Laying it out like this makes you really realize how many "nothing" augments there are. It's a shame that so many of the ship-specific augments are really most useful as free scrap for the second shield bubble in sector 1.

Cool guide, I would also mention one thing about Zoltan Shield (unless I missed it) - it doesn't block ASB, which is a bummer and may be a bit surprising when you get used to not having any damage while the shield is up

I believe the Zoltan shield can also block dms from women since I've never received one.

Another great video! Some thoughts:

Occasionally, Adv. FTL Nav helps you route "split" sector layouts and find the stores. I had that happen once with a free one.

Pre-igniter speeds up a Vulcan much more than a Reloader, albeit at 3 times the cost. With training, a Reloader drops the spool time from 28.4 to 25.8 seconds, whereas Pre-igniter makes it 19.5.

There are times where I think Pre-igniter is correct to buy in sector 4 or even earlier. That's definitely the exception rather than the rule.

Reconstructive Teleport has some niche benefit in cloning at a pulsar (though you can kinda do that anyway), and with Lanius boarders in fights where you can't stall to kill them off (especially pulsars).

I've bought Battery Charger a few times (late game) and found it decent. Can't be sure if I've done that outside Zoltan C, but I think so. It makes more sense if you upgrade your battery. An upgraded battery with the augment helps quite a lot in plasma storms.

Enemy FTL charge isn't affected by how long you've been fighting, it's a fixed timer for the event. The standard values are 40 seconds if running from the start, or 15 seconds otherwise.

Repair Arm I like quite a lot. I'll try to keep a free one, and occasionally I'll buy it very late. Getting a regular trickle of repairs between stores is a significant amount of additional safety. I think players' attitudes to this augment depend on the "default max" hull repair they normally take at stores (unless pressing scrap needs dictate otherwise). If you're only repairing to 22, it's going to seem really bad. My "default max" hull repair is all of it.

Distraction Buoys might be worth buying if you're good for scrap but hurting for systems / weapons. It's a 28 scrap investment and +1 jump might make a big difference to how effectively you can scout the next sector(s) for stores. This is a bit theoretical as I don't think I've done it yet, but the logic is sound.

I quite like DNA Bank, mainly since it lets you board automated ships with impunity. If the fight is really bad, you may otherwise be forced into risking your boarding crew. So it's one of those "situational, but the situation can really matter" augments. Kinda like anti-drone in that respect.

Similarly with Reverse Ion, it's situational but the situations where it matters can be significant. Like so many augments, it's rare that I'd buy one, but there are spots where I think it's justified. I'll try to keep a free one.

Slug Repair Gel is pretty good, it's just that 30 scrap in the early game is better. I'll try to keep this but it's almost always getting sold in practice. It's a shame I'm literally never getting this outside the Slug ships.

Pulsars randomly deal either 3 or 4 damage to a Zoltan Shield.

Fire Suppression is better than you described. It's not like having one Crystal in every room, it's like having one on every tile that has a fire -- so four tiles on fire means four "Crystals" in the room. Actually even that's inaccurate, because multiple crew all fight the same fire, whereas Fire Suppression acts on all fires at the same time. So really it's like every fire gets its own sprinkler, which has the same effectiveness as a Crystal crew. It does stack with crew.

The one thing that's kinda neat about the backup battery charger is the timing perfectly aligns with cloaking cooldown. If you activate battery and L3 cloak at the same time, and use the backup bars on the cloaking system with the battery augment, the battery will come back online a little before the cloaking does. It's absolutely not worth 40 scrap, but it is incredibly convenient.

Excellent video, Crow!

Though I do not agree 100% on everything here, the 95% or so is surely right for any case (IMO).

I would like to add some details, which I didn't notice in the video, if you don't mind.






Drone Recovery Arm: to recover the Hull repair drone after 2 repair bursts, it mustn't be depowered.

Backup DNA Bank: even an enemy hack on the Clone Bay doesn't purge the crew.

Engi Medbot-Dispersal: with level-2 Medbay it gets a blue option weapon reward. (Unknown disease on mining colony)

Rock Plating: the weapon/statis pod event happens once per sector in Engi, Rock, and Pirate sectors.

Crystal Vengeance: the shard can collide with any other projectile, including yours, targeted at the enemy ship.

Reverse Ion Field: vs pulsar it either blocks the ion damage completely or the puslar ionizes the systems normally. (~50% chance with 1 or even 2 augments) (thanks go to Mike for discovering and testing)

Stealth Weapons: the only option to break the cloaking cycle vs 'untimed' flagship phase-3 surge is to move (2-3) zoltans through the system.

Long-Ranged Scanners: beacon map reveal reward shows the info as well.

Zoltan Shield: can be detrimental when boarding enemy boarding ships with stronger crew and without Hacking/Crystal crew support (one would want to separate the enemy crew, if they cannot be destructive on your ship), and when boarding ships with MC without having your own MC system (e.g. auto-ships with MC level 2 will suffocate both of your crew; mitigated by having Clone Bay and boarding with 4 crew - 2 crew will cancel each other).

Got a niche use out of lifeform scanner: Lanius B, (no sensors, mind control) ran into no slugs. Was very useful

My basic augment list goes Preigniter & Zoltan Shield (wouldn't intentionally go out of my way to get 'em because of how hard it is, but if you have them, they're run-defining), Automated Reloader, DRA, and Zoltan-Bypass (possibly worth purchasing if you're gunboating/using drones/boarding respectively, definitely worth hanging onto if possible once you have them), and then LRS, SRA, Rock Plating, and Distraction Buoys as 'wouldn't buy but don't want to sell' because of how much extra scrap they can generate/save you spending. None of them are worth losing out on cloaking, hacking, or shields 2, or even keeping your guns on curve, but if I can avoid cashing in any of the above I'd prefer to. Pretty much everything else is vendor trash, except in very very specific situations.

Although I've screwed up enough times with the Clone Bay to really appreciate the backup DNA bank for peace of mind :v

Thank you for justifying selling the Zoltan Shield. I did it recently on Zoltan C to get a Flak I online and still felt dirty for doing so

The augment I actually have been buying the most is autorealoader, specifically since I almost always have early weapon training, its very nice for being super fast, and its cheap.

Stealth weapons I am also a big fan of, but if I have cloaking I am usually already winning so its pretty redundant at that point.

Everything else I actually am extremely unlikely to buy unless I am already winning. Even bypass Im not super sold on because its only useful for 9-12 ships, the ones that buy or start with teleporter, and its only useful for a small percentage of fights. Granted, it is against the worst fights in the game being riggers and zoltan ships, so there is something to be said for that, but most of the time, I don’t like boarding ships anyways unless their shields are down and I can hack something, especially if its a rigger with like 3 dudes, a shield drone, and an anti personnel drone and a medbay. In that case zoltan shield bypass can be not super useful even though in theory it is.

I will say that zoltan shield bypass to me is more useful as a win condition, specifically for fed c or mantis b, which can struggle against the boss sometimes, and having to pay only 55 scrap for essentially a guaranteed win against phase 3 is a great bargain.

great game, i think Weapon pre ignieter is the best  of all the stuff

I find long Long Range Scanners real value comes not from greed, but from dodging asteroid fields with zoltan ships (and the stealth line as you pointed out) in early/mid game, and hazards vs game ending ships in hard sectors (slugs and bombers) which are honestly sometimes nastier than the flagship.

Fire supression is good on mantis ships, but also in zoltan ships, I've buy occasionally and it has saved me more than once. You pointed out how flimsy they are vs fires when talking about the medibot dispersal, but is also really good to help them stay on their room manning those important sistems instead of having to run around like headless chikens dealing with a fire in some other subsystem or self ionized room like hacking / cloaking where the power they add would get wasted. I find its user case prevalent enough since weapons like the starrting halberd beam on ZA pushes you towards gunboating style, without crewkilling rewards my crew is usualy around 4 by the time Im in last stand.

Great content as always! Im re watching some of your guides after years of playing and finaly having my own experiences, yay for critical thinking!

FTL augments are a lot of solutions in search of problems. Especially once you've become a better/more knowledgeable player to address those concerns.

I agree with all these placements except for one. I've bought Battery Charger a lot and I would certainly vouch for C tier at the lowest. Obviously it's of no use if you don't have backup battery yet, but pretty much all of my runs will pick that up if there's nothing more pressing to buy. I know a lot of power issues can be solved by micro-ing better, but no amount of microing gets your battery back online in a longer, protracted fight. On a bad fight with an iffy ship, battery on cooldown can really stall your momentum, and getting ten of those seconds back can really matter if your mid-game ship has picked up more systems than it has Reactor to keep everything chugging.

Thanks for doing this! Most surprising part was that long ranged scanners were only a B. I get your explanation but (1) many people don't map out their paths as you do (maybe we all should) and (2) even if you're mapping it out, surely there are situations where you have a choice between 2-3 jumps where the choice won't otherwise affect your mapped route, and getting even one ship fight over an empty jump would pay for the LRS on its own. What do you think?

Zoltan shields is the only one i strongly disagree with: it's absolutely s-tier and fundamentally changes risk levels to the player's highly significant benefit,  and you would NEVER sell it.  Yes, you shouldn't go into zoltan sectors simply to find it, but otherwise it's pure awesome sauce and the Zoltan ships have to be heavily handicapped in order to offset how much of a win button this augment is.

Drone tier list soon?

How often do you lose outside of the first two sectors?  You put so much emphasis on them in this video it sounds like you’ve basically won if you don’t get screwed early on.

47:12
Are you saying "Messala Maneuver?"

You need to separate out the bottom tier into two, because there are way too many augments there, and some are situationally more useful than others.

For example, Reconstructive Teleport is almost invaluable for boarding ships with Clone Bays. Defense Scrambler is good for drone-based strategies, and Mantis Pheromones can give your crewmates a little extra time to fight, repair, or just plain survive.

No augment in S-Tier is ridiculous!!! Weapon Pre-Igniter ALWAYS buy it if you can afford it!!