Will the upcoming cargo refactor effect ship mass and in turn ship handling?
TL;DRLong term, cargo is supposed to affect mass and handling, and flight control would handle extra mass correctly, but currently cargo mass isn't passed to the ship, and speakers are unsure of the tech's status.
Long term, it's supposed to affect that. So, for example, if you have a cargo hold full of heavy equipment or something like that, then your ship is supposed to handle, well, less agile. But I'm not sure where the tech for that is. So the cargo work, as such, I'm not sure if it has an effect on the physical properties yet. Somebody else would need to take that.
I don't know if it would be for the team doing cargo to confirm that. But I know from the IFCS side, obviously, if you put more mass on the ship, it will behave correctly with the extra weight. It's just the current cargo system just doesn't do that at all. If it did, then you'd have that behavior already.
So currently the mass is just not propagated to the outside of the ship. The layer doesn't communicate with it yet.