Augmentations

Template:SeeAlso

Augmentation s are items that passively provide upgrades for your ship. Every ship can hold and equip up to three of them. They can be bought at random stores for scrap and found through random encounters and quests. Their benefits range from improving stats (FTL Recharge Booster) to granting entirely new abilities (Adv. FTL Navigation) and effects (Reverse Ion Field).

Most of the stat boosting Augmentations stack with each other. The ones that don't stack are grayed out in stores if you already own one (or if all of your augmentation slots are filled). All augments can be sold to any store for half of their cost (rounded down). If you loot an augment that you already own and it's not one that stacks, you are notified and it's salvaged on the spot for resale value. If you loot an augment and don't have room for it, you must choose one augment to leave behind when you jump, and you do not earn the resale value.

Weapon Augmentations

Automated Re-loader

"Cooldown between weapon shots is improved by 10 percent."

• This applies to all weapons, including the artillery weapons of the Federation Cruiser variants.
• Stackable additively with itself and the weapon manned bonus. For instance, 2 Automated Re-loader and a 15% weapon manned bonus would result in a 35% cooldown reduction.
• Cost: 40
• Rarity: 2
• A very good augment to buy in most situations.

Weapon Pre-Igniter

"Weapons are made immediately available after an FTL jump."

• Only charges a single charge of multi-charge weapons (Advanced Edition).
• This does not apply to the artillery weapons found on Federation Cruiser variants.
• This only works for the weapons that were powered when you left the previous beacon.
• Cost: 120
• Rarity: 4

A good tactic is to turn off everything and divert all power to your weapons before jumping away. This way you can "alpha strike" with 3-4 weapons the moment you arrive, overwhelming the enemy. After the initial volley you can shut down the extra weapons and immediately power up other systems to finish off the fight, or keep the pressure on.

Stealth Weapons

"Prevents your weapon fire from disrupting your cloak, allowing you to shoot at will while cloaked."

• This augmentation negates the cloak duration shortening effect caused by firing non-beam weapons while cloaked.
• Cost: 50
• Rarity: 3

Helpful with quick-firing weapons, if you want to fire during your cloak that is. Otherwise, the quick-shots will drain your cloak very quickly. Intentionally draining your cloaking can be incredibly useful in ensuring your cloak recharges when the flagship uses its power surges/missiles. Having this augment ensures you can't do that.

Explosive Replicator

"Missile based weapons have a 50 percent chance of not using a missile."

• Multi-shot weapons (Swarm and the Pegasus Missiles) have the same 50 percent chance of not using a missile in their volley. This is because one missile is used when firing these weapons, even though there are multiple attacks from them.
• Not stackable.
• Cost: 60
• Rarity: 3
• Advanced Edition only.

Hacking Stun

"All crew inside a room during a Hacking Pulse will be stunned for the duration."

• Affects both the enemy's and player's crew members.
• Crew members who enter the affected room during the Hacking Pulse are stunned to the end of the duration as well.
• Cost: 60
• Rarity: 3
• Advanced Edition only.

You can use this to keep crew in a room that is dangerous rooms such as ones that lack oxygen or have fires, though hacking a system already closes the doors of the system, so this augment is redundant.

Defense Scrambler

"Prevents enemy defense drones from targeting anything."

• Causes defensive drones (Eg: Defense Drone Mk1, Defense Drone Mk2, Anti-Combat Drone) to be unable to shoot down projectiles (Lasers, Missiles, Asteroids, combat drones, boarding drones, hacking drone).
• Does not affect the enemy Shield Overcharger.
• Does not affect enemy combat drones or boarding drones.
• Will show the enemy defensive drones spinning when the augment is in use.
• The Engi Cruiser Layout C starts with this, selling it grants you 40 free scrap.
• Cost: 80
• Rarity: 4
• Advanced Edition only.

Defensive Augmentations

Shield Charge Booster

"Boosts the ship's shield recharge rate by 15 percent."

• Stackable.
• Cost: 45
• Rarity: 2

Useful when dealing with a lot of lasers, such as the drone assault in phase two of the flagship. Having a single shield charge booster greatly increases your ability to survive it, and two in combination with high evasion makes it unlikely you'll take damage. The 90 scrap towards buying multiple of these could just be put to better defenses, cancelling out most reasons to purchase this.

Reverse Ion Field

"Protects your ship from ion damage, giving a 50 percent chance to negate it entirely."

• Stackable.
• Immunity to ion damage with multiple. (A.E.)
• Can protect from the ion pulse environmental hazard.
• Cost: 45
• Rarity: 2

Repair Arm

"Repairs your hull every time you collect scrap, but reduces scrap collected by 15 percent."

• Repairs your hull for 1-2 points every time you collect scrap.
• The scrap reduction percentage rounds against you.
• Not stackable.
• Cost: 50
• Rarity: 3

Before 1.5.10 would charge Scrap penalty even if Player's Ship is completely repaired, but doesn't do that anymore. It's generally advised to sell it off whenever you get it from an event, as losing so much scrap and the purchase cost nullify most scrap saved with this terrible augment.

Emergency Respirators

"Crew take half damage from low oxygen."

• Crystal crew members take only 25% damage from low oxygen with this augment.
• The effect also works when boarding enemy ships, allowing the crew to more safely board into vacuums.
• The Lanius Cruiser (Type A and Type B) start with this augment. This can help when trying to achieve the Loss of Cabin Pressure achievement or when using depressurization to defend your ship from fire and invaders.
• The Federation Cruiser (Type C) Starts with this augment. With this augment, a boarding crew can survive long enough to disable a system or two on oxygenless ships.
• Crew members can heal in a lvl 1 medbay without oxygen with this augment.
• Not stackable.
• Cost: 50
• Rarity: 2
• Advanced Edition only.

Fire Suppression

"Automatically put out fires throughout the ship."

• Cost: 65
• Rarity: 3
• Advanced Edition only.
• Puts out fires at the speed of a Mantis, you're better off selling it.

Backup DNA Bank

"Your crew is safe in clone storage even if the system is off or broken."

• Dead crew members will remain in the clone queue regardless of the state of the Clone Bay, effectively allowing you to delay the cloning process for as long as necessary.
• Has no effect without a Clone Bay and does not resurrect crew members who died before getting the augment.
• Discarding the augment while crew members are in the clone queue with the Clone Bay depowered will trigger the "Crew are dying" warning back.
• If all of your crew die and the Clone Bay is destroyed, there will be no-one to repair the Clone Bay (unless you are able to deploy a System Repair Drone or Repair Burst) and your crew will stay in the bank forever. The game over screen won't show, forcing you to restart manually.
• Cost: 40
• Rarity: 2
• Advanced Edition only.

FTL Augmentations

FTL Recharge Booster

"The ship's FTL Drive powers up 25 percent faster."

• Stackable.
• Cost: 50
• Rarity: 2
• Unfortunately, the effect is largely too weak to avoid most ASBs before they fire.

FTL Jammer

"Scramble enemy ships' FTL computers, doubling the time it takes for them to jump."

• Not stackable.
• Cost: 30
• Rarity: 3
• Can be slightly useful for defensive setups, though the 30 scrap could just be spent on improving your offensive capabilities anyway.

Adv. FTL Navigation

"Allows the ship to jump to any previously visited Beacon."

• Not stackable.
• This means you can go back to any 'blue' beacon in only one jump.
• Used in some blue events.
• Cost: 50
• Rarity: 3
• This augment is useless if you plan out your sector route to maximize your jumps in that sector.

Distraction Buoys

"Leaves a false signal at sector start to delay Rebels 1 jump."

• Not stackable.
• Only works at the beginning of a sector, so it's never useful right away.
• Cost: 55
• Rarity: 3
• Advanced Edition only.

Misc. Augmentations

Long-Range Scanners

"Adds additional info about nearby Beacons on the star map."

• Allows you to see if an adjacent beacon contains a ship or an environmental hazard before jumping to it.
• If a beacon does not indicate a ship in wait, it may still result in some kind of fight, so be wary. Likewise, even if a ship is detected, there may be ways to avoid a fight.
• Is used in some events. Most of its blue options are the same as for Scanners at level 3, which might be preferred to save an augmentation slot.
• The Stealth Cruiser (All Layouts, A, B and C) starts with this augment.
• Some quests will not be shown on the map with the scanner (Rebel Shipyard, Unarmed Zoltan Transport, and The Engi Fleet Discussion).
• Cost: 30
• Rarity: 1
• This augment is almost always worth purchasing, knowing what lies ahead is incredibly helpful for optimizing sector scrap gain and minimizing loss.

Scrap Recovery Arm

"Allows the ship to collect 10 percent more scrap from any source."

• It always rounds down, and extra arms stack additively (before rounding).
• If you had the arm and got 19 scrap, you would get 1 extra scrap because 1.9 isn't a full two. If you had 2 arms, and get 15 scrap, you would get 3 extra scrap.
• Provides a blue event option which involves mining an asteroid field.
• Cost: 50
• Rarity: 1

The blue option for this item can come as early as sector 1 and can easily net 30 scrap (the reward range is 18-60 scrap pre-bonus). Since it is quite easy to collect hundreds of scrap in sector 7 alone, this is often still profitable if purchased as late as sector 6 if you sell it at a store in sector 7.
For the scrap arm to pay for itself, you would have to collect 250 scrap with remainder rounded down before the bonus or 275 after, or in other words, you would have to get enough scrap for the scrap bonus to be equal to the sale price minus the sell price. (500 and 550 if you fail to sell it before the end of the game) This assessment, of course, does not account for the blue option you gain for having the scrap recovery arm.

Drone Recovery Arm

"Non-destroyed drones will be retrieved when jumping, allowing their parts to be reused."

• Functional drones that are not disabled will be received at the end of the battle, allowing the parts to be reused. This includes drones that are unpowered, as they remain intact and functional.
• Enemy drones are always disabled at the end of a battle, so they can't be recovered. Boarding drones and Ion Intruder Drones are also excluded; once launched to an enemy ship, they cannot be recovered, even if they remain functional. Hacking drones cannot be recovered.
• Most drone part costs are eliminated with this augmentation. The few drones that are shot down are more readily replaced with only the drone parts that you get from rewards and ship salvage.
• This augment pairs effectively with the Hull Repair Drone, which becomes disabled after a random 3 to 5 hull repair (or by being prematurely depowered). With this augment, jumping to another beacon before the drone finishes returns it to you. This means that you can get a minimum of 2 hull repair at every jump-point at no part cost, leaving you with more parts for additional repairs when needed. No more repair costs!
• Cost: 50
• Rarity: 2

Battery Charger

"Backup Battery's lock time is halved."

• Not stackable.
• Cost: 40
• Rarity: 2
• Advanced Edition only.
• If you can deal with missing out on the bonus power for 20 seconds, this augment is pointless.

Zoltan Shield Bypass

"Allows crew/bomb teleportation and mind control to work through Zoltan Shields."

• Also works on the Rebel Flagship's phase 3 shield, which is very handy when going with boarding-based boss strategy.
• Cost: 55
• Rarity: 3
• Advanced Edition only.

Reconstructive Teleport

"Crew gets fully healed by teleportation."

• More useful with a clone bay, allowing you to have full-health boarders without waiting multiple jumps or resurrecting them with loss of skill
• A defeated ship can be teleported on as long as you still have boarders remaining on it. That way you can heal post-combat your normally non-boarding crew.
• Will heal mind-controlled enemies
• Cost: 70
• Rarity: 3
• Advanced Edition only.

Lifeform Scanner

"Detects the location of any life forms, even when sensors don't function."

• Functions exactly like a slug crewman showing crew. You could just spend 45 scrap and outright buy a Slug crewman, however.
• Cost: 40
• Rarity: 3
• Advanced Edition only.

Non-Purchasable Augmentations

Engi Med-bot Dispersal

"Engi nano med-bots heal the crew outside of the med-bay (at a reduced speed)."

• Does not work if you have a Clone Bay instead of a Medbay.
• Not affected by Medbay upgrades.
• Will not work outside your ship.
• Used in some blue event options.
• Not stackable.
• The Torus (Engi Cruiser Layout A) starts with this augment.
• Can be acquired by any ship through the Rebel attacking Engi event.
• Cost: 60
• Heals 1.67 health points per second.

Rock Plating

"Superior hull armor provides a 15 percent chance to negate incoming hull damage (hit systems will still be damaged)."

• This augment also provides blue options for a few events. These include a guarantee of being able to acquire the Damaged Stasis Pod when the appropriate event is found. Without it, chances are only 1/3.
• The Rock Cruiser (A, B and C Variants) starts with this augment.
• Can be acquired by any ship through the Rock Cruiser unlock event, even if the Rock Cruiser has already been unlocked.
• Cost: 80
• While selling it for 40 scrap can be incredibly useful, assuming decent luck, this effectively grants you about 5 "extra" hull points on the flagship fight.

Titanium System Casing

"All ship systems have additional plating that provides a 15 percent chance to negate damage when hit (hull will still be damaged)"

• The Nesasio (Stealth Cruiser Layout A) starts with this augment.
• Can be acquired by any ship through the Stealth Cruiser unlock event, even if the Stealth Cruiser has already been unlocked.
• Cost: 80
• It almost solely exists to sell off and buy Shields if you're using the Stealth ships.

Drone Reactor Booster

"Your shipboard drones have their movement speed increased by 25 percent."

• The Vortex (Engi Cruiser Layout B) starts with this augment.
• Can be acquired by any ship through the Engi Virus event.
• Cost: 50
• A very negligible boost. It makes drones move from 50% the speed of most crew to 62% the speed of most crew. Selling it for 25 scrap is the recommended strategy, as its abilities are useless.

Slug Repair Gel

"Slug ships excrete a thick gel that automatically repairs any hull breaches."

• The Slug Cruiser (A, B and C Variants) starts with this augment.
• Can be acquired by any ship through the Slug Cruiser unlock event, even if the Slug Cruiser has already been unlocked.
• Cost: 60
• The effect can be emulated by having level 2 oxygen, as the rate your oxygen refills almost counteracts the rate one breach drains it.

Mantis Pheromones

"Your crew's movement speed is increased by 25 percent."

• Applies both on your ship and when boarding an enemy.
• The Mantis Cruiser (A, B and C Variants) starts with this augment.
• Can be acquired by any ship through the Mantis Cruiser unlock event, even if the Mantis Cruiser has already been unlocked.
• Cost: 50
• Allows your Mantis to be able to outrun any crew member, so keeping it is justifiable.

Crystal Vengeance

"Every time your ship takes damage, there is a 10 percent chance to break off a shard that flies at your enemy."

• This counts as a normal missile shot that does 1 damage and has a 10% chance to breach. Like any other projectile, the enemy can dodge it with their current evasion percentage.
• The Crystal Cruiser (A and B Variants) starts with this augment.
• Can be acquired by any ship through the Crystal Cruiser unlock event even if the Crystal Cruiser has already been unlocked.
• Cost: 80
• The odds of this augment even activating, and the fact that enemies can just dodge the shard ensure that you should sell it off for 40 scrap.

Be careful pairing this augment with Boarding. As an essentially automatic weapon, Crystal Vengeance will randomly target a room on the enemy ship, which can potentially damage your boarders or destroy the enemy ship if it is at low hull, killing your boarders. If you have a Clone Bay, this is less of a problem.

Zoltan Shield

"An unexplained technology creates this nearly impenetrable shield. Only the energy outburst from an FTL engine is powerful enough to recharge it."

• Upon arrival at a beacon, you start with an additional green energy shield that will absorb 5 points of damage before your standard shields and hull will start to take damage.
• Absorbs damage from all weapon types, including missiles, bombs and beams, but takes twice as much damage from ion weapons. Beam weapons do two room damage to the shield (including the Artillery Beam). Also note that aiming the Hull Beam at systemless rooms will not increase damage on the Zoltan shield.
• Crew cannot board a ship with an active Zoltan Shield. However, the player's ship will still be boarded if an event specifically calls for it, with the additional message "They must have a Super Shield Bypass Unit!". Additionally, in Advanced Edition, Mind Control and Hacking cannot be used on enemies protected by an active Zoltan Shield.
• The Zoltan Cruiser (A, B and C Variants) starts with this augment.
• Can be acquired by any ship through the Zoltan Cruiser unlock event, even if the Zoltan Cruiser has already been unlocked.
• Cost: 80

A Glaive Beam is the only weapon that can down the Zoltan Shield in one shot and still potentially do damage (given that the enemy's less than three actual shields); the beam must be aimed so that the tip just enters a room for it to damage the ship.

Damaged Stasis Pod

Spoiler Warning!
"This bizarre alien artifact appears to be barely operational. It has no practical function but perhaps someone can repair it."

• This "augment" is used exclusively in an event sequence to access the Hidden Crystal Worlds.
• Can only be acquired during the Dense Asteroid Field Distress Call random event.
• Can only be used during the Zoltan Research Facility random event.
• More than one Stasis Pod can be acquired and held at a time; each one will occupy an augmentation slot. It is also possible to encounter multiple Zoltan research facilities (even in the same sector), and each one will open a single pod.
• Cost: 30