FTL Analysis: Augments Intro
So. Augments.
Augments are passive benefits that occupy no physical location aboard your ship. They can't be attacked, they don't draw Power, they in fact can't be turned off. (Which is a problem with some of them!) They're also mostly a player-exclusive mechanic; enemy ships don't get random Augment selections or the like. There's a handful of Augments that do get used by some enemy ships, but for one thing enemy ships only ever have the one Augment, if they have any. So there's not going to be much 'X in AI hands' commentary here.
The player, by contrast, always has three Augment slots; if you ever have more than three Augments, you'll be forced to leave one behind, permanently getting rid of it. (If you return to the beacon, you won't get to pick it back up) Some Augments can be stacked, some cannot; the game won't let you purchase an Augment you already have a copy of if they can't stack, and if you loot such a duplicate it will immediately be broken down for Scrap. Bizarrely, this is a flat 25 Scrap, without regard to the Augment's actual cost. This averages toward throwing away Scrap relative to selling the redundant Augment, especially with advanced edition content enabled; most non-stackable Augments cost more than 50 Scrap, and only a handful cost less than 50.
This whole thing is a bit that irritates me about the design; if I can spontaneously break down Augments into Scrap, what possible reason could I have for simply leaving behind extras? They should be converted to Scrap, not gotten rid of forever to no benefit.
In any event, Augments have a wide variety of effects, ranging from minor tweaks to performance to brand-new capabilities or mechanics. The game seems to expect you to buy them from Stores, but in practice most Augments are too pricey to purchase, whether in the sense that their effect isn't worth the payoff or in the sense that they're so expensive you're unlikely to be able to afford them. In practice you'll mostly rely on looting them from events and occasionally from taking out an enemy ship, or from one being offered by a surrendering ship.
If a surrendering ship offers an Augment, you should usually accept the surrender. Even if the Augment isn't very good, they'll sell for a decent amount of Scrap; early in the game in particular, selling an Augment will easily eclipse the Scrap value you can loot directly from a ship. Later in the game it's less clear-cut, especially because you're a lot more likely to already have 2-3 Augments and so end up wastefully leaving behind an Augment. Not necessarily at that exact moment, but if you're at 2 Augments, accept a surrender that includes an Augment, and then loot another Augment before you can sell the first... whoops, bit of a waste. Still, even late in the game such surrenders are usually a gimme if your ship isn't loaded down with good Augments.
This whole thing is a bit that irritates me about the design; if I can spontaneously break down Augments into Scrap, what possible reason could I have for simply leaving behind extras? They should be converted to Scrap, not gotten rid of forever to no benefit.
In any event, Augments have a wide variety of effects, ranging from minor tweaks to performance to brand-new capabilities or mechanics. The game seems to expect you to buy them from Stores, but in practice most Augments are too pricey to purchase, whether in the sense that their effect isn't worth the payoff or in the sense that they're so expensive you're unlikely to be able to afford them. In practice you'll mostly rely on looting them from events and occasionally from taking out an enemy ship, or from one being offered by a surrendering ship.
If a surrendering ship offers an Augment, you should usually accept the surrender. Even if the Augment isn't very good, they'll sell for a decent amount of Scrap; early in the game in particular, selling an Augment will easily eclipse the Scrap value you can loot directly from a ship. Later in the game it's less clear-cut, especially because you're a lot more likely to already have 2-3 Augments and so end up wastefully leaving behind an Augment. Not necessarily at that exact moment, but if you're at 2 Augments, accept a surrender that includes an Augment, and then loot another Augment before you can sell the first... whoops, bit of a waste. Still, even late in the game such surrenders are usually a gimme if your ship isn't loaded down with good Augments.
The nice thing is you actually do get told exactly what Augment you'll get if you accept their surrender, so you get to make an informed decision. So there's no risk that you accept their surrender and get something worthless to your run -at least, not if you're familiar enough with the game (Or looking up info online as you go) to know whether a thing on offer is relevant or not. It's a surprising bit given that one of FTL's main failings is being way too willing to hide info the player needs to make meaningful decisions. Why did the devs feel this case calls for bothering to give the player useful info, and not so many other cases?
In any event, on to specifics.
Automated Reloader
Weapon charge times reduced by 10%. Affects artillery weapons, and can be stacked.
Rarity: 2
40
Note that the stacking is less generous than you might intuitively expect, not resulting in 90%/80%/70% charge times, but rather 90~%/83~%/77~% charge times. It's not really a big deal, but it does mean triple-stacking Automated Reloaders is less appealing than you'd expect (In the admittedly unlikely event you even get the opportunity to do triple-stacking), putting triple stacking as actually only slightly better than what you might be intuitively expecting from double-stacking.
It also doesn't stack favorably with the modifier for having crew manning Weapons. That is, fully-experienced crew reduces the charge period by 20%: that doesn't result in 70% charge time with one Automated Reloader. Instead it results in 72% charge time. A minor difference, but still worth noting.
'Rarity', by the way, is the game's internal tool for controlling how common something is. 1 is as common as things get. 5 is as rare as things get, aside the possibility of not appearing at all. Thus, the Automated Reloader is fairly common, common enough most runs are liable to see at least one at some point.
Anyway, the Automated Reloader is one of the more reliably, generally useful Augments. Even ships that start out not using weapons will virtually always end up incorporating weapons at some point in the run, and while the effect is small it adds up over the course of a fight. Its impact is particularly obvious with slower-charging weapons in a mirror match, potentially letting you fire off your weapon to knock out their Weapons System and thus completely prevent them from firing their own slow-charging weapon. It can also push some Ion weapons over the edge into permanently knocking out an infinite amount of enemy Shields, in conjunction with crew Weapons skill, and is the only Augment that can help with this.
Even outside those specific cases, though, it's useful to be getting volleys in a little more often, a lot more so than you might intuitively expect. Firing just a little more frequently can mean enemy crew repairing essential Systems faster than you can damage them stops happening, have a dramatic impact on your real damage output if it causes you to slip in additional hits under their Shields before they regenerate or get repaired enough to gain a Shield bubble, cause enemy crew to run for the Medical Bay before they've properly repaired a System, etc. There are certainly Augments that are better overall, but not as many as you might think. You probably shouldn't sell it unless you've got duplicates, or need to clear space for an Augment that has a more dramatic effect on your current strategy. (eg Zoltan Shield Bypass on a boarding-focused ship)
Weapon Pre-Igniter
Weapons are at full charge after making a Jump, instead of zero charge. Does not affect Artillery charge.
Rarity: 4
120
This is, of course, amazing with powerful weapons that have a long charge period, but even with weapons that have a middling or fast charge speed just being able to alpha-strike the enemy before they start shooting is huge. This is the single most expensive Augment in the game, and quite justifiably so.
It's also worth explicitly clarifying that it has no special synergy with chain-class weapons; they'll still have to fire multiple times to achieve their best rate of fire. It is at least useful to skip the first, slowest charge period, so it's decently supportive of chain weapons, but it doesn't go the extra mile and make them start at max chain, or let them inherit their chain value when Jumping, or anything like that.
Charge weapons, on the other hand, it's... well, it depends on if you're willing to do Shenanigans or not. If you play normally, you'll get a single shot preloaded on your charge weapon, which is underwhelming. However, if you allow your charge weapon to fully charge, then pause the game, turn off the weapon, Jump, and then turn it back on at your destination, you will find it has magically retained very nearly all its charge, and you need only wait a half second or so before firing off a full barrage. This is a very tedious exploit and honestly I don't understand why the Weapon Pre-Igniter doesn't max out their charges in the first place, so hey, if you're fine with putting up with tedium to get more firepower, go right ahead.
Automated Reloader
Weapon charge times reduced by 10%. Affects artillery weapons, and can be stacked.
Rarity: 2
40Note that the stacking is less generous than you might intuitively expect, not resulting in 90%/80%/70% charge times, but rather 90~%/83~%/77~% charge times. It's not really a big deal, but it does mean triple-stacking Automated Reloaders is less appealing than you'd expect (In the admittedly unlikely event you even get the opportunity to do triple-stacking), putting triple stacking as actually only slightly better than what you might be intuitively expecting from double-stacking.
It also doesn't stack favorably with the modifier for having crew manning Weapons. That is, fully-experienced crew reduces the charge period by 20%: that doesn't result in 70% charge time with one Automated Reloader. Instead it results in 72% charge time. A minor difference, but still worth noting.
'Rarity', by the way, is the game's internal tool for controlling how common something is. 1 is as common as things get. 5 is as rare as things get, aside the possibility of not appearing at all. Thus, the Automated Reloader is fairly common, common enough most runs are liable to see at least one at some point.
Anyway, the Automated Reloader is one of the more reliably, generally useful Augments. Even ships that start out not using weapons will virtually always end up incorporating weapons at some point in the run, and while the effect is small it adds up over the course of a fight. Its impact is particularly obvious with slower-charging weapons in a mirror match, potentially letting you fire off your weapon to knock out their Weapons System and thus completely prevent them from firing their own slow-charging weapon. It can also push some Ion weapons over the edge into permanently knocking out an infinite amount of enemy Shields, in conjunction with crew Weapons skill, and is the only Augment that can help with this.
Even outside those specific cases, though, it's useful to be getting volleys in a little more often, a lot more so than you might intuitively expect. Firing just a little more frequently can mean enemy crew repairing essential Systems faster than you can damage them stops happening, have a dramatic impact on your real damage output if it causes you to slip in additional hits under their Shields before they regenerate or get repaired enough to gain a Shield bubble, cause enemy crew to run for the Medical Bay before they've properly repaired a System, etc. There are certainly Augments that are better overall, but not as many as you might think. You probably shouldn't sell it unless you've got duplicates, or need to clear space for an Augment that has a more dramatic effect on your current strategy. (eg Zoltan Shield Bypass on a boarding-focused ship)
Weapon Pre-Igniter
Weapons are at full charge after making a Jump, instead of zero charge. Does not affect Artillery charge.
Rarity: 4
120This is, of course, amazing with powerful weapons that have a long charge period, but even with weapons that have a middling or fast charge speed just being able to alpha-strike the enemy before they start shooting is huge. This is the single most expensive Augment in the game, and quite justifiably so.
It's also worth explicitly clarifying that it has no special synergy with chain-class weapons; they'll still have to fire multiple times to achieve their best rate of fire. It is at least useful to skip the first, slowest charge period, so it's decently supportive of chain weapons, but it doesn't go the extra mile and make them start at max chain, or let them inherit their chain value when Jumping, or anything like that.
Charge weapons, on the other hand, it's... well, it depends on if you're willing to do Shenanigans or not. If you play normally, you'll get a single shot preloaded on your charge weapon, which is underwhelming. However, if you allow your charge weapon to fully charge, then pause the game, turn off the weapon, Jump, and then turn it back on at your destination, you will find it has magically retained very nearly all its charge, and you need only wait a half second or so before firing off a full barrage. This is a very tedious exploit and honestly I don't understand why the Weapon Pre-Igniter doesn't max out their charges in the first place, so hey, if you're fine with putting up with tedium to get more firepower, go right ahead.
But in general the Weapon Pre-Igniter is huge and often is enough to ensure a run will reach the Rebel Flagship. It's... less helpful for defeating the Rebel Flagship, as the Rebel Flagship is extremely difficult to rapidly alpha strike even with a Weapon Pre-Igniter, but it's not like you should sell it off or something. There's not clearly superior competition in that context, or anything like that.
On a different note, while it's unlikely to come up unless you do a lot of runs, the Weapon Pre-Igniter provides the most glaring example of the jank with the break-down-duplicates-for-Scrap mechanic, as a Weapon Pre-Igniter you sell is worth 60 Scrap, more than twice the 25 Scrap you get for breaking down a duplicate. In addition to the aspect of losing Scrap per se, it's also just frustrating because the Weapon Pre-Igniter is one of the last Augments you'd ever consider selling; the reason you're unlikely to run into the wastage is purely due to how rare it is to get a shot at a Weapon Pre-Igniter. If they were more common to find, they'd be one of the most common to run into this duplicate point. And there's really nothing you can do to improve your play to avoid this waste, so there's no learning curve or system mastery here, it's just a thing where if it happens you get to be frustrated by the wastage you could technically have avoided, but which would require literally seeing the future to be meaningfully true of.
On a different note, while it's unlikely to come up unless you do a lot of runs, the Weapon Pre-Igniter provides the most glaring example of the jank with the break-down-duplicates-for-Scrap mechanic, as a Weapon Pre-Igniter you sell is worth 60 Scrap, more than twice the 25 Scrap you get for breaking down a duplicate. In addition to the aspect of losing Scrap per se, it's also just frustrating because the Weapon Pre-Igniter is one of the last Augments you'd ever consider selling; the reason you're unlikely to run into the wastage is purely due to how rare it is to get a shot at a Weapon Pre-Igniter. If they were more common to find, they'd be one of the most common to run into this duplicate point. And there's really nothing you can do to improve your play to avoid this waste, so there's no learning curve or system mastery here, it's just a thing where if it happens you get to be frustrated by the wastage you could technically have avoided, but which would require literally seeing the future to be meaningfully true of.
And to be completely clear: the game doesn't ask if you want to throw 35 Scrap in trash for no reason. If you loot a non-stacking duplicate, the game immediately and automatically converts it into 25 Scrap without any input from you.
I don't understand why someone thought this made sense.
Stealth Weapons
Weapons fired while cloaked will not reduce the duration of that cloak.
Rarity: 3
50
If you don't have the Cloak System, this is worthless and should probably be sold as quickly as possible, as it's pretty unlikely you'll manage to buy the Cloak System.
If you do have the Cloak System, this is... okay? It depends in part on your loadout: beams don't lower the cloak duration any to fire, Drones don't interfere with cloaking at all, and if you have slow-charging weapons like the Burst Laser III that literally take longer to charge than a full cloak duration lasts, it's not very useful. So it's pretty easy to have it be pretty worthless.
Stealth Weapons
Weapons fired while cloaked will not reduce the duration of that cloak.
Rarity: 3
50If you don't have the Cloak System, this is worthless and should probably be sold as quickly as possible, as it's pretty unlikely you'll manage to buy the Cloak System.
If you do have the Cloak System, this is... okay? It depends in part on your loadout: beams don't lower the cloak duration any to fire, Drones don't interfere with cloaking at all, and if you have slow-charging weapons like the Burst Laser III that literally take longer to charge than a full cloak duration lasts, it's not very useful. So it's pretty easy to have it be pretty worthless.
If you do have multiple weapons that charge relatively quickly, especially if you're late in a run with a maxed Weapons experience crewmember and maybe also an Automated Reloader, you may be able to actually squeeze 2-3 shots from each such weapon in a full cloak duration and appreciate that this is actually possible instead of the volleys rapidly erasing the cloak duration.
But mostly this is something you should honestly probably sell if you loot it, even when playing a Stealth Cruiser, and almost certainly don't buy it.
Shield Charge Booster
Shield recharges 15% faster. Can be stacked.
Rarity: 2
45
Generically good.
Also very boring.
If you loot it, you should probably keep it, but I'd hesitate to actually buy it from a Store until fairly late in a run. 45 Scrap is a lot for the first half-ish of a run, and a 15% improvement to charge rate, though nice, is not the kind of amazing some similarly-priced Augments are.
But mostly this is something you should honestly probably sell if you loot it, even when playing a Stealth Cruiser, and almost certainly don't buy it.
Shield Charge Booster
Shield recharges 15% faster. Can be stacked.
Rarity: 2
45Generically good.
Also very boring.
If you loot it, you should probably keep it, but I'd hesitate to actually buy it from a Store until fairly late in a run. 45 Scrap is a lot for the first half-ish of a run, and a 15% improvement to charge rate, though nice, is not the kind of amazing some similarly-priced Augments are.
The one I'm covering next, for example.
Reverse Ion Field
Ion attacks have a 50% chance of not doing anything. Stacks, with two copies conferring complete immunity to Ion effects, including from environmental hazards.
Rarity: 2
45
Erratic in its utility (Only the Rebel Flagship is actually guaranteed to have an Ion weapon, and only in its first phase), but incredibly useful when it does apply. One copy is already enough that the AI will basically never lock down your Shields System with Ion weaponry, drastically reducing your vulnerability to Ion weaponry. Two provides complete immunity, making Ion weaponry on enemies essentially dead weapon slots.
Ion weapon protection is a pretty big deal given they can take your ship from 'can literally shrug off the enemy ship's attacks forever without taking real damage' to 'your ship has been destroyed, game over, try again'. They're pretty unique in this regard; only missiles and bombs are at all comparable, and in the case of bombs they're held back by the fact that the AI goes with random-targeting and they have no innate Hull damage of their own. They have to get lucky and happen to blow up your Shields System. (Missiles can instead kill you directly) And there's no source of protection against Ion weapons outside the Reverse Ion Field, so if you're tired of Ion weapons ruining your runs you should consider buying it when able. (Okay, Ion Bombs can be semi-blocked by Supershields, and Ion Intruders can be killed by crew or shot down by Defense Drones, but the regular fire Ion weapons? No, there's no alternatives, and these two exceptions don't reliably ruin your shield bubble, which is the point)
Reverse Ion Field
Ion attacks have a 50% chance of not doing anything. Stacks, with two copies conferring complete immunity to Ion effects, including from environmental hazards.
Rarity: 2
45Erratic in its utility (Only the Rebel Flagship is actually guaranteed to have an Ion weapon, and only in its first phase), but incredibly useful when it does apply. One copy is already enough that the AI will basically never lock down your Shields System with Ion weaponry, drastically reducing your vulnerability to Ion weaponry. Two provides complete immunity, making Ion weaponry on enemies essentially dead weapon slots.
Ion weapon protection is a pretty big deal given they can take your ship from 'can literally shrug off the enemy ship's attacks forever without taking real damage' to 'your ship has been destroyed, game over, try again'. They're pretty unique in this regard; only missiles and bombs are at all comparable, and in the case of bombs they're held back by the fact that the AI goes with random-targeting and they have no innate Hull damage of their own. They have to get lucky and happen to blow up your Shields System. (Missiles can instead kill you directly) And there's no source of protection against Ion weapons outside the Reverse Ion Field, so if you're tired of Ion weapons ruining your runs you should consider buying it when able. (Okay, Ion Bombs can be semi-blocked by Supershields, and Ion Intruders can be killed by crew or shot down by Defense Drones, but the regular fire Ion weapons? No, there's no alternatives, and these two exceptions don't reliably ruin your shield bubble, which is the point)
I often buy it if I get the opportunity, one of the only Augments I do so with.
Scrap Recovery Arm
Anytime Scrap is collected, collect 10% more.
Rarity: 1
50
Auto-buy, unless you're very late in a run. (Like, you find it in a Store just before entering the final Sector) It will literally pay for itself, usually several times over if you manage to get one early. This isn't even getting into the existence of a semi-common event where the Scrap Recovery Arm provides a blue option that gives you a whole bunch of Scrap at once! (As in, 100+ Scrap is expected from this event)
Honestly, this probably shouldn't even exist in the game's design. It's simply too generally good, even considering that Augment slots are a bit limited.
To be fair, part of the problem is that most Augments... kind of suck. This means that even though you only have three Augment slots to work with, it's actually pretty rare for you to be making a real decision about what to use. If Augment quality was overall more consistent about being solid-to-great, the Scrap Recovery Arm would still be an obvious grab when you were at 0-1 Augments but would be a harder decision if you had 2 or 3 Augments. Even if you actually improved the Scrap Recovery Arm at the same time as implementing such a change, this would do a lot to make it a more meaningful and interesting decision.
Scrap Recovery Arm
Anytime Scrap is collected, collect 10% more.
Rarity: 1
50Auto-buy, unless you're very late in a run. (Like, you find it in a Store just before entering the final Sector) It will literally pay for itself, usually several times over if you manage to get one early. This isn't even getting into the existence of a semi-common event where the Scrap Recovery Arm provides a blue option that gives you a whole bunch of Scrap at once! (As in, 100+ Scrap is expected from this event)
Honestly, this probably shouldn't even exist in the game's design. It's simply too generally good, even considering that Augment slots are a bit limited.
To be fair, part of the problem is that most Augments... kind of suck. This means that even though you only have three Augment slots to work with, it's actually pretty rare for you to be making a real decision about what to use. If Augment quality was overall more consistent about being solid-to-great, the Scrap Recovery Arm would still be an obvious grab when you were at 0-1 Augments but would be a harder decision if you had 2 or 3 Augments. Even if you actually improved the Scrap Recovery Arm at the same time as implementing such a change, this would do a lot to make it a more meaningful and interesting decision.
But it probably shouldn't be in the design regardless; this kind of 'spend a resource to make more of itself' mechanic is pretty much always busted if the design isn't actively built on the assumption of it being reliably prioritized by players.
Repair Arm
Each time you collect Scrap, you collect 15% less, but 2 Hull damage is repaired.
Rarity: 3
50
Surprisingly bad for most purposes, as you'd generally be better off purchasing repairs from a Store, the Repair Arm can actually be nice to have when you're on the final approach. Among other things, the Flagship does drop some Scrap in its first and second stages, and they're trivial amounts that are usually literally worthless, where getting some Hull back may be what lets you actually win the run. There's also the possibility your run has reached the point where it can't spend Scrap on further improvement anyway. It doesn't happen often, but it can happen. At that point sacrificing Scrap to the Repair Arm isn't particularly costly.
Anyway, the reason the Repair Arm is bad for most of a run is that it tends to work out as comparable to or worse than paying for repairs from a Store. Repairs happening as you go has some value, but not really enough to make up for the Scrap inefficiency. This makes it particularly difficult to justify buying a Repair Arm; holding onto it after you've looted it is still not great, but paying for it is just putting you too deep into the hole for not enough payoff.
Repair Arm
Each time you collect Scrap, you collect 15% less, but 2 Hull damage is repaired.
Rarity: 3
50Surprisingly bad for most purposes, as you'd generally be better off purchasing repairs from a Store, the Repair Arm can actually be nice to have when you're on the final approach. Among other things, the Flagship does drop some Scrap in its first and second stages, and they're trivial amounts that are usually literally worthless, where getting some Hull back may be what lets you actually win the run. There's also the possibility your run has reached the point where it can't spend Scrap on further improvement anyway. It doesn't happen often, but it can happen. At that point sacrificing Scrap to the Repair Arm isn't particularly costly.
Anyway, the reason the Repair Arm is bad for most of a run is that it tends to work out as comparable to or worse than paying for repairs from a Store. Repairs happening as you go has some value, but not really enough to make up for the Scrap inefficiency. This makes it particularly difficult to justify buying a Repair Arm; holding onto it after you've looted it is still not great, but paying for it is just putting you too deep into the hole for not enough payoff.
Among other points, the game rounds up for Scrap lost to the Repair Arm; if you should've looted 30 Scrap, you lose out on 5 Scrap, since 15% of 30 is 4.5. This contributes to the tendency for repairing at Stores to be similar or greater efficiency.
Also not helping is that Hull repair events, though rare, do exist and are common enough it's better for a large portion of a run to not burn Scrap on hitting full Hull. Sitting at 25 Hull is, until quite late in a run, not particularly less safe than pushing up to the max of 30 Hull, while allowing Hull repair events to actually benefit you; a Repair Arm takes away the ability to stop repairing at 25-ish Hull and hoard Scrap for upgrades/Store purchases. Say you would've stopped at 25 Hull, but the Repair Arm forcibly took you to 30 and then you hit a Hull repair event; at that point, all the Scrap taken repairing those 5 points was functionally thrown in the trash.
Also not helping is that repairing from 29 to 30 Hull doesn't reduce the Scrap theft. So that's another bit of inefficiency baked into the Augment.
A bit of good news: it only devours Scrap if you were damaged and thus needed repairs. That's an appreciated touch. Games with comparable mechanics usually force the player to eat the downsides of passives even in cases where they didn't actually get the passive's benefits, so it's a pleasant surprise that FTL is an exception.
A bit of good news: it only devours Scrap if you were damaged and thus needed repairs. That's an appreciated touch. Games with comparable mechanics usually force the player to eat the downsides of passives even in cases where they didn't actually get the passive's benefits, so it's a pleasant surprise that FTL is an exception.
Not enough to save it, but still.
This really needed to just repair the player a little bit for free (eg 1 Hull per Jump performed, at no cost), or let them spend 2 Scrap per Hull point manually when out of fights without needing a Store, or... something different from what it actually does, something less inherently bad.
Drone Recovery Arm
External Drones have their Drone Part cost refunded when Jumping, assuming they're still intact.
Rarity: 2
50
Hugely useful if you're using external Drones at all, will literally pay for itself several times over, letting you deploy external Drones constantly and heavily.
Note that the Drone Recovery Arm can be exploited with the Hull Repair Drone to get literally free repairs. Deploy the Hull Repair Drone, let it repair you twice, and then Jump: you'll get back your Drone Part due to the Hull Repair Drone still being out there. The Hull Repair Drone is normally a dubious deal, but it's worth considering holding onto it just in case you get a Drone Recovery Arm. (Assuming you're using Drones at all, anyway) Not to mention it makes the Hull Repair Drone a lot more viable in a non-exploitable way, since it's a lot easier to justify spending Drone Parts on it when your Drone Parts can go on theoretically forever for other purposes.
This incidentally is a contributing factor to Repair Arm being bad. Drone Recovery Arm has a host of benefits, with 'improve your field repair ability' being completely incidental (And free if you're using the mild exploit! And the same amount of Hull repaired !), while Drone Recovery Arm costs just as much as Repair Arm and is actually more common. Now, you won't necessarily buy a Drone Control in every run -they won't necessarily appear in Stores, for one- but if you do have a Drone Control, there's no contest. Drone Recovery Arm is just way better.
Also note that the Drone Recovery Arm does not recover Drone Parts expended on events, even when you would intuitively expect it to do so. Alas. This is pretty minor overall since your Drone Parts will go so much further in general, making such costs easier to bear anyway, but it is mildly frustrating, and can be a genuine problem for a learning player who is low on Drone Parts and doesn't realize that spending a Drone Part on an event may take them below the amount needed for their combat kit.
Drone Recovery Arm
External Drones have their Drone Part cost refunded when Jumping, assuming they're still intact.
Rarity: 2
50Hugely useful if you're using external Drones at all, will literally pay for itself several times over, letting you deploy external Drones constantly and heavily.
Note that the Drone Recovery Arm can be exploited with the Hull Repair Drone to get literally free repairs. Deploy the Hull Repair Drone, let it repair you twice, and then Jump: you'll get back your Drone Part due to the Hull Repair Drone still being out there. The Hull Repair Drone is normally a dubious deal, but it's worth considering holding onto it just in case you get a Drone Recovery Arm. (Assuming you're using Drones at all, anyway) Not to mention it makes the Hull Repair Drone a lot more viable in a non-exploitable way, since it's a lot easier to justify spending Drone Parts on it when your Drone Parts can go on theoretically forever for other purposes.
This incidentally is a contributing factor to Repair Arm being bad. Drone Recovery Arm has a host of benefits, with 'improve your field repair ability' being completely incidental (And free if you're using the mild exploit! And the same amount of Hull repaired !), while Drone Recovery Arm costs just as much as Repair Arm and is actually more common. Now, you won't necessarily buy a Drone Control in every run -they won't necessarily appear in Stores, for one- but if you do have a Drone Control, there's no contest. Drone Recovery Arm is just way better.
Also note that the Drone Recovery Arm does not recover Drone Parts expended on events, even when you would intuitively expect it to do so. Alas. This is pretty minor overall since your Drone Parts will go so much further in general, making such costs easier to bear anyway, but it is mildly frustrating, and can be a genuine problem for a learning player who is low on Drone Parts and doesn't realize that spending a Drone Part on an event may take them below the amount needed for their combat kit.
Note that the base game has no equivalent Augment for extending missile ammunition efficiency. Advanced edition adds one, but... well, that's for next post, but for now I'll note it's inexplicably far, far worse a support, when Drones are inherently more useful, powerful, and versatile than missiles and bombs.
I don't get why the devs were so willing to literally erase the Drone Part cost on Drones but felt compelled to ensure missiles and bombs forever labored under their own ammunition limits.
Long-Ranged Scanners
Reveals environmental hazards (Including what specific type they are) and ship presence in beacons the player can travel to. Note that ship presence or lack thereof is not strictly correlated to the presence of a fight.
Rarity: 1
30
All Stealth Cruisers start with this Augment.
Frankly, I don't understand why this isn't a core part of the game, either as an intrinsic functionality of all ships or at least as an Augment literally every ship starts with. FTL is, like many Roguelikes, a game where risk management is an important part of gameplay, and risk management requires information to work with. Not perfect information, certainly, but enough information to at least make very broad decisions like 'my ship is low on Hull, I'll avoid ships and environmental hazards to reduce my risk until I can find a Store' vs 'my ship is doing great, let's pick all the fights'. Environmental hazards are a particularly big offender in this regard, as they're universally designed to be extremely player-hostile, so much so that they all have shocking potential to take a run from 'doing perfectly' to 'game over' in the space of one encounter, and yet you get zero warning of them unless you specifically have this Augment.
As an Augment, this is strongly worth considering buying, especially since it's unusually cheap for an Augment, and if you happen to loot it you should probably hold onto it until fairly late in a run. Once you're on approach to the fight with the Rebel Flagship you should sell it/replace it with another Augment if you can, as it's essentially worthless in Sector 8 (There's no environmental hazards there, for one), but for most of a run it significantly protects you from disaster.
Long-Ranged Scanners
Reveals environmental hazards (Including what specific type they are) and ship presence in beacons the player can travel to. Note that ship presence or lack thereof is not strictly correlated to the presence of a fight.
Rarity: 1
30All Stealth Cruisers start with this Augment.
Frankly, I don't understand why this isn't a core part of the game, either as an intrinsic functionality of all ships or at least as an Augment literally every ship starts with. FTL is, like many Roguelikes, a game where risk management is an important part of gameplay, and risk management requires information to work with. Not perfect information, certainly, but enough information to at least make very broad decisions like 'my ship is low on Hull, I'll avoid ships and environmental hazards to reduce my risk until I can find a Store' vs 'my ship is doing great, let's pick all the fights'. Environmental hazards are a particularly big offender in this regard, as they're universally designed to be extremely player-hostile, so much so that they all have shocking potential to take a run from 'doing perfectly' to 'game over' in the space of one encounter, and yet you get zero warning of them unless you specifically have this Augment.
As an Augment, this is strongly worth considering buying, especially since it's unusually cheap for an Augment, and if you happen to loot it you should probably hold onto it until fairly late in a run. Once you're on approach to the fight with the Rebel Flagship you should sell it/replace it with another Augment if you can, as it's essentially worthless in Sector 8 (There's no environmental hazards there, for one), but for most of a run it significantly protects you from disaster.
The sad thing is, the information it provides is painfully limited, and the 'ship yes/no' component in particular is basically the game lying to the player, as the game is perfectly happy to do stuff like have an event unavoidably dump a hostile ship on you upon entering a beacon that supposedly had no ship. Only the environmental hazards component is 100% accurate, and even that comes with a qualifier: there are events that give you the option of risking entering an Asteroid Field, where Long-Ranged Scanners won't actually forewarn you. (Fortunately, no event will uncontrollably force you into an environmental hazard, so you can, in fact, consistently avoid environmental hazards with the help of Long-Ranged Scanners)
Oh, and on top of what a big deal it is in its own right, it provides blue options for eight events. That's more than twice any other Augment. Admittedly, this is somewhat inane in practice as seven of these blue options are completely redundant with having Sensors at level 3 (Or sometimes just 2!), with the remaining blue option being inferior to the Crew Teleporter-provided blue option for that event... but if you loot it really early, all the more reason to hold onto it.
FTL Recharge Booster
The FTL Jump charges 25% faster. Stackable.
Rarity: 2
50
This is okay, but not spectacular. Unless you're going for a pacifist run or something, you probably shouldn't buy it -the value is too limited for the expense- but if you loot it, particularly on a ship that doesn't start with an Augment, feel free to hold onto it, at least until you have 3 Augments total.
Its main issue is that Engine upgrades start out cheap, while covering its benefit and raising evasion and making your Engines less vulnerable to being completely knocked out. Only the last three Engine upgrades aren't cheaper than FTL Recharge Booster, and by the time you're at Engines 5 you're pretty reliably able to escape when you need to escape.
Thus; can be okay to hold onto if acquired as loot, but extremely dubious as a purchase. It would've needed to be on the order of 20-25 Scrap, or Engine upgrades made a lot more expensive, for it to make sense as a purchase.
And yes each tier of Engines also requires a point of Power backing it, but Power is also cheap. In real play the fourth Engines level might be more expensive than this Augment, depending on what the exact context is... but that still comes back to the point that upgrading Engines does more than just boost your FTL charge rate, unlike this Augment, so upgrading Engines takes a while to not be more payoff for the Scrap expended. At higher Engines it's at least more comparable to two Engine upgrades in terms of Jump charge... but it doesn't give evasion, or make Engines better able to function when damaged, so Engine upgrades still have significant advantages in utility and efficiency.
Advanced FTL Navigation
If you have previously visited a beacon, you may Jump there in one action without regard to normal travel limitations.
Rarity: 3
50
This is a neat idea in theory, but in practice is pretty close to worthless. It can occasionally help if the exit beacon of a Sector happens to be unusually far to the left simultaneous to an unusually large number of beacons being placed on the right side of the map, as in the mid-late game it's often not too costly to risk a fleet-has-overtaken-the-beacon encounter, especially if the exit beacon happens to be in nebula -this will result in no ASB threat. (Normally a nebula beacon will automatically turn into an Ion Storm instead, but exit beacons are exempt, making nebula-covered exit beacons bizarrely safe to let the rebels overtake; you'll still get a fight against an 'out of depth' ship, but these ships aren't that much more powerful)
Normally, though, you should basically never be re-visiting beacons. It's a waste of fuel, a waste of precious time, events cannot be re-triggered even if you would expect to be able to do so, and it's unlikely that you'll get into a fight, run away, and then reach the point of being able to take the fight on swiftly enough that going back to try again is even relevantly possible. Stores and the exit beacon are the only things that can occasionally make sense to hit more than once, and notably Stores cease to exist once the rebel fleet has overtaken them, giving you a fairly limited window to go back regardless.
I honestly usually just sell Advanced FTL Navigation if I happen to loot it somewhere, and I certainly would never burn Scrap on buying it.
FTL Recharge Booster
The FTL Jump charges 25% faster. Stackable.
Rarity: 2
50This is okay, but not spectacular. Unless you're going for a pacifist run or something, you probably shouldn't buy it -the value is too limited for the expense- but if you loot it, particularly on a ship that doesn't start with an Augment, feel free to hold onto it, at least until you have 3 Augments total.
Its main issue is that Engine upgrades start out cheap, while covering its benefit and raising evasion and making your Engines less vulnerable to being completely knocked out. Only the last three Engine upgrades aren't cheaper than FTL Recharge Booster, and by the time you're at Engines 5 you're pretty reliably able to escape when you need to escape.
Thus; can be okay to hold onto if acquired as loot, but extremely dubious as a purchase. It would've needed to be on the order of 20-25 Scrap, or Engine upgrades made a lot more expensive, for it to make sense as a purchase.
And yes each tier of Engines also requires a point of Power backing it, but Power is also cheap. In real play the fourth Engines level might be more expensive than this Augment, depending on what the exact context is... but that still comes back to the point that upgrading Engines does more than just boost your FTL charge rate, unlike this Augment, so upgrading Engines takes a while to not be more payoff for the Scrap expended. At higher Engines it's at least more comparable to two Engine upgrades in terms of Jump charge... but it doesn't give evasion, or make Engines better able to function when damaged, so Engine upgrades still have significant advantages in utility and efficiency.
Advanced FTL Navigation
If you have previously visited a beacon, you may Jump there in one action without regard to normal travel limitations.
Rarity: 3
50This is a neat idea in theory, but in practice is pretty close to worthless. It can occasionally help if the exit beacon of a Sector happens to be unusually far to the left simultaneous to an unusually large number of beacons being placed on the right side of the map, as in the mid-late game it's often not too costly to risk a fleet-has-overtaken-the-beacon encounter, especially if the exit beacon happens to be in nebula -this will result in no ASB threat. (Normally a nebula beacon will automatically turn into an Ion Storm instead, but exit beacons are exempt, making nebula-covered exit beacons bizarrely safe to let the rebels overtake; you'll still get a fight against an 'out of depth' ship, but these ships aren't that much more powerful)
Normally, though, you should basically never be re-visiting beacons. It's a waste of fuel, a waste of precious time, events cannot be re-triggered even if you would expect to be able to do so, and it's unlikely that you'll get into a fight, run away, and then reach the point of being able to take the fight on swiftly enough that going back to try again is even relevantly possible. Stores and the exit beacon are the only things that can occasionally make sense to hit more than once, and notably Stores cease to exist once the rebel fleet has overtaken them, giving you a fairly limited window to go back regardless.
I honestly usually just sell Advanced FTL Navigation if I happen to loot it somewhere, and I certainly would never burn Scrap on buying it.
It does provide 1 blue option for an event that occurs in a wide variety of Sectors, but it's debatable whether it's an improvement over most of the outcomes of resolving the event without using a blue option. So... not a reason to buy it, and dubious of a reason to hold onto it.
FTL Jammer
Enemy ships take twice as long to charge their FTL Jump.
Rarity: 3
30
This isn't particularly great. The vast majority of cases of enemy ships fleeing come in three categories;
1: A Rebel scout finds you, immediately starts charging for a Jump, and fleet pursuit will double if you let it escape.
These all take 40 seconds to escape. If you have Engines at level 4, or at level 3 with an experienced crewmember manning it, your Jump will charge before theirs does, and the thing is the fleet pursuit effect doesn't trigger if you Jump. (Even though that doesn't really make sense) Since you should generally prioritize getting Engines to level 4 fairly early due to it being a relatively cheap series of upgrades with a dramatic effect on your survivability... you will frequently be in a position to Jump first, even if you aren't able to actually take out the scout. This is also ignoring that you will often be able to smash their Piloting and/or Engines to delay them; even if your Engines is just level 2, you may still finish charging before them by virtue of delaying their Jump.
In this case, the FTL Jammer is primarily pertinent for potentially letting you grab rewards you wouldn't have gotten otherwise. That's nice, but Rebel scouts are usually relatively weak and not that hard to destroy even in the normal 40 second charge period, and the exceptions -such as Autoship scouts with Cloaking- are highly unlikely to be made doable just because you doubled their escape timer.
2: You pick a fight with a Rebel noncombatant ship, which immediately starts charging, but will have no consequences if it escapes.
These will also take 40 seconds to escape, and there's no pressure to deal with them before they do beyond that defeating them will get you rewards.
This is the main realm the FTL Jammer is decent in, as these ships are often a bit difficult to take out quickly, but no so difficult that doubling their timer doesn't actually help. These encounters are, however, uncommon. Not rare -I've had runs hit this encounter 5 or so times, and sometimes have encountered 3 in one Sector- but uncommon enough it's entirely normal for runs to never have it happen at all.
3: You're fighting virtually any ship, and once it's low on health it decides to run.
In the very early portion of a run, it's not too unusual to get into a slapfight where the enemy ship literally can't hurt you and you can only slowly wear down its Hull. In such a case, they may well escape, which can be particularly frustrating if eg you activated a Drone or they did some Hull damage via Missiles before running out of ammo, or something. For those situations, the FTL Jammer can be pretty nice.
These situations don't happen that often in the early game, though, and will virtually never occur past the early game. In the mid-to-late game, if you can knock a ship low enough it decides to run, you can almost certainly finish the job before it can escape, FTL Jammer or no.
This sharply constrains the utility of the FTL Jammer. The FTL Jammer is relatively cheap, but not so cheap you can readily afford to buy it early on, even in a relatively lucky run, and even if you could, rewards from winning fights start out terrible and go up as you progress, with the improvement being very disproportionate relative to how your costs rise.
That is, in the very early game, making a useful upgrade to most Systems will run you something like 15-30 Scrap to purchase the System upgrade, plus 20-25 Scrap so your Reactor can cover its Power requirements, whereas very late in the game a useful upgrade can be running you from 50-100 Scrap plus 35 Scrap for the Reactor upgrade. That sounds like a dramatic spike in costs, but your rewards have scaled faster; winning a fight in the first Sector almost always gives you less than 10 Scrap, and thus you need at least three such fights to make cheap upgrades, more if you want something that isn't dirt-cheap. Late in the game, such as Sector 7, an individual fight can easily be dropping 50-80 Scrap, sometimes more than 100; unless you're specifically pursuing the very expensive upgrades like the final tiers of Shields, you can be upgrading a System every other fight in the late game!
In turn, this means that securing extra victories at the very beginning of the game is much less important than you might expect. You can't let too many ships get away or else you'll get stuck in a death spiral where being under-equipped means you can't win fights to get better-equipped to win fights, but ensuring a ship remains around long enough to successfully kill it in the early game has pretty limited payoff.
So basically the FTL Jammer is not only too expensive to readily grab it in the early game, but even if you could buy it for 0 Scrap the period it would be most consistently helpful in is also the period it would have the least payoff by far.
If you happen to win it for free off an early event, it can be worth holding onto until something like Sector 3, but don't be afraid to sell it off if it will let you cover a Burst Laser II or something else good, and certainly sell it at some point.
FTL Jammer
Enemy ships take twice as long to charge their FTL Jump.
Rarity: 3
30This isn't particularly great. The vast majority of cases of enemy ships fleeing come in three categories;
1: A Rebel scout finds you, immediately starts charging for a Jump, and fleet pursuit will double if you let it escape.
These all take 40 seconds to escape. If you have Engines at level 4, or at level 3 with an experienced crewmember manning it, your Jump will charge before theirs does, and the thing is the fleet pursuit effect doesn't trigger if you Jump. (Even though that doesn't really make sense) Since you should generally prioritize getting Engines to level 4 fairly early due to it being a relatively cheap series of upgrades with a dramatic effect on your survivability... you will frequently be in a position to Jump first, even if you aren't able to actually take out the scout. This is also ignoring that you will often be able to smash their Piloting and/or Engines to delay them; even if your Engines is just level 2, you may still finish charging before them by virtue of delaying their Jump.
In this case, the FTL Jammer is primarily pertinent for potentially letting you grab rewards you wouldn't have gotten otherwise. That's nice, but Rebel scouts are usually relatively weak and not that hard to destroy even in the normal 40 second charge period, and the exceptions -such as Autoship scouts with Cloaking- are highly unlikely to be made doable just because you doubled their escape timer.
2: You pick a fight with a Rebel noncombatant ship, which immediately starts charging, but will have no consequences if it escapes.
These will also take 40 seconds to escape, and there's no pressure to deal with them before they do beyond that defeating them will get you rewards.
This is the main realm the FTL Jammer is decent in, as these ships are often a bit difficult to take out quickly, but no so difficult that doubling their timer doesn't actually help. These encounters are, however, uncommon. Not rare -I've had runs hit this encounter 5 or so times, and sometimes have encountered 3 in one Sector- but uncommon enough it's entirely normal for runs to never have it happen at all.
3: You're fighting virtually any ship, and once it's low on health it decides to run.
In the very early portion of a run, it's not too unusual to get into a slapfight where the enemy ship literally can't hurt you and you can only slowly wear down its Hull. In such a case, they may well escape, which can be particularly frustrating if eg you activated a Drone or they did some Hull damage via Missiles before running out of ammo, or something. For those situations, the FTL Jammer can be pretty nice.
These situations don't happen that often in the early game, though, and will virtually never occur past the early game. In the mid-to-late game, if you can knock a ship low enough it decides to run, you can almost certainly finish the job before it can escape, FTL Jammer or no.
This sharply constrains the utility of the FTL Jammer. The FTL Jammer is relatively cheap, but not so cheap you can readily afford to buy it early on, even in a relatively lucky run, and even if you could, rewards from winning fights start out terrible and go up as you progress, with the improvement being very disproportionate relative to how your costs rise.
That is, in the very early game, making a useful upgrade to most Systems will run you something like 15-30 Scrap to purchase the System upgrade, plus 20-25 Scrap so your Reactor can cover its Power requirements, whereas very late in the game a useful upgrade can be running you from 50-100 Scrap plus 35 Scrap for the Reactor upgrade. That sounds like a dramatic spike in costs, but your rewards have scaled faster; winning a fight in the first Sector almost always gives you less than 10 Scrap, and thus you need at least three such fights to make cheap upgrades, more if you want something that isn't dirt-cheap. Late in the game, such as Sector 7, an individual fight can easily be dropping 50-80 Scrap, sometimes more than 100; unless you're specifically pursuing the very expensive upgrades like the final tiers of Shields, you can be upgrading a System every other fight in the late game!
In turn, this means that securing extra victories at the very beginning of the game is much less important than you might expect. You can't let too many ships get away or else you'll get stuck in a death spiral where being under-equipped means you can't win fights to get better-equipped to win fights, but ensuring a ship remains around long enough to successfully kill it in the early game has pretty limited payoff.
So basically the FTL Jammer is not only too expensive to readily grab it in the early game, but even if you could buy it for 0 Scrap the period it would be most consistently helpful in is also the period it would have the least payoff by far.
If you happen to win it for free off an early event, it can be worth holding onto until something like Sector 3, but don't be afraid to sell it off if it will let you cover a Burst Laser II or something else good, and certainly sell it at some point.
---------------------------------------------
Next time, we move on to the Augments added by the advanced edition update.
See you then.
Comments
Post a Comment