Started playing recently. This game is opaque as balls. When I got a hull breach on my window or something there was seemingly nothing I could do. Can't frameshift. Restoring shields doesn't seal the breach. A year to nearest station at sublight. Bleh.
Just upgraded some parts, buying weapons and equipment is confusing as balls. I had to look up shit online to make heads or tails of the class vs rank stuff. I'm still not convinced my railgun+double beam laser is gonna work out any better than my hopeless gimballed autocannon+double pulsed laser (starting weapons).
My Asp isn't really that threatening to enemies.
First of all, regarding the cockpit canopy thing. If your canopy breaks, the only way to repair it in the field is with an Auto-Field Repair Module. Other than that, you are now down to your emergency oxygen in your pilot suit. The default one is 5 minutes, but there are upgrades for that that last longer. What probably kept you from frameshifting was you still had your hardpoints deployed or something. You cannot charge your FSD when the hardpoints, landing gear, or cargo scoop are out. You also can't if you are mass locked, which is also possibly what happened to you. If something big is near you, then it's mass will prevent you from jumping, so you need to get away from it. The bigger ships in the game can mass lock a lot of the ships in the game, which makes them useful in a PvP environment.
Rule of thumb: If you get into a bind, retract hard points, cargo scoop, etc, 4 pips to engines with 2 to shields, and boost away until you can frameshift.
About the classes and ratings:
Class refers to the size of the module, so if I'm in outfitting and see this:
If you look at the lighter number on the low part of each hardpoint, that tells you what class the hardpoint is. You see the terms "Huge", "Large", "Medium", and "Small" in reference to hardpoints, but those are just another way of saying the classes. Generally a higher class of a module will be more effective, however it willl also likely consume more power, and put out more heat.
So on the Class 4 hardpoint, you can put any weapon on it that's Class 4 or lower. The same logic applies to all the other slots on the ship.
So the ratings are exactly what they sound like: different versions of modules that are of the same class. So an B Cannon will do more damage than an E Cannon, however the E cannon might consume less power, or not weigh as much. There are also some special cases of things available only at certain ratings.
For instance, in the new upcoming patch, a C rating Shield Generator will be a Bi-Weave Shield Generator, meaning that it doesn't have as much strength, but it regenerates much faster than normal shields.
As for managing your build, there's a few things you have to take into consideration:
Is the combination you want going to overheat your ship constantly? Will it use too much power?
If you were to load yourself up with nothing but Plasma Accelerators, you would fry instantly and take heat damage. Thermic weapons tend to put off more heat, while most Kinetic weapons barely put off any. In addition, you can also have a staggered firing strategy. On my current loadout for my Fer-De-Lance in the main game, I have a Huge Plasma Accelerator and four Pulse Lasers. If I were to hold the trigger to fire the Pulse Lasers and kept mashing my PA button, I would keep overheating continuously. I generally have to fire a PA round, wait, adjust position for a good shot, watch heat gauge, and fire again. If your build can't be effective without doing this, then you need to try a different build.
As for your specific builds, you might be able to make that build work, however if you're just NPC farming, you might want to swap the railguns out for something else since their ammo is so limited. Beam Lasers are particularly good at taking out shields, while Pulse Lasers are good at both hulls and shields, but not a master of either. Kinetic weapons such as multicannons are great at taking out hulls. Railguns all around pack a huge punch to both shields and hull, however the ammo is very limited, and they put out a good amount of heat. I haven't flown an Asp myself, but I think you might want to try 2 medium railguns, 2 pulse lasers, and 2 beam lasers. Replace the railguns with cannons, or something big like that. You need to set up your fire groups. Generally you will have two fire buttons, and if you look on the right panel and go to Fire Groups, you change which fire buttons do what. You can make additional fire groups, and you should have a button set up to change fire groups. I recommend having your rail guns on their own fire group, and your beam and pulse lasers on the other fire group.
Anyway, glad to see you join us. If you have any more questions we are happy to help.
