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All it matters now is how it looks.
And I'll take "doesn't know wtf he is talking about" for 500, Alex.
@cswiger gave you the correct answer, OP.
I fight in a hauler or a fighter. Maybe this will change with the most recent update but living ships are lack-luster fighters. Esp. since I am older and with a disorder that gave me severe early hand arthritis and issues. So I tend to "turret" and fight battles mostly, well, in reverse. The hauler shields are good for this and the lower handling is no issue when you are just pivoting in place in reverse. If it is a good hand day, I'll use a fighter with several weapons for variety. But most days are not good hand days.
Anyway, it's all moot now because the living ship is going to be king, probably by quite a lot.
Don't be. I'm happy to be playing still. I also enjoy "tanking" in games where it is a playstyle and enjoyed that even when my hands worked. Something about being the thing that comes out of the smoke with a few cosmetic dings but still going and still shooting ... yep I like it.
So if you like tanking your fights as a turret, hauler is fine choice. Otherwise fighter if you prefer a more agile dps type role.
Or yeah, who knows with new living ship changes ...
There's hardly enough difference to notice unless you have OCD. More important is to do the living ship quest, starting by buying a void egg from the quicksilver guy in the anomaly or sit by the nexus begging for one in multiplayer. Next you need a freighter and do the living frigate quest, then go and farm a few more living frigates using anomaly detectors ( see Youtube vids). Send the frigates out on missions, and soon, you'll have the best ship in the game.
Haulers focus on carry capacity.
Explorers focus on Hyperspace range.
Solar Sails Focus on in system pulse travel.
Living ships are simply to look neat.
Squid ships i have no idea.
Exotic ships i have no idea.
Shuttles are useless.
Just to clarify this...
Haulers can get a higher amount of high capacity cargo slots and come with more slots on average when you find them compared to other ships but save for the high capacity slots, all ships at S class can be upgraded to 48 main slots and 21 tech slots. Haulers also have hidden bonuses to shields.
Explorers do indeed have the best hyperdrive efficiency out of all the current classes.
Solar Ships pulse better than other classes and have improved launch thruster charging via the Vesper Sails, perfect for someone that does a lot of in system landing and takeoffs.
Living Ships can warp to any color star systems without the usual needed Hyperdrive upgrades. Don't think they need or spend fuel either. Upgrades for it also don't need to be purchased but are instead obtained via use of the Living Ship and through items gained via frigate expeditions that have had living frigates assigned to them.
Exotic ships get hidden bonuses to all stats. Makes them kind of jacks of all trades, masters of none as the bonuses are not higher than that from comparable other ship types. For instance, they get a hyperdrive bonus, but not one as big as Explorers get.
Squid ships are just a rarer type of Exotic and have the same bonuses as Exotics
Fighters get damage bonuses.
Shuttles get no bonuses to any of the stats. Unless you absolutely love the looks of them, they're not really worth going for.
Some think the bonus amounts are not noticeable, but they do make a difference over the long haul. Could mean a couple extra jumps out of your hyperdrive fuel or the difference between having to fire 2 or 3 shots to kill another ship.
HG has flip-flopped between making roles and class matter and don't matter. Currently they don't matter.
These three things define your ship. Only Type really matters in the long run, and then not super much in a mature save.
Class - C, B, A, S. These set the bonus ranges of your ship. It also sets and upper limit on the amount of slots you can unlock until you upgrade it. It does not always matter on how many of those slots start unlocked.
Tier - 1, 2, or 3. This is best explained as "size". 1 is a small, 2 is a medium, 3 is a large. This majorly governs how many slots the ship starts with unlocked. More than class. You can find a Tier 3 fighter in C class with more slots unlocked than an S class exotic. Be advised that some ship types only come in certain Tiers. You have to buy a lot more slots for these. This stat is hidden, you just have to recognize what the Tier features are. For instance, a T3 fighter has two cargo pods on either side of the nose. Those pods block the halo tail, meaning a halo fighter will never come in Tier 3.
Type - That's what we're on now.
Start with the bog standard and work our way up:
Shuttle - average stats across the board, it doesn't suck in any one area... which unfortunately means that it doesn't specialize in anything either. Comes only in Tier 1 or 2 as well. You'll never find a large shuttle. Doesn't exist. People hate shuttles because for almost every use, there's a better option out there. What the shuttle does have is the 2nd cheapest possible launch cost. This was big back in the day, but now... yeah, launch fuel is dirt cheap to make and the materials are at almost every landing site. You would use a shuttle if you're doing something that requires you to take off and land on the same planet multiple times. It'll save you from having to craft fuel as often. But since the bonus on every stat is so lackluster... why bother? The other fun thing about shuttles is their center of mass for the procedurally generated parts is off center. If you look at one close, it will always be just slightly off with equipment protruding from other things.
Explorer - highest hyperdrive starting bonus range. The worst possible explorer bonus still blows everything but the best possible exotic or living ship hypdrive out of the water. You use this ship if you want to explore the galaxy in as few hops as possible. A T3 explorer will have two massive engines on either wing. That's how you recognize it. It has no bonus damage, and the shield bonus is better than only shuttles and most fighters. This has the cheapest launch cost. Unlike the shuttle it doesn't turn very fast, though. You're unlikely to use it to make multiple hops across the same planet because it turns like bus. I run into a ton of trees whenever I use this in atmosphere.
Fighter - highest damage bonus range. The worst fighter... still out damages every other ship type. I already told you what the T3 features were above. Shields are between shuttle and explorer ranges. No hyperdrive bonuses. Prior to Outlaws, if you wanted to hunt NPCs or freighters, this was your goto ship. There's now a better option, but it's still a contender. Issue is that with those shields you can dish out a lot of damage, but you have difficulty taking much damage yourself. If your wingmen aren't distracting enemies, you're losing shields pretty fast.
Hauler - highest unlocked starting cargo, highest starting shield bonuses. The bottom T1 cargo range is still better than most other ship's mid-range. You have to pay the least to upgrade a T3 hauler. Damage wise, C class has no bonus, and at S class you could be anywhere from slightly worse to about even with an S class shuttle. In terms of shields, the hauler is a BEAST. Outclasses everything. The problem is that at T3, it has to be, because it is also BEAST sized. Ain't nobody who can miss a T3 hauler shooting manually. You'll probably want this as your early game ship type. It'll hold all your stuff, cost you very little in terms of upgrades, and the shields forgive a lot of your combat mistakes. T3 features are varied, but include fans on the wings, ball cargo pods (both shielded and not), and refrigerator pods on the wings. Any of those three features are a T3. T3 haulers start massive. Hauler's upgraded CARGO is twice what every other ship type is.
Solar - They only come T1, but they're also the only ship type with those Vesper Sails. The sails drastically cut down on your pulse engine fuel usage. They also have only slightly worse damage bonuses than fighters. They start with shield bonuses in the fighter range, but end up exceeding it on the top end. Their hyperdrive bonuses compare favorably to haulers. If you're a pirate, this is probably your ship. I call it the "Smash and Grab Special". What it excels at is getting into a mass of ships, picking off the one ship or a few cargo pods, then getting out of there. The shields will keep you alive long enough to outrun sentinels or NPC pilots until you can engage the pulse engine. It will then sip your pulse fuel while you find new targets to brutalize. This is the best ship for raiding, it is also good if you have to visit multiple planets in the same system. You'll have to pull over and blast asteroids a lot less with one of these.
Exotic - This also comes in T1 only, but it's always an S class. It has the highest balanced stats. You have worse damage than a fighter, you have worse hyperdrive range than an explorer, and you have worse shields than a hauler. Thing is, you only miss these marks by a little. You're often in the same range as the worst S-class of each type. This is really the ship you get when you've "arrived" in NMS. You're going to spend a lot of materials and money upgrading it, but it'll be worth the investment. It'll perform well at nearly everything.
Living - Imagine a T2 S-class Exotic, but with only fighter range shields. When you get an upgrade for this ship in C class, you evolve it up into S class by spending nanites once it's installed. So, you almost never need more than 3 upgrades of any type, unless you're also maxing that type in your general inventory with another 3. This is a mature save ship, as discussed above. It's often a player's "other" ship. By this, I mean that it uses different materials than most other ships, so you'd use this to farm fuel or materials to use in the other ship. Like it uses silver for pulse engines instead of tritium. Thus, I'd blast asteroids in this for awhile and every scrap of tritium I got would go to the main ship instead. You find upgrades in the wild by pulsing around, or they get dropped off by frigates in missions. The storage space upgrades are unfortunately rare right now. Hopefully this gets fixed in a patch. You have to be very specialized when you go hunting for a specific living ship, because it's more complicated than the usual process. The flip side of this is that if you go through all the motions and it spawns at the spawn-point, it's always S-class. Your starting tech inventory is also huge compared to the others.
Hope that helps.
An S-class fighter has +60% damage and +25% for shields.
An S-class hauler has +20% damage and +85% for shields.
A living ship has +50% damage and +25% for shields.
Those differences are comparable to a few S-class modules. You can review the details here:
https://nomanssky.fandom.com/wiki/Starship