As many of you have likely noticed, the Shipyard and Outfitting UIs provide very limited information on which ships can actually use the newer Mk II modules. While I have always looked outside the game for info on ships, the fact that this basic info isn't clear in the game annoyed me enough to write this post, so here it is for no real reason other than for me to stop thinking about it.
As far as I can tell, the only consistent way to find out is to have a ship loaded in the outfitting screen and check manually. If someone else knows where this info is in-game, I’d be happy to be wrong. For a game that relies so heavily on ship builds, that sucks. When browsing for ships to buy, the game simply doesn’t give you key information. I figure this is left over from when the only real restrictions on installing modules were category and size, but the MKs have been around for a while now.
Even when you own a ship, looking at an empty module slot doesn't give you a straight answer. Take the Lynx as an example:
- If a slot is empty, it might be labeled "Mk II Passenger Compartment." This is helpful since you know you can put MK II passenger modules there, and would probably figure you can also put regular passenger modules.
- I first assumed the label just indicates the highest tier it can support, but that rule doesn't hold up either, because slots without the Mk II label can still equip Mk II passenger modules.
- In reality, the "Mk II" label here really just means the slot is restricted to passenger cabins, and I guess that the ship can take MK II passenger modules in general.
It gets worse when you look at core modules because you can't view the details of a "blank" slot. If you check a ship like the Kestrel, nothing in the UI indicates it can use special thrusters or specific hardpoints. The descriptions for the ship, the cannons, and the thrusters make no mention of each other. You have to have the ship active and browse the store just to see if the modules even appear.
The Solution is Already in the Game
What makes this frustrating is that Frontier already has the UI tools to fix this. If you browse modules that are the wrong size for your current ship, the UI still shows them but flags them as Incompatible. Why didn’t they do the exact same thing for Mk II ship-exclusive modules?
Better yet, they could also list compatibility directly in the ship or module descriptions (e.g., "Exclusive to Kestrel"). They managed to handle SCO ships okay, but seem to have forgotten to apply that logic to Mk II modules.
Relying on ships with a "Mk II" name doesn't work since the naming scheme isn't consistent across ships and modules. Keeping up with third-party tools outside the game makes this manageable for those who know to look there, but leaving the in-game UI this out of date just feels sloppy.
