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I think the first stage is planned to use 31 Raptors, so the rocket will be about twice the thrust of the Saturn V, but I expect there will be around a 40% payload penalty because of reusability.

Starship will be the most powerful rocket to fly and the cheapest if it’s successfully developed.

They've got the Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 development under their belts, but this project is going to beat their asses I think. The reusability of Falcon 9 has been overstated all along, and while they'll no doubt improve reusability and shave some more cost, this Starship design is a SSTO, which has literally never been pulled off. Such a thing can be done, but the payload budget shrinks to nothing just to reach SSTO, meaning it isn't accomplishing the intended goal, it just becomes the goal in and of itself.

OTOH, when underestimating Musk, the world has always been wrong, me included.

Staging makes the most sense. A big-ass booster that is reusable to get the upper stages and crew/colonist vehicles to optimum velocity and altitude might Work better if, after separation, continued on a single orbit trajectory, carrying relatively small solid rocket strap-ons to do the deceleration burn after the big-ass booster has done its main job and approaches it's launch site, having circumnavigated.

Of course, the, uh, vision of Musk is to have the SSTO make the interplanetary transit, thus being able to do a propulsive landing on the surface of the Moon, Mars, or other rocky large body. The Mars round trip will take something like four years, which mitigates against the economy of reusability. Having a series of different vehicles looping on their own job makes more sense. Even better is to send the colonists aboard unitary habitats which would ride to Mars, land, and never fly again. That would give the colonists somewhere and someway to survive on the surface.