that can physically fit inside either ship.

Alpha 4.10.1 — documented limitations

RSI's Alpha 4.10.1 Known Issues  names the Polaris among carriers whose docked fighters may despawn after a bed logout; it lists no workaround.

The same page documents a Landing Services detection delay, for which waiting and reopening the app is the published workaround. The Polaris-specific persistence issue should not be automatically attributed to the Carrack.

Crew, Solo Play and Parallel Tasks

The 4.10.0 records show 12 crew and 12 stations for the Polaris, versus 6–12 crew and 12 stations for the Carrack. These are community-extracted vehicle fields, not a minimum-player requirement for takeoff or a claim that every station needs constant staffing.

With four players, a Polaris can assign a pilot, torpedo operator, turret gunner, and engineer, but deploying its fighter then pulls somebody away from another position.

A Carrack can assign a pilot, gunner, and support crew while the Pisces performs a short shuttle run; the trade-off is that a player leaving the mothership can no longer cover an onboard task.

A solo player can fly either ship. The Carrack's data-derived pilot-controlled remote turret offers limited firepower, but one person cannot also occupy its manned turrets, operate the Rover, and respond to engineering damage.

A solo Polaris pilot cannot simultaneously operate its separate torpedo and turret stations or fly the carried fighter. Neither ship is a quick substitute for a purpose-built solo vessel.

Cargo, Medical Support and Recovery

The Polaris has 576 SCU in two 288-SCU grids; the Carrack has 456 SCU across six 64-SCU and three 24-SCU grids.

For the Polaris, reserving cargo-grid space for fighter fuel, RMC, and ammunition can be more useful than filling the entire hold with trade commodities. A Carrack expedition may instead divide its space among supplies, mission freight, and recovered materials. Neither layout makes the ship a dedicated freighter.

Both have Tier 2 medical facilities: four beds on the Polaris, one on the Carrack.

RSI's medical guidance  says Tier 2 beds treat minor and moderate injuries, stabilize severe (Tier 1) injuries, and can serve as selected regeneration points within 8,000 km. They cannot fully treat severe (Tier 1) injuries.

Ship medical beds need MedGel; a destroyed bed, insufficient MedGel, or death beyond range can send the player back to their home regeneration location instead. The Polaris's extra beds increase simultaneous treatment capacity, not treatment tier or range.

The 4.10.0 snapshot lists standard claim times of 75.8 minutes for Polaris and 48.3 for Carrack, with expedited times of 19.0 and 16.1 minutes, respectively.

A claim can interrupt an operation even before the crew has replaced cargo or reassembled its carried vehicles.

Purchase Price and Availability

The 4.10.0 vehicle records list $975 for Polaris and $600 for Carrack as MSRP references. Those figures are not current standalone offers, Warbond prices, CCU values, or third-party listing prices. Operating costs also depend on ordnance use, damage, fuel, and servicing supplies; no verified, controlled cost-per-hour comparison is available.

The publicly accessible LTI Hangar product-page snapshots show conflicting availability signals: both show SOLD OUT near the displayed price while also showing In Stock elsewhere. They therefore do not establish real checkout availability.

View the Polaris listing  or Carrack listing  to inspect the chosen variant and insurance; confirm the live price and stock directly before purchasing. These are third-party marketplace pages, not RSI pledge-store offers.

Final Verdict

Polaris: for crews regularly using heavy torpedoes, staffed weapons, and a carried fighter.

Carrack: for expeditions built around the Pisces, Rover, cargo, and medical support.

Related Guides

For the complete ship overview, read the Polaris Guide .

The Polaris Weapons Guide  covers torpedoes and turrets, while the Polaris Crew Guide  explains station assignments.

For craft compatibility, see the Polaris Hangar Guide . The Carrack Guide  covers expedition ownership.