Would someone be kind enough to explain the module/weapon upgrade mechanics to me?

[CmdrDaymian]

Greetings one and all, Cmdr Daymian (explorer of many planets, trader of much silver, called "he who runs away from fights a lot" by native tribes) here and needing help and advice.

Today, after returning from a glorious exploration adventure of roughly 200ly, where I discovered a great many useless ice planets and dwarf stars and not much else, I found I had 850,000 credits in my bank (those cartography folks will pay for any old useless information, suckers) and wanting to upgrade my Adder to a new ship. I like my Adder, it has served my well these last 30 space hours, but I found the view from the canopy is inadequate. The windows are very small you see. I decided it was time to quit exploring until I could afford the advanced discovery scanner and so it was time to do some trading.

There was a Cobra Mk. III for sale at Harrison Ford station and at around 350,000 credits was well within my price range, so I did a little research and discovered it performs quite well as a beginner trading vessel and bought it. It's a bit slow on the rudder but it sounds lovely, looks lovely and the view from the canopy is great, and that's what counts right? So I set about upgrading my modules.

This is where I got confused. I tried to upgrade my thrusters, but all available thrusters in the station (and there were lots of them) were unavailable to me because they would make my ship exceed its maximum mass. But I'm confused. You see, the stock thrusters on my Cobra have a mass of 10.00 and the ones I want to upgrade to have a mass of 4.00. That's 6 less. Also in the panel to the right, my mass would've gone down from something like 242.00 to 182.00. So how would those thrusters have made me exceed my mass? Obviously I am missing something.

Also I noticed most stock modules on the Cobra are rating 4, class D. What's this rating and class business? Is A1 the best and E5 the worst? Or is it the opposite? A1 is the worst and E5 is best? Confusion levels are critical. Someone please fire a knowledge sink my way.

 

[Renegade Roach]

Other way around, your ship's mass exceeds the maximum of the thrusters. Ideally you want to be keeping the total mass of your ship below the optimum mass of the thrusters you use. You can go over but it will degrade performance.

Class = the size of the module/module slot. A thruster slot rated '4' can fit thrusters rated 1,2,3 or 4. Same applies to all module slots.
Rating = the quality of the module. A being best.


This is a handy site/tool for fitting and gives more detailed info than the in game fitting screen. It will also tell you what the rebuy cost for your loadout is. Never fly without enough to cover the rebuy http://www.edshipyard.com/

Edit for clarity and because I always get class and rating the wrong way round

 

[Wullail]

On the A1-E5...(actually goes upto 7)

Each ship has a number against each slot , you CAN fit upto the maximum number in that slot...so a Slot that shows 5 against it can fit A1-A2-A3-A4-A5/B1-B2-B3 etc etc.

Fitting a class 3 shield in a ships class 5 slot might work but be very weak , often though you would be told that the ships mass is too great to place that on , which basically means they arent strong enough to cover the whole hull with a shield.

Generally the letter denotes weight and how 'good' things are....a D class item is usually the one with the least weight , A class are usually best (most efficient / stronger / faster) but cost a LOT more , B is close to A in efficiency etc but they weight a TONNE more than A class.

What RR said about the thrusters , the ones you tried to fit were too weak to move your ship around.

 

[Renegade Roach]

To expand on the ratings a little.

E = Terrible, don't unless you have to.
D = least mass, best for jump range.
C = decent all round performance/cost/fitting.
B = highest mass, worst for jump range. Best module integrity (helps protect subsystems). Worse for maneuverability (thrust to mass) apart from thrusters, where B give better maneuverability and speed than lower ratings.
A = Awesomeamazingsupergear, harder to fit.

A lot of ships will force you to make compromises between power usage and performance. For trading people often go with largely D rated to extend jump range other than Frame Shift Drive.

 

[jgm]

Each ship has a number of slots internally. Some are pre-designated for a particular purpose (thrusters, life support, power plant etc.) and others you can choose what you put in them (shield generator, hull reinforcement, cargo bay etc).

The number next to the slot is the maximum class of module that can fit in it. So the Cobra's class 4 thruster mounting can theoretically take class 1, 2, 3 or 4 thrusters. However some thruster modules just aren't powerful enough to move this particular ship, which is where you see the mass exceeded message. You can often step down one class of module (so for example put class 3 thrusters in the slot) but these often come with a relatively severe penalty (in this case to speed and agility).

For any given module and class there are grades E through to A. Each is somewhat different, but a good rule of thumb is to think of them like this:

• E: economy
• D: lightweight
• C: standard
• B: armoured
• A: advanced

This isn't a comprehensive set of descriptions, and you should read the outfitting screen for each grade of module to see what effect it really has (note that some of the descriptions aren't great at the moment; FD have stated that they would like to put more information about each module on the outfitting screen but right now we're stuck with limited information).

The same applies for each module slot with the exception of life support and sensors, which can only ever take the correct class of module.

As had been mentioned above, edshipyard is a great resource to allow you to build out potential loadouts and see their cost, power usage, jump range and the like.

 

[ChubbyBunneh]

You're trying to yank out your Lamborghini's V10 and replace it with a lawnmower motor and wondering why it won't go 0-60 in 2.6 seconds any more. The thing can't even move with the 'upgrade' you wanted to install in it.

 

[wiz0floyd]

Those are the mass of the thruster. Exceeding the modules mass means that it won't have enough oomf to accelerate your ship.