FTL Analysis: Advanced Edition Augments

These Augments were introduced by the advanced edition update, and will not appear if your run has advanced edition content disabled. They unfortunately trend impressively bad; I feel overall advanced edition is an improvement, but this is one area where the design is probably actually worse off. If advanced edition content were broken up into multiple sets of enable/disable toggles, with AE Augments off on their own... I'd probably have never turned them on again once I was done getting a handle on them.

Distraction Buoys
The Rebel fleet pursuit is delayed by one Jump at the start of each Sector.
Rarity: 3
55

Not very useful, certainly not worth purchasing. It's probably a good idea to hold onto it if you happen to loot it from an event or enemy ship if you have no other Augments, and is worth considering holding onto if you have only one other Augment on the idea you'll sell it ASAP once you have a third, but that's about it.

I don't really get why this is advanced edition content, to be honest. I'd have understood if this was an underwhelming Augment that was part of the initial release, but you'd think by the time they made the advanced edition update they'd have some sense of how low-value such a limited effect is.

Honestly, even just bumping it up to a delay of two jumps would make it actually decent. Why is it just one?

This technically does provide a blue option, but it's for exactly one event that is inexplicably exclusive to the Hidden Crystal Worlds, making it extremely difficult to care. The reward is technically pretty good, but accessing the Hidden Crystal Worlds is a huge pain and only occasionally even possible, and then isn't even particularly rewarding. So no, that's not a reason to grab or hold onto Distraction Buoys.

As a bonus issue, this Augment is one of the more in-your-face examples of a massive disconnect between the textual assertions regarding the rebel fleet and the visual/gameplay realities of its mechanics; Distraction Buoys is one of several cases of the game's text presenting the rebel fleet as hunting you in particular, but otherwise the game's handling is that an infinite wall of rebel control is advancing behind you, with every Beacon in their wake claimed and fortified. As you're hurrying to Federation HQ and the plot hinges on the rebels advancing on Federation HQ, this advance-and-conquer behavior trailing behind you makes perfect sense, but also makes all these bits premised on 'rebel fleet advancement represents their hunt for the player getting closer' absolute nonsense.

Which is another reason I'm baffled by this being advanced edition content, incidentally.

Explosive Replicator
Expending a missile weapon's charge has a 50% chance to not use up a missile.
Rarity: 3
60

It's incredibly frustrating that advanced edition didn't retcon this onto the Rock Cruiser A.

Anyway, the Explosive Replicator isn't as dramatic a gamechanger as the Drone Recovery Arm, but it has somewhat similar implications in that you can be a lot more cavalier with missile usage if you have it than if you don't. You can't suddenly go all-in on a Missile spam strategy, but you can probably get away with running a Missile weapon continuously without paying much attention to ammo, especially if you already have 20+ Missile ammo when you find the Explosive Replicator, as you'll loot Missile ammo regularly enough that often you'll either end up gaining Missile ammo over time or at least bleeding it slowly enough that it doesn't run out before you win the game.

It also makes it a lot more worth considering buying Missile ammo if you end up running low on it anyway, as the Explosive Replicator makes your ammo go much further, not quite twice as much further. It's tempting to think of it as twice as far, but, well, let's walk through an example.

Let's say you have exactly 4 missiles. You fire them all, so you've fired 4 shots. The Explosive Replicator does its thing, and the average result is that you now have 2 more missiles to fire. You fire those, so now you've fired 6 missiles, and the average result of the Explosive Replicator is that you have 1 missile left. You fire that, making for 7 missiles, and now the expected result is that you have... half a missile? So let's just stop there and call that 7.5 missiles fired from your initial stock of 4 missiles; not quite doubling. This will stay true no matter how many missiles you add to the count, as the underlying ratios aren't affected by your initial number's size.

Still, that makes the effective price of buying a unit of missile ammo very slightly higher than 3 Scrap, instead of the 6 Scrap per shot you're normally paying. If you've eg acquired a Breach Missile, that can be worth paying such a reasonable cost to keep it firing, especially in a run that's hit the point where upgrading the ship's (Sub)Systems is a dubious investment of Scrap.

Hacking Stun
A Hacking Pulse Stuns all crew inside the room for the duration of the Hacking Pulse.
Rarity: 3
60

I don't get what the purpose of this is intended to be. If it only Stunned enemy crew, it would be a way to lock some enemies in a room and then kill them even when your crew doesn't have a clear edge over enemy crew in boarding actions. If its Stun were more widespread, such as hitting the entire ship, it would be unclear how you optimize it but would at least be a kinda free edge. But with it Stunning all crew in just the Hacked room... who cares? Enemies can't man Hacked Systems, and the AI won't try to leave a hacked room unless it's actively dangerous to them (eg on fire, out of oxygen) or the AI is running out of crew to send for tasks like repairing the Shields System. 99% of the benefits of Stunning enemy crew in the room are being achieved just by Hacking it!

Don't buy it, and if you loot it seriously consider immediately selling it.

... okay, that's somewhat overstating how awful it is. It does have some edge case benefits that make it worth holding onto, maybe even buying depending on your ship's situation.

First of all, it legitimately helps with securing crewkills against ships with Medical Bays. Hack the Medical Bay, and when enemies run in to heal, start the Hack; normally enemies that have broken into the Medical Bay will be able to just turn around and leave once it turns into a death zone, making it hard to actually finish them. Hacking Stun will trap them in the room to actually die.

Second, it actually goes decently with a Lanius boarding strategy, as while your Lanius will be Stunned alongside enemy crew their oxygen-draining effect will continue, and of course so too will the damage from asphyxiation. This can potentially let a Lanius win a fight with a Mantis, where normally the Mantis would kill the Lanius right as the oxygen was hitting critical.

Third, by a similar token it's synergistic with starting fires, as you can Hack a key System, set it on fire (eg with a Fire Bomb), and when crew come in to put out the fire you start the Hack so they just stand around burning while the fire gets worse.

Fourth, it can help you get the edge against a ship aggressively repairing its Shields System (eg with Engi), which can be notable if your ship just barely has the firepower to get started breaking through Shields but keeps getting stymied by repairs happening too fast to get a beneficial snowball going.

But... most of the time, Hacking Stun is more or less useless, even aside the cases it's actually useless, like Autoships. Most of the utility it theoretically brings to the table is already handled by just using the door-control aspect of Hacking intelligently, where you can trap enemies so they can't run to a Medical Bay on a moment's notice, interfere with sustained repairs on Shields by virtue of enemies having to cut through the doors on their way in and on their way back, and so on. There's also other tools for getting similar results that are better at those tasks and broader in utility to boot, like boarding with Rockmen alongside a firestarter kit.

So it's still an Augment you should more or less never buy, and should usually sell if you loot it, even if you have a Hacking System, just... with some limited uses you should keep in mind if you loot it.

Battery Charger
Backup Battery's cooldown is halved.
Rarity: 2
40

I don't get why this is more expensive to purchase than the Backup Battery itself. If it, like, completely removed the cooldown so that the Backup Battery was just a free 2 or 4 extra Power bars at all times, I'd get that, but as-is... no, seriously, why does it cost more than the Backup Battery?

You should generally just sell Battery Charger no matter what you're doing. Most of the best uses of the Backup Battery are mildly exploit-y uses that don't care that much about an improved cooldown, and there's far too many Augments that are more worth the slot.

You certainly shouldn't buy a Battery Charger; it's a waste of Scrap.

Zoltan Shield Bypass
Allows Bombs, Crew Teleporters, and Mind Control to be used through Zoltan Supershields.
Rarity: 3
55

For extremely boarding-focused ships, like the Mantis Cruisers, it's worth considering acquiring this as early as you can reasonably afford it. A boarding strategy having to wait for the Supershield to go down is a big issue if you have barely any armaments, and a really big problem if you have no non-bomb armaments. Crucially, the third stage of the Flagship always has a Supershield, and will in fact generate it anew periodically, guaranteeing that the Zoltan Shield Bypass will matter at least once, in the fight you most care about things mattering in.

It of course also benefits you if you have bombs and/or Mind Control, but the degree is much lesser, as neither tends to be decisive on its own; crewkilling off just Mind Control is too slow (And can't be done with just Mind Control unless enemy Zoltan or Lanius are present, and it's unlikely to happen even then), crewkilling off just bombs is generally too expensive, and bombs can't really kill ships on their own for the most part: only the Fire Bomb can potentially solo a ship. Mostly the Bypass lets you directly use those tools in supplement to boarding actions, instead of needing tools for knocking down Supershields before they can help.

All that said, non-pirate Zoltan ships are found almost exclusively in Zoltan Sectors and, less commonly, Engi Sectors. It's entirely possible for a run to never have to deal with a Supershield prior to the Rebel Flagship, and depending on how the rest of your kit works out it's not necessarily worth burning an Augment slot on this just to help against the third stage of the Rebel Flagship. Several other Augments can potentially help more, after all. So even for an extremely boarding-focused ship, this isn't really an essential Augment; among other points, if you actually buy it from a Store and then never actually encounter a Supershield-equipped ship prior to the Rebel Flagship, you'd probably have been better off spending the Scrap on other stuff.

This is one of many examples where I feel it's damaging to the game that you can't see future Sectors at all, only getting to pick between the two or three in front of you once you're actually trying to Jump to a new Sector. You can't even check the colors of future Sectors if you're not considering a Sector Jump, meaning you'll have to take notes or have a good memory if you want to know if there's the slightest chance of this Augment mattering prior to the Rebel Flagship. On the plus side, Zoltan ships happen to be restricted to green Sectors, so if you're confident you're not going to go through any green Sectors (Such as because your first Sector Jump choice makes it impossible to go to the green Sectors that generated), you can skip this; you can get into fights with Zoltan ships in Rock and Mantis Sectors, but only by virtue of choosing to pick a fight with them in events that involve a Zoltan ship fighting a Rock or Mantis ship.

Also note that no enemy ship has this, even though events will claim the enemy ship 'must' have one to justify boarding events completely ignoring your own Supershield. Indeed, boarding events are base game content, yet the Zoltan Shield Bypass is advanced edition content; if you were hoping that disabling advanced edition content would let your Zoltan Supershield protect you from boarding events, sorry, no. The game is lying to you, simple as that.

Reconstructive Teleport
Crew are fully healed by being teleported.
Rarity: 3
70

For ships with a Medical Bay, this is neat but not particularly great. It does make your ship a bit more resistant to combinations of bad things happening, in that if your crew is forced to flee the enemy ship with your Medical Bay having been knocked out and hazards being somewhere that you urgently want repaired your crew being unable to get healed at the Medical Bay suddenly isn't a dire problem the way it normally would be, but most of the time it won't be helping at all... and selling it gives you a fair bit of Scrap to spend on preventing those bad situations from happening in the first place.

For ships with a Cloning Bay, this is actually fairly useful, reducing how often boarders lose some combat skill to dying and also meaning you'll never be forced to either open a fight with an enemy ship by suiciding wounded crew on them and having to wait for them to be cloned, or deliberately suffocate your own crew so they're fresh for the next fight. (An option not even available if using Lanius...) This speeds up combats in your favor, reducing how much Hull damage you take, gives the RNG fewer opportunities to screw you over, and means your boarder combat skill grows faster and stays maxed more consistently.

I'm not sure it's actually worth buying, unfortunately, as 70 Scrap is a lot until quite late in a run, and is still a non-trivial burden even late in a run, but for a ship that loots it while already having a Cloning Bay and Crew Teleporter it's probably worth holding onto.

Defense Scrambler
Enemy Defense Drones Mk. I and II, as well as Anti-Combat Drones, cannot perform their primary functions.
Rarity: 4
80
Engi Cruiser C starts with this Augment.

If you're trying to lean heavily into missiles, this helps when dealing with ships that have a Defense Drone. Notably, the Flagship's second stage is guaranteed to have a Defense Drone, so if you have missiles, this is guaranteed to help at least one time.

If you're leaning into Drones, it's helpful against ships that have Anti-Combat Drones. Notably, ships will often field multiple Anti-Combat Drones. Drone ships are uncommon overall, but the Defense Scrambler may let you effortlessly take out a ship that would otherwise be impossible for you to overcome, which can be a big deal.

If you're using neither Drones nor Missiles, it's not automatically worthless, but Mk. II Defense Drones are very rare. Only Engi and Rebel ship designs are even allowed to have a Defense Drone Mk. II, and only one Rebel ship design -the Rigger- has a Drone Control in the first place. Most runs won't actually see a Defense Drone Mk. II at all.

If you're using both missiles and Drones, then this is an excellent Augment all-around.

Flak and Crystal weaponry also benefits, though generally a bit less dramatically. Flak in particular tends to be able to overwhelm Defense Drones, especially if you get a hold of multiple flak weapons. Crystal weaponry is limited more by how rare they are -if you play the Crystal Cruiser A or the Rock Cruiser C a lot, you should certainly keep the Defense Scrambler in mind, but if you don't, it's pretty unlikely this synergy will ever come up in a run.

Personally, I don't really get why the Defense Scrambler costs 80 Scrap; for most ships it should never be purchased and if looted it should honestly be sold right off the bat, and for the ships that get the most use out of it it can be quite hard to afford that price. It's useful to such ships, yes, but erratically, where it can pretty easily just leave you in the hole to have bought it. It at least means it sells well if you loot it, but I doubt that's why the devs made it so expensive.

Fire Suppression
Puts out all fires across the entire ship at roughly the same speed as a Mantis working each room.
Rarity: 3
65

This is technically poor fire suppression, but it has the advantage of occurring completely passively. This makes it useful for ships that lack Sensors -which is surprisingly common- and also makes it useful in nebula since Sensors don't function in them. This minimizes opportunities for fires to become serious problems without you even realizing they got started in the first place.

Even outside those conditions, it can also be useful if your ship currently has a limited crew complement and so is making real sacrifices anytime you're sending crew to put out fires. This can let you literally ignore fires occurring in empty rooms, particularly if the fire has no chance to jump directly to a room with a System or Subsystem in it.

Unfortunately, it's pretty difficult to justify actually purchasing it. 65 Scrap is a lot to spend on functionality crew can handle from an early-game perspective, and later when 65 Scrap isn't so bad you usually have a large enough crew it's redundant.

Still, if you happen to loot it early in a run, it can be very helpful. You should probably sell it once your crew is large enough to have idlers, but up to that point it's liable to be pretty helpful.

Emergency Respirators
Crew takes half damage from oxygen deprivation, even when on an enemy ship.
Rarity: 2
50
Both Lanius Cruisers and the Federation Cruiser C start with this Augment.

For ships that aren't relying on boarding, this is usually better off being sold. Taking half damage from oxygen deprivation isn't worthless, but you're better off trying to get Scrap allocated to preventing the kinds of situations it helps with.

For ships that are reliant on boarding (And don't have a Cloning Bay), this makes it vastly more practical to fight Autoships, as even an un-upgraded Crew Teleporter cools down sufficiently quickly that non-Zoltan crew will survive to be teleported back if oxygen deprivation is the only damage source, and even with an upgraded Crew Teleporter you get to leave them aboard the Autoship for longer.

Just keep in mind you'll still need some other way to destroy the Autoship if you don't want to lose crew, though.

If by some miracle you end up with an unusually large number of Lanius, like 4 or so, and get the opportunity to have this (Most likely by virtue of having started with a Lanius Cruiser...), it's actually probably worth holding onto just to minimize the damage done to non-Lanius crew when sharing space with the Lanius. In the even more unlikely event you end up with exactly 3 Lanius on one of the handful of ships that has a 4-slot Crew Teleporter, being able to teleport a Mantis or something with them without them dying too fast is also a nice benefit.

But seriously, this is mostly not great, and it's particularly frustrating that two of the ships that come with it come with two Lanius crew, who don't need to breathe. Yes, the Emergency Respirators help protect your non-Lanius crew from Lanius wiping the oxygen from a room, but this is only really useful when doing an emergency last stand in the Medical Bay... when both ships have Cloning Bays. The Federation Cruiser C gets a little more use out of it since it has no Lanius crew and is basically going to have to send crew into suicide missions against Autoships, but it's still not a great fit. This should've been on something like a Mantis Cruiser that had a Medical Bay and its Crew Teleporter starting at only level 1, so the Emergency Respirators would let the ship raid Autoships right away. (Assuming it had a weapon or Drone to land the finishing blow)

Strictly speaking, all enemy Lanius ships are equipped with this Augment, but they only ever have a pure Lanius crew so it doesn't matter. I dunno, maybe it would affect crew they Mind Controlled?

Backup DNA Bank
If a Cloning Bay is present, dead crew will survive in storage indefinitely even if the Cloning Bay is unpowered or completely destroyed.
Rarity: 2
40

This does literally nothing if you don't have a Cloning Bay, so if you loot it you should sell it as soon as possible if you don't have a Cloning Bay and don't plan on buying one.

If you do have a Cloning Bay, this is a very good thing to have, making it so the Cloning Bay being knocked out right when people are dying isn't a disaster and also meaning you can free up Power for elsewhere or free up cognitive load for elsewhere because you don't have to worry about failing to note that people are going to die if you don't turn the Cloning Bay back on. I don't quite consider it mandatory for a Cloning Bay-based ship, but it's important enough it can actually be worth considering burning 40 Scrap on it relatively early in the game. If it saves even one crewmember's life, it's literally paid for itself.

Certainly, if you loot it with a Cloning Bay ship, you should probably just hold onto it, just in case. Especially if your ship starts with -or has already acquired- any of the rarer crew types. (ie Slugs, Lanius, and Crystals) After all, if they die for good, you're unlikely to be able to replace them at all.

This is another Augment that does have a blue option, but only one, and it's exclusive to the Hidden Crystal Worlds, making it essentially irrelevant. Why is this a thing?

Lifeform Scanner
Reveals the location, species, and activities of all enemy crew, but not their current HP.
Rarity: 3
40

This costs 5 Scrap less than a Slug to provide only part of the functionality of a Slug.

I'm honestly not sure why this exists. Yes, Slugs are rare to be offered in Stores or via events, actively impossible to get in several Sector types, where the Lifeform Scanner can be offered in any Sector at any time, but... so? It's not like this functionality is particularly important unless you like to go Nebula-diving while wanting to rely on Mind Control, and if you're fond of Nebula-diving you're probably going to be offered a Slug at some point regardless.

It's particularly baffling since it's Advanced Edition content, where the devs really ought to have some idea of how their own game actually works. This is the sort of Augment I'd have expected to be in the base game and removed by advanced edition, or so completely overhauled as to be unrecognizable, not added by advanced edition.

This does at least have three blue options, but they're frustratingly narrow and not very good: one is exclusive to Pirate-Controlled Sectors and is replicated by just having a level 2 Medical Bay (And the event can generate such that the Lifeform Scanner option doesn't appear...), one is exclusive to nebula  Sectors and is identical to blue options provided by Long-Ranged Scanners or Sensors 3, and the last one can only occur if you run out of Fuel and don't turn on your distress beacon. Lifeform Scanner is at least the only blue option for this third event and reliably produces a good outcome, but no, blue events don't save the Lifeform Scanner.

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Next time, we cover the non-standard Augments that you can't normally loot or buy from Stores.

See you then.