What are your favorite upgrades / augmentations? [SPOILERS]

[FDru]

I only ever really payed attention once, and the artillery beam recharge bar didn't seem to get any shorter when I bought a reloader. From what I can tell, it doesn't affect it (and I buy reloaders quite frequently).

I guess the next step is to take a stopwatch and time it to be sure, but I'm too lazy for that.

[SleepyMage]

Drone systems, hands down. Teleportation and cloaking are nice, but a defense drone cuts out half of the lethality of virtually any ship you run across. And after all, you can't kill the enemy for tons of scrap if you are already dead.

Augmentations would go to long range scanners. Identifying hazards in regular sectors? Mildly useful. Being able to hit every nebula sector without fear of ion storms? Now that is useful. Long range scanners easily make up for their price in extra beacons that I can jump to by letting me take advantage of any purple sector or beacon that I can without any risks.

[wowfood]

The gods of random already hate me since I never get one of these but.

Ion Cannons + Weapon pre-ignite + auto reloader

all you need is one more weapon to actually deal damage and nothing can really stop you. The only problem is in my last... god knows how many games I haven't found a single ion weapon of any kind. Oh unless I have 0 scrap and the federations is already right behind me. And I haven't seen the reloader for god knows how long either.

[Gus Smedstad]

The gods of random already hate me since I never get one of these but.

Ion Cannons + Weapon pre-ignite + auto reloader

The various ion weapons don't work well with the weapon pre-igniter, since they tend to be fast charging and thus get minimal benefit. If you manage to luck into a weapon pre-igniter, it's the 20+ second weapons that really shine, particularly the Glaive.

I'm not fond of any of the Ion weapons except the Ion Blast II. It's the only one that's fast enough to keep a system (shields in particular) permanently ioned. It's the only one that can progressively eat through shields, the rest usually only knock down 1 level. Of course, once you've got a Ion Blast II, any additional Ion weapons are very welcome, since they'll stack nicely with it. But I'd rather have a Dual Laser over almost any other ion weapon by itself, since it can at least knock down 2 levels of shields instead of just 1.

[Dash_Headlong]

For basic system upgrades, I have to go with Medbay 2. It heals faster than suffocation damages which is great if you get depressurized and your O2/doors are down, is a major boon in crew to crew combat (boarding OR repelling boarders), and the faster your repair men are back on their feet the quicker they can get back to turning wrenches. Its a relatively simple one, but it does loads for survivability.

And that's not counting the blue text!

You can heal plagues for goodies, keep crewmembers safe from random encounter biological badness and (more often than not) add to your crew by healing those random loonies that people keep depositing on out-of-the-way planets. All that for 35 scrap!

As far as augments (just the ones on the little gray boxes, not counting add-on systems), probably the Automated Reloader. A lot of the augments are only situationally useful but the minute you bolt THAT thing on, you know its gonna work hard for you.

Add-on systems? Drones. One Defense 1 and a supply of drones and you've probably (in the sense that I'm speculating wildly) increased your survivability by 60% with the missiles and boarding drones it shoots down.

[al244098]

1. Max Scanners : they add give us a very strategic advantage over enemy ships
2. Weapon Pre-Igniter: when i have 3 Burst lasers Mk2 and a Mk1, I can take down any shield in no time
3. Auto-Reloader : seems very useful for me
4. Engi Med-bot Dispersal : I'm just lazy to move my crew around XD

[Marinealver]

Most Favord Weapon: well don't know If I could call this a weapon but the Fed Cruiser Arty Beam is a good one. Goes through all shields (Except Zoltan Defense Grid) and causes 4 damage per room. It is like how in the heck are the federation loosing to this rebel scum with weapons like that?

Least Favord Weapon; Probibly the leto. It is good on the zoltan ship at first as it takes down shields for the halbird but I would rather have an ion burst. Others are the heavy lasers which only fire on shot so it acts worse than a mini beam on shield penetration. Teh glave beam is not that good either. It is like a halbird beam but it is not long enough to hit ship. 3 to 4 shield ships make that weapon useless.

Most favored upgrade, sensors. It just opens up so much I have been able to kill crew with out boarding them or using stuff liek firebombs or bio beams.

Least favord upgrade, probibly the pilot seat. Unless I have a small crew that may only get upgraded once just to pad the system from damage. That and engines. Heck with a cloak and engines powered to give 100%+ chance of evasion I still get hit by missles. Also I don't see how cloak gives you evasion against asteroids.

Most favored augment, Scrap recovery arm. Get 2 of them and you will bank. Once you get to sector six or seven. Sell them and get the combat augmentations for the boss.

Least foavred is the hull repair arm. Sure it repairs your hull but only one or 2 points and it takes scrap away.I always sell that first chance I get. Most frustrating would be the damage stais pod. If you don't know yet I just got one thing to say. "WHERE THE HECK IS THAT DAMN ROCK HOMEWORLD SECTOR!!!!" I have quit many times on sector 6 at the exit beacon.

An augment I would like. How about a system hacking augment that disables a random enemy system by 2 sort of like the many encounters against slug ships in the nebulas.

[Agg Shell]

i would have to say, the automated re-loader. It's easy to get, cheep, and really useful. drones come at a close second however.

[BKT]

Yeah. The automated re-loader is, IMO, give you the best bang for the buck of any augment; unless your weapon are a pair or two of zergling, of course.

1x Reloader = Very nice.
2x Reloader = Game changer... Some of the gun can now do something it previously could not!
3x Reloader = Overkill...

....

One of my personal favorite upgrade (that is, completely unnecessary but I upgrade it anyway) is Lv.2 O2 ... Not only because I like to go to the Slug sector whenever I have the chance, but also because... well, waiting sucks, mmmkay...

I also like to upgrade the Lv.2 Pilot as well before heading into Nebula; sometime you might get an event.

BTW ...

Fed Cruiser Arty Beam is a good one. Goes through all shields (Except Zoltan Defense Grid) and causes 4 damage per room.

Dude... Have some mercy! Those poor pirates and many of the Rebel men are just trying to make a living!

[MBz]

Long ranged scanners - picking your fights is invaluable, knowledge is power and all that.

Secondly, when it occurs, stealth weapons, cloak level 3 and an Ion Blast mk II. Anything bolted onto that is just dandy.

Finally, the 4 man teleporter on certain ships. I don't need to explain why.