Equipment Tier List and how to utilize it properly [v1.041p20] + Threat Tier List

Overview

[GUIDE VERSION 1.5.2]Easy to digest guide that should help you understand the meta and equipment synergies.

Introduction

First thing that I need to clarify is that this guide is all about meta game, which means if you read it before learning any basics or not spending enough time trying to discover meta on your own, you are seriously risking to spoil the game for yourself (even though there are no plot spoilers). Best time to read this guide is when you find yourself hopelessly banging your head against the wall. Or if you are some game gourno that is reviewing soon-to-be retro indies and hate if games don’t hold your hand throughout their whole length. Git gud m8.

In addition, upgrade tier-list is in no way reflecting the order at which you should repair your upgrades or anything like that – believe me when I say that repairing Stealth is more important than repairing Gather (or any offensive module for that matter). I’m sure that your priorities would sort themselves out without any guides if you just play the game naturally – no amount of knowledge can substitute your experience from interacting with the game directly.

If you are using Steam version of the game, I strongly advise you to go here and install the unofficial update that fixes a lot of annoying bugs and changes some numbers around.

[Drone Upgrade Tier List]

It’s important to note that while some modules bring more utility than others, every single piece of equipment has a universal set of benefits and drawbacks:

• Can be converted into scrap
• Takes up an upgrade slot
• Breaks over time
• Can be traded for a full price even broken

WIth all that in mind, you will rarely run into a situation which requires you to leave the derelict without stripping all the destroyed drones of their modules. Unless you don’t have a room for them. Or if you don’t wanna risk getting mauled by a Leaper that decided to have a chat with one of your own drones.

– SS-Tier (Impossible to survive without)

“One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”
You absolutely need scrap to maintain equipment, so how do you aquire it? You waltz in a room, look for yellow spots on the floor, use “gather all” command and voila! Even if your gathering drone suffers a depressurization accident while trying to act as a bait for a Swarm, you still get all the scrap it gathered. Same applies to propulsion fuel and jump cells. Don’t try to commandeer the vessel without sweeping all the useful stuff first!

“Unlimited power!”
The ability to close and open doors is, no joke, one of your biggest tactical advantages – enemies, after floating in space on a motionless derelict for 200 years, don’t care about doors suddenly being able to function – they take an open door as an invitation to wander around and ignore the fact that this new room contains a big yellow airlock in it~ aaand it’s gone. In order to become the master of door manipulation, you need power and that’s where this handy upgrade comes – upon entering the right command your generator drone would attempt to hook up to a power inlet in a room it’s in. Aside from doors it can also power terminals and ship defences. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always power the whole ship as they can have more than 1 power inlet in them. Or course, you are able to explore unpowered ships too, but it’s kinda hard to do.

“A runabout? I’ll steal it! No one will ever know!”

You always start your journey with 3 drones, but what if you could have 4? Or even 7? This upgrade allows you to recruit disabled drones into your army of alien food remotely controlled scavenger units! All you have to do is to locate the disabled drone (yellow outlines), escort your towing drone in a room with a soon-to-be recruit, put in a command and transport it back to your dropship. While you can’t have more than 4 functioning drones on a mission and no more than 3 spare ones, towing disabled drones is one of your top priorities as they are also a great source of scrap (converting them gives you 7-9 scrap depending on their condition) so be sure to have at least 1 empty slot for an extra drone before a mission. In some rare cases ships may contain drones with 4 upgrade slots, and believe me – you absolutely want to have extra slots on your drones. You can also tow ship upgrades back to the dropship (unless they are permanent or firmly installed). Be advised that you can’t move destroyed drones (white outlines) with this upgrade, however an open airlock can, so be careful when venting dangerous rooms.

– S-Tier (Meta as is)

“What I’d like to know is how you rob a bank without opening any doors.”

Pros:

• Instantly teleports drones upon entering command even under fire
• Can teleport certain small items with an upgrade
• Infinite uses

Cons:

• Doesn’t teleport other drones
• Doesn’t teleport some small items
• Unusable with Tow
• Can’t teleport into rooms you haven’t revealed in schematic view
• Difficulty with teleporting into narrow rooms

This is, in my opinion, the best upgrade you can ever have on your generator drone, While it has its drawbacks, this upgrade gives you an ability to detect and dispatch threats within the safety of your first room specifically due to its pretty cheap upgrade. Though you need some other upgrades to make the most out of this one, even in its default state it’s pretty useful – especially in situations when one of your drone ends up stranded in an unpowered room and you for some reason can’t get to the specific inlet directly in order to free it. So what makes this upgrade so valuable?

“A surveillance camera?”

Pros:

• Continiously scans the room it’s placed in
• Works with Teleport
• Has plenty of charges

Cons:

• Dangerous to place without Teleport
• Meal for Security Drones

You are able to detect enemies visually, but only a few would let you to drive up to them and then leave unscathed. While the presence of your drone is required to place a sensor down, you are almost never locked into your first room and almost always able to manipulate enemies into walking inside rooms that are being scanned. Pretty solid upgrade on its own… but with an upgraded Teleport it becomes 3 times more useful! One thing that takes ages to do in Duskers is scouting for enemies – you can spend 20 minutes trying to lure out Swarms and Leapers from unsurveyed rooms just to lure them back once you’ve done collecting scrap, or there may be no enemies in those rooms and you’d just waste time waiting for nothing to come out and even then you can either get ambushed by a Swarm suddenly bursting out of a vent or Slime can spawn next to your dropship even before you are able to figure out that it was on the ship in the first place. However Teleport + Sensor combo mitigates all those things and lets you salvage derelicts 2 or even 3 times faster just by reliably pointing out all the dangerous rooms for you within several minutes. Just teleport your sensors into every room you haven’t been to and watch your entire schematic turn red… uh oh. Junkbots don’t like being beeped at, so be careful when trying to lead one to an airlock through your rooms full of sensors – you can’t pick them up.

– A-Tier (Best utility you can have)

“Give me a hard copy right there.”

Pros:

• Instantly reveals everything in the room
• Locates extra scrap
• Infinite uses

Cons:

• Doesn’t reveal enemies
• Maintenance may outweigh the extra scrap you get

Another thing that takes time in Duskers is highlighting all the items and structures – you need all the resources you can get to survive so the game facilitates meticulous search for every bit of useful stuff. But with this upgrade upon entering a command you are able to reliably highlight every point of interest without a need to drive up to everything with a magnifying glass. What’s more useful is that this upgrade can reveal deposits of scrap that you have no way of seeing through the drone view! Best upgrade for you gathering drone.

“What makes me a good Demoman?”

Pros:

• AOE one-hit kill
• Works with Teleport

Cons:

• If more than 1 trap is deployed, they detonate altogether
• Blast radius is as big as the room is
• High chance of damaging structures

Your second most destructive way of dispatching enemies (nothing beats the vaccum of space). Place a trap in a middle of the room, wait until an enemy enters and blow it to smithereenes! Now, you can do damage to environment, but if you’ve towed all the drones from the room and there is no power inlet, you’re safe to play with explosives. Oh, and who can forget the Teleport synergy? Telebomb your way through the derelict like a madman! Though you may want to save those few trap charges just for Leapers and Slime clusters. Don’t forget to pick up unused charges before you leave.

“How am I going to stop some big mean mother hubbard from tearing me a structurally superfluous new behind?”

Pros:

• Flexible setup
• Plenty of ammo
• Hitscan

Cons:

• Unusable while moving or turning
• Doesn’t immediately kill threats
• Can damage structures

Good old-fashioned tactic of giving your enemies a critical dose of lead. While it is the least damaging way of fending threats off, it is by far the most flexible one. What I mean by that is that you can use Turret in various situations where even Trap can’t help you. For example, RNG decided that it’s your unlucky day and spawned a vent in a room with a power inlet and what do you know – Swarm has been spotted buzzing on the derelict! What does this mean? Well, you either need to move very fast or deal with Swarm spawning at some point from a vent next to your generator drone. Even though your combat drone will take some damage and you’d waste 40 bullets putting an end to a Swarm, your mission won’t be put in jeopardy. Another thing to note would be that trying to take on a Leaper head-on is also a bad idea – it’s gonna claw you down before you’d be able to retaliate so consider setting up an ambush instead. Try not to kill rooms full of Slime with it though – it takes quite a bit of ammo to do so.

– B-Tier (Good, but not the best)

“They forgot the first rule of survival: the real hunter always watches where he steps.”

Pros:

• Set and forget
• Proximity-based
• Variable blast radius

Cons:

• Unreliable
• Useless against Slime

Let me say that despite the drawbacks it is still a very useful upgrade and doesn’t hurt to have it alongside other offensive upgardes (hence why it’s on the top of B-tier). Its main drawback consists of a few small annoying conditions you have to meet. Firstly, you need 2 mines to kill 1 Leaper – half of your ammunition out the window! Secondly, most effective placement is directly in front of a door – Swarms and Junkbots have no chance of surviving, but the door can’t be closed after that. Thirdly, the upgrade has a variable amount of damage depending on how close your drones and enemies are to the explosion – your drone will survive if a mine goes off on the othe side of the room but not without taking a hit. And finally, it can damage structures as well as Trap can, or it may not – just don’t set up your minefield on top of an inlet. Why is its weird blast radius considered a benefit? Well, if we take an earlier example with a vent in a room with an inlet, you can pretty safely spawnkill Swarm with mines – just put one on top of the vent, even if you are as slow as molasses, losing some health won’t be as bas as losing an entire drone. Would I take mines over other weapons though? Hell no. Would I use it before trying to kill Swarms and Slimes with an airlock? Hell no. Would I use it against SecBots and Leapers if there are ship defences as well as Interface upgrade available? Hell no. With all that said, you don’t have a lot of options in terms of how you take out enemies, so you better use those few available.

“Vi, you have to put a force field around the plane!”

Pros:

• Tank almost all kinds of damage (even Leapers can’t penetrate it!)

Cons:

• Has to be activated beforehand
• Doesn’t let you disengage
• Weak to explosions

Did you want to be a juggernaut? Now you can! With this handy upgrade you can take any living threat head-on or you can pose as a better living bait depending on how desperate you are. The best synergy is with Turret since you can just stand in front of a door and wait ’til enemies come to you! If you don’t have Turret, then you better have it on your gathering drone as it is most likely the first one to enter a new room and, if you have no other options, Shield lets you to check whether it is safe or not without suffering damage or losing the drone completely. Of course, shield hitpoints can run out so you can’t just stay under Swarm’s attack indefinetely. Why is it weak to explosions? Well, just don’t try driving up to a Leaper with full 500hp shield and dropping a mine on its face – while it is going to die from 1 mine, you now have a disabled drone on your hands. And I’d say that radiation shielding is not worth it – I’ve yet to see a situation where it is either absolutely needed or it can save my drones better than a closed door can. Can’t be activated along the next upgrade which is…

“She says the jungle… it just came alive and took him”

Pros:

• Become invisible to all enemies (can even fool a Slime spawn)
• Rechargable

Cons:

• Using almost any other module switches it off
• You can’t go through most of the enemies
• Bumping into them reveals your drone
• Enemies can sense your drone if you drive near them

Your second best early-game module and your only way of safely identifying types of enemies 100% correctly. With it you can scout for enemies directly, if you have no other means of detection, and sneak past them if given a big enough room. In combination with Turret, you can reliably sneak up on Leapers and gun them down before they turn around and make you regret your life choices so it’s a pretty good replacement for Shield for your combat drone. Swarm though… despite of what I heard, it is surprisingly good angainst it – you can’t bump into it as it’s a non-solid entity unlike Bots and Leapers. While you best not to take your chances with a stationary Swarm, if it somehow finds a target (even the drone with the upgrade), you can put Stealth on and literally go through the pack without it noticing – Swarm’s AI only allows it one action before it is able to react, so if it is flying towards the spot it has seen you last time to investigate, it’s you best chance to escape.

“Welcome to the omniverse.”

Pros:

• Survey ship layouts
• Switch on defences that vaporize all enemies instantly
• Scan rooms for valuables
• Ship Defence option is almost guranteed to be in the terminal if there are any stationary turrets present

Cons:

• Presented options are random
• You can’t switch on defences in unpowered rooms
• Rooms that get scanned are random

There is only one very solid reason for this upgrade to not be in a lower tier – ship defences kick so much ass that you’d wish you could take a stationary turret with you, strap it onto your combat drone and cleanse the whole ship with it. In fact, it can also kick your ass if you forget to switch defences off before entering the room. While terminals can provide you with a scan and a survey, they aren’t as useful as some upgrades can do the same without a need to search for a right terminal or have whole derelict powered.

“Don’t move, don’t whisper, don’t even breathe!”
Pros:

• Reveals threats in a room you are in as well as any adjacent rooms even through closed doors

Cons:

• Needs your drone to stay in place in order to work
• Has a chance to not be able to scan random rooms at all
• Does not detect Slime

I was considering putting this into a lower tier but… it’s way too good in early game. Being able to scan rooms for threats within the safety of your starting room is invaluable before you’re able to assemble the meta build, not to mention it works well in tandem with Sensor – the more detection, the better. Unfortunately it becomes obsolete very quickly and upgrade slots need to be filled with other useful upgrades. You can still turn your drone with it switched on.

– C-Tier (Very situational or weaker options)

“AAGH I tried to sneak through the door man! Can’t make it. Can’t make it. ♥♥♥♥’s stuck.”

Pros:

• You can open any door

Cons:

• Try closing it back, lol

While the benefit is very clear and the upgrade has no alternatives, why would you ever want to open an unpowered door? Or course, if some random door is going to malfunction due to RNG or because it couldn’t withstand the vacuum of space, trapping a drone in the process, then this is your only hope of recovering it which makes it a decent fail-safe upgrade. You can also ditch Generator completely, give all your drones Turret upgrade, put a SWAT uniform on and play “breach n’ clear”, but is it the best strategy? Not really. Though at some point you need to commandeer an unpowered vessel to complete a certain objective, I’m pretty sure you have to do that just once. Good addition to your 4-slot drone through. Weirdly enough, it’s the only upgrade that works with Stealth on.

“Computer, turn off that noise!”

Pros:

• Scare off Leapers, Slime and Swarm
• Lasts up to 100 seconds

Cons:

• Slime returns back to where it was 10 seconds after switching the upgrade off
• Bots couldn’t care less
• Requires your drone to be motionless

Let’s face it, you don’t want to go in a room with a Leaper while having only Sonic equipped – half the time Leaper is going to meet you face to face before you have a chance to use your upgrade. I would prefer to have a type-specific upgrade in this situation (which is slightly below on the list) as it distracts Leapers for far longer without a drone to supervise them. Despite aparently being a mechanical threat just like Junkbots, Swarm has sensitive ears. And Slimes? Yeah, it gives you time to react and gtfo, you can even prolong the inevitable for longer if you care to time the use of the upgrade correctly, but it requres much more attention than just throwing Slime out the airlock (or gunning it down if it spawned next to your generator drone), which is much faster and safer. I’ll take Trap or Turret over this on a Slime-infested derelict any time!

“Probing Uranus.”

Pros:

• Automatically scans rooms once deployed
• Retrievable
• Can pose as bait

Cons:

• Scan is quicker to use
• Randomly wanders around
• Require more maintenance than Scan as you can use up all your charges
• Still doesn’t scan enemies

Seems like a very good upgrade? Well, it is good and it would be better… if Scan didn’t exist. Still a good alternative to it. Stealth isn’t worth it – while enemies can’t see the probe, you still need to get past them to get to the rest of the ship or to the goodies. Increasing health may work if you have scrap to throw around (like that’s ever gonna happen) as it can buy you enough time to escape a sudden Swarm attack. If you have no way of detecting enemies, Probe may also serve as one in a pinch.

“It’s easy to fool the eye but it’s hard to fool the heart.”

Pros:

• Attracts Leapers and Swarm
• Leapers prefer lures over drones

Cons:

• Can’t be teleported
• Can be destroyed
• Can’t be picked up if damaged
• Security Bots and Slime ignore them

No, Bots and Slime clusters don’t get fooled not because they have hearts, in fact all the enemies are pretty much heartless, as well as the entirety of the dead universe… So 2 out of 4, huh? Swarm can get distracted by it if it didn’t see any juicy drones driving around first. Leapers though? Leapers love lures. One can jostle a lure for several minutes! As already been stated, they prefer lures over your drones, so if you have a Leaper on the loose and happen to have Lure, be sure to feed them some of the charges. But you know what is the best way to disable Swarms and Leapers? That’s right, outright killing them, so this upgrade acts as a crutch before you get sonething more lethal.

“I’m not looking to start a firefight in there; just neutralize them.”
Pros:

• Disables moving enemies
• Drones recover twice as fast

Cons:

• Disable is temporary

It’s just a weaker Mine. Situations where you need to stun and not kill your adversaries are extremily rare, not to mention it is practically useless against Slime. The only moderately good use this upgrade can have is when dealing against Swarm – if you have Turret upgrade and desperately need to gun down a Swarm that is blocking your path, Stun allows you to dispatch it safely. Just another offensive crutch.

– F-Tier (Glorified chunk of scrap)

“Light speed is too slow, we’re gonna have to go right to ludicrous speed!”

Pros:

• Get 35% faster
• You can outrun Swarm
• Stacks with drone speed upgrade

Cons:

• Aforementioned drone speed upgrade

Yes, you can go to plaid if you want, but is there any reason to? And also, why would you give up valuable upgrade slot for something that improves your survival chance by the tiniest margin possible? It wouldn’t be this bad if it wasn’t for the fact that for 2 more scrap you can free an upgrade slot and stop caring about this thing breaking just by giving the permanent speed boost to any drone. It’s good on a mission you found it, after that it’s just a free deposit of scrap. And yeah, why would you try to run from a Swarm, if you can blow it up/lock it up/feed it some bullets/send it to space? You can be a better bait with this upgrade, but honestly, if you run this upgrade on a drone for this reason specifically, that means you don’t have any non-essential upgrades available and you are meters away from a reset.

[Ship Upgrade Tier List]

Ship upgrades possess same universal properties as drone upgrades do, but with some remarks or implications:

• None are imperative to your survival

This is simply because there are no essential ship upgrades. Yes, some of the upgrades allow you to visit derelicts you had no way of accessing before, but you can either skip them completely or access them later.

• Alternative deterioration rules

All but one equipable upgrade pass deterioration check upon leaving a derelict. Yep, doesn’t matter whether you used it or not. Bringing something over “just in case” might bite you in the ass.

• Procurement method is different

You either tow them back to your dropship or commandeer a ship with them on board (the only way of getting firmly installed or broken ones). And yes, just like drone upgrades, you can buy or sell them (for double the price!) when you come across autotraders.

• Existance of fixed upgrades

These offer a few new rules. For instance, they never break, which doesn’t necessary means you can use them as much as you want – most of them require scrap to reachrge. Also, they are ship-specific – it doesn’t mean however that each type of ship has their own fixed upgrade. But still, you will never be able to find Cannon installed on a barge (I’ll gladly eat my words in case if I didn’t look hard enough – I once thought that one fixed upgrade can be installed only on 2 ship types, but then I discovered that both Cannon and Collector can be found on 3 different types).

Did you know that ship upgrade slots themselves are prone to breaking? Unfair, I know, but such is life.

– A-Tier (Quality-of-life improvements or unique options)

“Show them the zappy thing, Miles.”

Pros:

• Power any inlet on the derelict

Cons:

• 1 inlet at a time

A glorified Generator upgrade? Not so much. You see, the obvious big difference is that you don’t need a drone for it (which means you can ditch Generator if it malfunctions and if you don’t want to convert your upgrades into scrap to build a new one). Why is it important? Flexibility, m8! The fact that you don’t need to move your generator drone means you don’t have to waste time leading it to another inlet and then escorting it back, and time is of the essence – the more you wait, the more problems will arise such as pipe ruptures leaking radiation, asteroids flying by, vents spewing Swarms, etc. Speaking of vents, for some reason game really likes putting them next to inlets in Swarm-infested ships. So yeah, even if there are any threats in the room with an inlet, you are still able to safely power it. Also, don’t try to hook up to destroyed inlets, the upgrade isn’t THAT good.

“…To chart the world. What joy… If only Iselda could share the thrill…”

Pros:

• Immeadiately reveal the layout upon boarding

Cons:

• There are a number of other ways to reveal layouts

Pretty straight-forward, innit? What could be a better upgrade to synergize with meta build – now you can send out sensors straight from the dropship! Despite of how good this upgrade is, it is still a tiny bit worse than Remote Power – Surveyor offers very few options compared to former since hooking up to inlets already reveals all the powered rooms. If you have Interface, and if you are lucky, you can survey the ship that way (in this sense Surveyour is better because there is no RNG involved). And unfortunately, all the derelicts have a rectangular shape, so there wouldn’t be any surprise corridors leading to even bigger sections of the derelict, which devalues this upgrade even further. And no secret inaccessible rooms because all adjacent rooms are always connected to each other. I just realized how much wasted potential this game has. Some advanced ship generation mods would be nice to have.

“This ingenious device lets you move things from one place… to the other!”

Pros:

• Transport your drones from and to dropship
• Gain access to outposts
• Works with Tow

Cons:

• Interacts only with certain rooms
• Each room randomly gains and loses signal

Not much to say here – there is no alternative to the upgrade. Even though you can freely teleport to and from dropship via drone upgrade, the game won’t allow you to board outposts if you don’t have Transporter installed. It also works with regular derelects by extending your safe zone further as you can transport your drones at any time if they are in a room with a signal of any strength. The randomness at which signal appears makes this upgrade rather finicky. Make sure you have some aliases ready – Transporter commands have a bigger auto-fill threshold. Actually, a lot of upgrades benefit from aliases, especially those that contain more that 1 word in them, make yourself familiar with that window if you haven’t already. Imagine typing a giant command each time just to teleport 1 sensor, lmao… Nobody would be that stupid, right? RIGHT???

“Get out of here, stalker.”

Pros:

• Gain access to quarantined derelicts

Cons:

• These derelicts are quite rare

Perhaps the biggest choice this upgrade gives me is what I get to joke about in this section – anti-vaxers or that scary virus which currently keeps me at home. Fun fact: making this guide kept me from crawling up my walls during COVID-19 pandemic, otherwise I don’t think I’d be bored anough to even think about making it at all. Anyway, this is the most straight-forward upgrade ever. Outposts are more frequent hence why this upgrade is below Transporter. And please, unequip it if you aren’t boarding quarantined derelicts.

– B-Tier (Situational or weaker upgrades)

“My vision is augmented.”

Pros:

• Double the scan range in galaxy view

Cons:

• Different deterioration rules
• Systems are almost never out of reach of your regular range
• Useless during boarding

This is the only upgrade that deteriorates upon equiping it. Does that mean you have to equip it and keep it until you commandeer another vessel? No, if you aren’t flying MUTEKI A, you barely have any space for upgrades that are useful during boarding. You are going to be ok if you equip it just before or after moving to another system. And if it breaks – not big deal. The upgrade mainly helps you with strategic decision-making – if you don’t have Transporter or Bypass, you might want to avoid systems that are dominated by derelicts that require those, with the help of Long Range Scanner you will be able to see them before you waste a jump-cell in order to chart the rest of the galaxy. In short, you barely get to use the upgrade for it to be somewhat useful, which means there is way less upkeep involved. And don’t worry, if it breaks upon equpping, the area around you is still going to be revealed.

“So what if I like big guns?”

Pros:

• Obiterate whole rooms with enemies

Cons:

• Too destructive

Remember when I said that there is nothing more dangerous than vacuum? I lied! How about getting exploded first and THEN getting exposed to the vaccum of space? Nothing survives, nothing. Problem is that you may need to go through that destroyed room, or maybe there might be something useful to salvage. Besides, if you manage to lock enemies in rooms you have no intention to visit, they are practialy dead to you. And also there is little to no benefit in complete room destruction. For example, demolishing all Slime-infested rooms doesn’t stop it from spawning periodically elsewhere. There is also a chance to destroy doors (and leave them open!) in the process which means you are possibly locking yourself out from even bigger area. If you are about to commandeer another vessel, Cannon may save you some ammunition and time.

“Number 5 is alive.”

Pros:

• Make some derelict structures blow up
• Junkbots and Swarm die instantly

Cons:

• Slime and Leapers take 2 explosions
• You can’t use destroyed equipment
• Doesn’t work with rooms that don’t have required structures

The list of affected structures is as follows: Inlets, Terminals, Turrets and Fuel Access Points. Basically, it works like a remote controlled Mine, but the blast radius is consistant and damage is constant (not much of a benefit if you ask me). You also don’t get to control what explodes in the room – you can damage something and(or) you can destroy something. Possibly the worst lethal option you can have.

“I’m The Trashman, I eat garbage!”

Pros:

• Recover salvageable things that got sucked into space
• Passive (doesn’t requre recharging)
• The only way of salvaging destroyed drones

Cons:

• ~40% per item

Another weird upgrade. First of all, it usually spawns on derelicts that aren’t very desirable to commandeer, which are most likely to have just 1 free ship upgrade slot. Second of all, in order for it to work you need to deliberately feed salvage to the vacuum – drones of any kind, scrap and ship upgrades can get fished out by your ship at the end of the mission. And finally, the chance is quite low – the only thing that follows backwards XCOM rules is upgarde breaking chance, which means these 40% are practically nothing. I decided to do a test to see if the upgrade works with salvage that doen’t get sucked out but is just left to rot aboard – juicy Medical A with 2 disabled drones and ~20 scrap were left untouched… and not a single thing got collected. I’m pretty sure I just killed my current run by performing this test, but it’s all for science.

“Whoa, those things come in kits now? The good book don’t mention that.”

Pros:

• Remove radiation from a room

Cons:

• Expensive to refill (each charge costs 2 scrap)

Radiation leak can be caused by doing 3 things – leaving airlock open for too long, wasting enough time to experience pipe rupture event or blowing the room with Cannon. What do you do when it happens? Simple, just close dem doors. When this upgrade comes into play? If you decide to pay a visit to an outpost and the remaining Transporter signal ends up being in irradiated room. It’s good only as a fail-safe option, any active use gets trampled by costly recharging. You got better chances to get hit by lightning than find a situation where this upgrade can save your run.

“Nog, did you reroute that damn gyrodyne?”

Pros:

• Power rooms adjacent to those which are powered by an inlet

Cons:

• Lose power in rooms you reroute from

It’s a good upgrade in a vacuum… but Remote Power accomplishes the same quicker and better. Nothing much to say here. This upgrade can be very helpful if you accidentially destroy an inlet early, but if you rely on fail-safe equipment a lot, you might be doing something wrong.

[Threat Tier List] (bonus)

And now for something completely different. For this section I’ll be rating threats by how easy you can deal with them – “Pros” still display properties that benefit you, “Cons” on the contary. The amount of preparation definetely matters which means for the sake of simplicity I should settle on that amount – whether one is fully prepared or not prepared at all… so let’s do both! Universal properties? You don’t want your drones to be anywhere near them, simple.

Btw, if you thought you can roleplay as a battlebots announcer while locking up a junkbot and a leaper in the same room, I have bad news for you – infestations don’t recognise each other as enemies.

– S-Tier (A friend)

“bark”

Pros:

• Woof

Cons:

• *whimper*

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– A-Tier (Sometimes useful or harmful but neutral)

“I’m trying to get some rest from all the unborn chicken voices in my head.”

Pros:

• Drops scrap if destroyed
• Slow on the draw
• Restricted vision
• Extremily predictable
• Weak to radiation

Cons:

• Destroys sensors

If prepared: no challenge
If unprepared: minor threat

Let’s be fair to Bots and say that they aren’t complete pushovers – you generally don’t want to stick around them with no weapons and you sometimes can get shot from outside your vision. But if you have any way of killing them, you are in luck – each Bot can drop from 1 to 3 scrap upon death. Patrol behaviour is also pretty simple – Bots can’t resist going through open doors, which means mines are your easiest option. If you get spotted, don’t worry – outrunning these guys is just as easy. As for the drawback of having them on the derelict – sensors are expendable anyway. Despite supposedly being a part of internal ship defenses, they can’t be controlled through terminals or directly exploded with Overload.

“I’m escaping to one place that hasn’t been corrupted by capitalism. SPACE!”

Pros:

• Instantly vaporizes hostiles

Cons:

• Treats you and anything you can drop or pick up as hostile
• Extremily high chance of destroying structures including closed doors
• Brings radiation along

Environmental hazard

This thing seems vicious, right? Well, it is, but if you play the game right, it becomes your temporary friend. Anything that enters depressurized field (yellow lines on schematic view) gets sent to shadow realm… except your drones. Yeah, vaccum leaves some breathing room for you, albeit a very small one. What does that mean? You can vent rooms with enemies while having a drone in the same room, you can even survive if you close the airlock fast enough (remember what I said about aliases?). Vacuum travels through open doors, so Slimes aren’t safe. It also removes corpses, so you can unblock doors if you want.

– B-Tier (Barely a threat)

“All that I ever see is nuclear fusion.”

Pros:

• Weak
• Rare

Cons:

• Generally sticks for a while
• Doesn’t affect organic threats

Environmental hazard

There’s not much to say about this one, it’s just a slight obstacle 95% of the time that isn’t even that powerful (even though it travels through open doors). Well, except when you hear a sudden metal-bending sound which usually warrants for a mass evacuation. Or if you get notified about an asteroid floating by. Or if you decide to put Cannon to use. As long as you don’t leave airlocks open for too long, you are gonna be safe.

– C-Tier (Dangerous but not that annoying)

“You learn to live like an animal in the jungle where we play.”

Pros:

• Gets stunned after attacking

Cons:

• Massive leap range
• Massive burst damage
• indecisive
• Big health pool

If prepared: Minor threat
If unprepared: Moderate threat

The first ever encounter with this thing was so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ frigtening, I tell ya. Even after almost a hundred hours of playing, this thing manages to at least make me flinch when I run into it. 100 damage upon impact is the real kicker here. Still, not the worst that you can find aboard a derelict. It has been already mentioned that Mine is not the best offensive upgrade for fending off Leapers, however it doesn’t mean they can’t be killed – a few shots from Turret should make a quick work of them. And they aren’t immune to vaccum either. Shield is your best friend while dealing with these living crystals.

– D-Tier (Dangerous and annoying as hell)

“We’ll outnumber them all.”

Pros:

• Cannot move
• Can’t go through doors
• Relatively low DPS

Cons:

• Spawns in any room multiple times
• Seeks out your stationary drones
• Initial clusters are too big for Turret
• May grow out of control
• Slows you down
• Invisible to Motion

If prepared: Barely a threat
If unprepared: Oh god why

Many people find this enemy to be an embodiment of Satan that is going to ruin your run at any opportunity. And I’m not many people. Yes, this is a very annoying enemy that can block you out from any room (potentially permanently), but that doesn’t mean you can’t beat it. In fact, if you know how to deal with it and have offensive upgrades, Slime becomes as tame as a puppy… that tries to consume you whole sometimes, so you have to make a roll out of your newspaper, hit it on the head and say out loud “No, bad boy!” Trap and Turret are your newspaper rolls. A sensor near your generator drone should be enough to counter Slime’s movement – new instances can spawn only 3 times over the course of the expedition. If you don’t have anything with which you can destroy Slime nodes, don’t hesitate leaving the ship if it threatens to lock you out – don’t be greedy and cut your losses.

“Bring the spooks to the beer-soaked glade, the robot’s here if the robot’s paid.”

Pros:

• Tiny health pool
• Monotask AI
• Very loud
• Very weak to radiation

Cons:

• Numerous
• Very fast
• High DPS
• Spawns out of vents
• Breaks through weak doors
• Hard to distract
• Indecisive

If prepared: Medium threat
If unprepared: Massive threat

The most vicious physical threat you can find aboard a derelict. Imagine if you were attacked by 20 robotic fig wasps irl, you’d be scarred for life if you survive. Same here – if Swarm finds your drone, your chances to recover are very low. Oh, and it can spawn at any time from one of the vents. Now, why Swarm is worse than Slime? First of all, Swarm behaves like a normal enemy and can very quickly close the distance. Second of all, Slime can only spawn 3 times and then it stops, while Swarm can spawn 1-2 times from each vent – the bigger the derelict is, the worse it gets. Third of all, even if it is tied to vents in terms of spawn location, it spawns 10 or 20 small drones immediately – Slime can only spawn one node that is easily dealt with using Turret. Speaking of, the amount of Turret ammunition you have to spend to kill a standard Swarm should really discourage you from using the upgarde against it. However, Mine proves to be the best offensive upgarde you can have while dealing with Swarm – just make sure you put it right in front of a door. Another thing you should consider is that Swarm, as was previously stated, has sensitive ears! I once opened a bunch of doors to form a coridor to the other side of the ship, room on the other end had a triggered sensor. The moment I moved my scout drone, Swarm started to demolish the door that lead towards my entire party – yes, it heard me moving on the other side of the giant derelict! Pick advantageous fights with this one and avoid being detected at any cost (unless you know how Stealth works).

Afterthoughts

Thank you for reading this far, this was my first ever guide. If you have any questions, ideas or objections, feel free to post them below – I’ll try to answer asap.

Guide version 1.5.2:

v1.5.2:

• Restructured ship tier-list intro
• Repair priority clarification in the main intro
• Overall minor entry tweaks
• Typos removed

v1.5.1:

• Blast radius mechanic concerning Mine and Overload is now a bit more clarified

v1.5:

• Added Threat tier list
• Typos

v1.4:

• Added Ship Upgrade tier list
• War on typos continues

v1.3:

• Added a mention of Stealth and Pry synergy (thanks to Nobody)
• Removed Shield recharging mod from its benefits (too much maintenance)
• Added a minor drawback to Turret description
• Typos!

v1.2.2:

• Added the rest of the GIFs to Drone Upgrades
• Updated Sonic entry (got bamboozled by the wiki)
• Placed Sonic under Pry
• Added fancy dividers

v1.2.1:

• Added more GIFs and updated those that were present already
• Pry moved up to the top of C-tier
• Updated Lure entry (turns out it’s useless against Slime)

v1.2:

• Added disclamer in the intro
• Added some GIFs
• Added a sligtly clarified description of an interaction between Stealth and Swarm
• Removed some more typos

v1.1:

• Reworked Stealth and Mine descriptions
• Mentioned unofficial patch
• Added tiny details to some entries
• Removed some typos

v1.0:

• Hello, world!

Plans for the future:

• Test Mine on Leapers more
• Investigate Transporter signals interacting with vents
• Removing remaining typos
• More images