Equipment

Ships can be retrofitted with a variety of different equipment to suit various roles, flight styles, and budgets. The standard loadout for most new ringdivers is a second-hand Rusatom-Antonoff K37 TNTRL mining barge outfitted with a mass driver. Many pilots will soon find this arrangement lacking, either in mining efficiency, agility, endurance, reliability, or any other parameter they find themselves optimizing. Modern technology has come a long way, and with the right choice of upgrade you may find your revenue climbing very, very quickly!

Thanks to a fairly high degree of convergent evolution (and the desire to maximize sales), many systems from most manufacturers can be installed into common ships without much trouble. Modularity has proven its worth in spaceflight. Engineers today can transplant the newest technology from modern ships into old ones – or vice versa. Enceladus Prime dockyards even succeed in retrofitting entire nuclear cores and main engines, though the highly integrated nature of these systems prevent such swaps from being simple (or low-cost).

The gear you'll find available and installed on mining ships in the Rings is somewhat limited compared to Earth or Mars, mostly due to practicality or legal restrictions. Obviously, civilians also do not have access to the full range of military hardware.

Note that some types of equipment can be damaged during a ring dive, and eventually require repairs. For example, thrusters are subject to wear from usage, and may become misaligned due to a high-velocity impacts, crashes or kinetic projectiles.

Hardpoints

External equipment is mounted onto hardpoints. They typically hold weapons, retrieval tools or detachable equipment.

Mass Drivers fire kinetic slugs and consume ammunition (damageable)
Energy Weapons such as lasers and microwaves that do not require ammunition (damageable)
Plasma Weapons fire superheated plasma by consuming propellant (damageable)
Manipulator Arm that can grab ringroids, ore, and salvage (damageable)
Drones can slow down and/or haul ore to your ship
Detachable cradled equipment such as Cargo Containers, the B8 Claim Beacon, the NT Mining Companion, and the External Impact Absorber

Different types of hardpoints – high-stress, low-stress, drone hardpoints, docking bays, and spinal hardpoints – can accommodate different equipment.

Internal Storage

Ships may hold several separate reservoirs and containers for dedicated purposes.

Propellant Tanks for the Reaction Control System, Main Propulsion, Powerplant (exc. Stellarator), and Plasma Weapons
Cargo Bay that stores retrieved cargo and raw ore, and may contain a mineral processing unit to refine ore.
Kinetic Ammunition used by Mass Drivers
Nanodrone Components used by Drones

Thrusters

Thrusters consume propellant and use heat and electrical power to accelerate the ship.

Reaction Control Systems provide fine maneuvering and rotational control (damageable)
Main Propulsion (damageable)

Power

Multiple systems required to provide thermal and electrical energy.

Nuclear reactor, which is ship-specific and houses the reactor core (damageable)
Reactor Core that provides thermal power used by thrusters, the powerplant, auxiliary generators, and some other equipment
Powerplant that consumes thermal power to produce electrical power
Ultracapacitor Array that store excess electrical energy to be used during peak demand
Auxiliary Power Unit either an additional electrical generator or an electrical energy storage system

Electronics & Sensors

Cabin electronics assist in controlling and piloting the ship.

On-board computer, which is ship-specific and performs necessary computations for the autopilot and the HUD (damageable)
Head-Up Display (HUD) to display to the pilot the status of the ship, its systems, and external sensors
Autopilot that maintains a stable velocity and orientation of the ship

Additionally, sensors help to navigate and provide a view of the area around your ship.

LIDAR provides a view of objects surrounding the ship in a spiral pattern
Reconnaissance Craft provide an external view of the ship