In Elite Dangerous you are your ship and your ship is its stats. Unfortunately there are so many stats in play with each ship that it can easily become confusing as to which stat controls what, making it harder to outfit your ship with the upgrades it needs to perform at its maximum potential.

Certain ships will also want to focus on different stats. Fighters will want to maximize their firepower, while Transport ships want to focus on increasing their cargo space and shields. To give you a better idea of what stat affects what, here is a rundown of the ship stats in Elite Dangerous.

Hull Mass – A ships mass is its overall weight. You should be wary of gaining too much mass as it will affect the efficiency of your thrusters causing you to manoeuvre more slowly. A larger Hull Mass will also require more powerful shields to protect. Every time you add a module to your ship it will increase its mass.

Armor – Your armor rating mitigates the damage you take from attacks when your shields fail or from attacks that bypass shields. The more armor you have, the more damage you can take but it usually comes at the cost of speed and maneuverability.

Shields – Your first line of defense, your ships shields can be thought of as your life bar. Each hit will reduce your shields an amount equal to the power of the attack. Shields can also regenerate over time if they haven’t been hit in a while.

Larger vessels require more powerful shields. As you increase your mass, you will need to get more powerful/ more shield generators.

Max Speed – The top speed your ship is capable of measured in m/s without using boost.

Boost Speed – The fastest your ship can go while using the boost ability.

Maneuverability – This stat determines how agile your ship is when making turns and accelerating. Larger ships tend to have low maneuverability while smaller ones have much higher maneuverability.

Cargo – The amount of cargo space your ship has available when empty. Transport ships have huge cargo bays while fighters have very minimal spots for storage.

Hard points – Adding weapons to your ship requires hard points. There are different sizes of hard points from small to huge. They can be deployed from your cockpit when you need to use them, but must be retracted in order to jump.

Utility Points – You can use utility points to attach modules to your ship. Things like Cargo Scanners and point defense turrets all require a utility point to attach to.

Fuel Capacity – The maximum amount of fuel a ship can carry. More fuel = farther distances travelled.

Internal Component Slots – These can be thought of as hard points for equipment inside your ship as opposed to outside. Like the Hard points they come in different sizes and can be filled with everything from shield generators to sensors.


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Last Updated: Mar 21, 2016

About The Author

A man of many hats, Greg divides his precious gaming time between competitive games like League of Legends and Dota 2 and Action/ Adventure Games like GTA, and Destiny. At Ten Ton Hammer he specializes in making guides for new and veteran players alike.

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