When do you move up a tier in weapons/shields?

[RaptorSolutions]

Like perhaps a salvage threshold or something? It'll be helpful if I can see how much I need to upgrade something.
Edit: I found a spread sheet, and according to it I should be able to comfortably move to level 30 for V3.0 gear. Maybe level 40. Is it time to switch? I'm stuck at iirc sector 48 currently with the dozens and dozens of small fighters with huge weapons.

[best bulliet target]

i cannot remember about when is the time to switch but i believe it's about lvl 180 or so.
That should net you to level 60-70 of the new version.

[RaptorSolutions]

Well, I was stuck so I transitioned when I can get level 30 of the new tier. Level 40 if I wait a bit. Level 60 overnight.
Though even with level 30 it was already way better than the previous tier at level 120 or so so if you're stuck, move on imo. I retrofitted btw.

[themoonstar]

Originally posted by RaptorSolutions:

Well, I was stuck so I transitioned when I can get level 30 of the new tier. Level 40 if I wait a bit. Level 60 overnight.
Though even with level 30 it was already way better than the previous tier at level 120 or so so if you're stuck, move on imo. I retrofitted btw.

On the Wiki for the game it says you want to make sure that you can get to at least LVL 60 (Ablativce shielding/ Improved Tracking) on all of them cores easily since that is the one that scales.

[RaptorSolutions]

Originally posted by themoonstar:

Originally posted by RaptorSolutions:

Well, I was stuck so I transitioned when I can get level 30 of the new tier. Level 40 if I wait a bit. Level 60 overnight.
Though even with level 30 it was already way better than the previous tier at level 120 or so so if you're stuck, move on imo. I retrofitted btw.

On the Wiki for the game it says you want to make sure that you can get to at least LVL 60 (Ablativce shielding/ Improved Tracking) on all of them cores easily since that is the one that scales.

From my experience, you don't have to. Level 30 was enough for me to get over the bump. Though leaving it overnight let me get to 60.

[Dragon]

The optimum level for each weapon changes based on the weapon and it's more based on losing bonuses that affect your targeting choices because of the drastic effects on range, fire rate, and the "unique" effects that you are using that weapon for. as long as you can gain levels on the higher tier the damage will in most cases be higher, but you may have to compensate as you build up salvage to reach the higher level by using lower tier weapons with the higher tier.

The best way to know if you need a higher tier without any negative consequences if to just Save your primary game under a separate name, refit to your desired core tiers, and let it run to see if you can still beat your current limit. if you can't then load that file you saved and boom you are back without doing the refit and just have some offline time instead of runtime.

You don't really need to over complicate the process of when to change to the next tier because the dev gave us the tools already.