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Jack's tips #9: Wings
The wings in Starlink don't have anything to do with flight. You can fly just fine with no wings on your ship, and weapons will mount directly to the side of your ship.
What wings do
Each wing increases one of the ship's stats by 15 points. Different wings increase different stats: speed, handling, weapon energy, or defense shields. Adding wings is an easy way of improving your ship's stats.
Each wing also increases the ship's weight. Each time you add two wings your ship's weight will increase by one class -- from ultra-light to light to medium to heavy to ultra-heavy. It should be noted that in the Starlink universe, gravitational and inertial mass don't behave the same, so the added weight has no effect when outside of gravity wells (that is, while in space).
Obviously, wings also increase the size of the ship. Sometimes it's easier to slip through a narrow opening if you remove the wings. If you're playing digitally -- as opposed to using the toys -- you've got three "loadout" slots you can use, and it might be useful to set up one of the slots to be wingless so that you can quickly change between a smaller ship and a more powerful one.
It's not usually a big deal, but wings affect the position of the weapons. Some positions may be more easily blocked than others, especially if they're some distance from the ship's body (because you probably position the body so as to be able to target the enemy).
Wings don't have any connection to XP. A pilot doesn't earn experience points with wings, and changing wings has no effect on the XP that a pilot has earned with a particular ship.
Wings clearly have an aesthetic effect. That doesn't affect gameplay, but you might prefer the appearance of certain wings.
And only on Nintendo Switch...
For those playing on Switch, the Arwing wings are unique in that they have built-in weapons: dual-mode lasers. An Arwing wing's laser is active if there is no weapon mounted on that side of the ship. As soon as you mount a weapon, the laser is disabled until you remove the weapon. To remove a weapon, you need to go to the full Loadout screen, select the weapon to be removed -- ZL and ZR are shortcuts -- and press X. You can't remove a weapon from the shortcut weapon loadout activated by just pressing ZL or ZR.
If you "flip" an Arwing wing with the X button before mounting it, that wing's laser will fire backward (behind you).
You can't independently fire identical weapons in Starlink, so if you have both wing lasers active, pressing either ZL or ZR will fire both lasers at the same time.
You can't directly mod the laser weapons, but if you're using the wings on an Arwing body, there are a couple of ship booster mods -- one for rapid laser mode and one for charged laser mode. You can pick those up during the Star Fox campaign "A Wolf in Atlas."
Combinations
You can put as many as three wings on each side of your ship, or as few as zero. You can mix and match wings however you like, except that if you're playing digitally you've only got one of each wing type. The Starlink Title Screen (reachable in-game from Options) shows off random combinations of ship bodies and wings. You can also play with the original "wave 1" ship bodies and wings in Ubisoft's Starlink Ship Builder, and there's a thread on this forum where you can see what others have done and share your own Frankenship creations if you'd like.
You can put left wings on the right-hand side and vice versa; the front stays the front and the back stays the back, but the top side ends up facing down (the online ship builder gets this wrong). You can also "flip" the wings, putting the front at the back and the back at the front (top and bottom are also swapped). You can also flip wings that have been swapped side-to-side, in which case front/back is swapped but top/bottom is as originally. Side note for Switch users: you probably wouldn't, but if you do place both Arwing wings on one side, with no weapons, only the outermost laser will fire.

Pictured: Neptune body and standard wings, with Pulse and swapped Arwing wings stacked on, and Levitator and Frost Barrage weapons mounted. Weapon position is raised above many ground obstacles but nearly inline with the body, and overall width is barely increased. +60 points handling from the added wings. The Neptune was already ultra-heavy before the added wings.
A note about changing ships
If you're playing digitally (not with the toys), when you change the ship in a loadout you're only changing the body, not the wings. The new ship has the same wings. This tends to come up during combat when one ship is disabled (or in danger of being disabled). Maybe the old wings on the new body are fine with you, in which case don't worry about it. But be aware it's happening. If you do care about those things, maybe you might want to set up one of the loadout slots with the alternate body/wing configuration, but then you need to remember that you won't necessarily be using the same weapons as you were. It's always something...
Wings by stat type
Defense wings are short, with approximately vertical plates toward the ends that extend both above and below the wings. Weapons (or other wings) mount on the far ends. The Zenith comes with defense wings, and everybody has at least those. The Vigilance (wave 2) comes with one defense wing, normally mounted on the left.
Speed wings are also short, with a propulsion unit. Weapons (or other wings) mount on the far ends. The Nadir comes with one speed wing, normally mounted on the left. The Vigilance (wave 2) comes with one speed wing, normally mounted on the right. The Skullscream (wave 2) comes with two speed wings. Side note: the propulsion units in Skullscream's speed wing produce impressive trails of purple, especially with boost, while the one in the Vigilance's speed wing barely looks like a propulsion unit at all.
Handling wings are longer, with a prominent slanted section. Weapons (or other wings) mount at an angle, up and away -- or, if flipped or swapped, down and away. The Pulse, Lance, and (Switch only) Arwing all come with two handling wings, and the Nadir comes with one handling wing, normally mounted on the right.
Energy wings are also longer, with housings that presumably contain the energy generators. Weapons (or other wings) mount on the top -- or, if flipped or swapped, on the bottom. The Neptune comes with two energy wings, as does the Vantage (wave 2). Side note: the Vantage wings have slanted end plates that kind-of makes them look like handling or possibly defense wings, but they're not.