Augment tier list; opinions welcome!

[TehJumpingJawa]

Tier 0 (godly, autowin most of the time)

• Repair Exchange
  Max your defences turn 1, while simultaneously earning yourself huge XP, and increasing your access to ammo & coolant nodes.

Tier 1 (excellent, linchpin of a good run)

• Scrap Exchange.
  Not as good as Repair Exchange, but still very good for helping with board clears and getting coolant
  
• Coolant Refill
  Basically you can forget about coolant troubles, as it's extremely hard to burn through your coolant quicker than this aug can refill it.
  
• Accuracy Booster
  Never. Ever. Miss. That's pretty damn good! If it ever gets fixed, it'll go down to Tier 4.
  
• Voltite Generator Cooling
  Ideally this will be getting you 6 coolant per turn, which is even better than Coolant Refill!. Obviously it's not as reliable, but it pretty much solves your coolant issues for the entire game.
  
• Combination Master
  
• Overdrive Oracle
  The above 2 are amazing because they are self-enablers. Every time you get a 10-chain, the injected Link/Overdrive node makes it easier to get the next. Get both of these, and you'll be getting back to back 10-chains for the entire game - earning huge XP & slaughtering the opponents.
  
• Ammunition Efficiency
  Fire more... a lot more! Just make sure you have the coolant to support it.
  
• Weapon Heat Sinks
  Another fine coolant solution, though usually has to be combo'ed with another lesser coolant solution.....
  
• Improved Ventilation
  ...such as this!

Tier 2 (good, will probably remain in use for the entire game.)

• Gather Scrap
  Helps will board clears, and earns you scrap (but not XP). However it's useless in boss battles, so just missed out on Tier 1.
  
• Life Leech
  "Earn 50 scrap every 2 turns", what's not to like?! Obviously stops you from dying too, which is nice.
  
• Crippling Signal
  Poor man's Accuracy Booster.
  
• Enhanced Protection
  
• Occulus Shielding
  
• Ultra-Rapid-Fire
  
• Dynamo Modification
  
• Finely Tuned Drives
  
• Shield Booster
  Until you have plentiful supplies of Coolant & Energy, the continual damage mitigation that Shield Booster offers you is excellent value.

Tier 3 (useful, but will probably be swapped out once you get more augs.)

• Ammo Leech
  An extra shot every 3 turns is nice, but taking 3 ammo from your enemy never seems to reduce their rate of fire....
  
• Coolant Exchange
  There is significant benefit in homogenising the board, so you can do big clears. However losing coolant nodes is usually not desirable. If you've got other sources of coolant though, this augment should be elevated to Tier 2.
  
• Coolant Leech
  Unspectacular on its own (compared to the likes of Coolant refill), and while killing your enemy with overheating is fun, it's very situational.
  
• Heat Sinks
  
• Experienced Warrior
  
• Reinforced Plating
  
• Variable Heat Venting
  
• Damage Reduction Field
  Statistically better than Enhanced Evasion, and damage mitigation *is* King..... still not very exciting though.
  
• Enhanced Shields
  
• Gather Repair
  Always feels nice clearing lots of repair nodes without using a match to do it. Though converting them to energy is a lot better.
  
• Hull Repairs
  
• Kinetic Conversion
  
• Shield Dampener
  
• Kinetic Conversion
  
• Overdrive Shields
  
• Reflective Shielding
  
• Crack Shot
  
• Overdrive Shots
  
• Overdrives

Tier 4 (meh, will only see use if you're desperate.)

• Additional Shot
  
• Cooldown Override
  Just think of all those great combos you can get with this aug........ oh wait, I've lost an ability slot to do it. Just not worth it IMO.
  
• High Performance Shells
  1% damage boost.... really??
  
• Improved Salvage Mechanisms
  
• Last Stand Mechanism
  
• Link Specialisation
  
• Electromagnetic Blast
  Situational. Losing your own shields is never ideal. Better to stop the enemy getting their shields up high in the 1st place
  
• Energy Exchange
  Usually a terrible idea.... but homogenising the board to get a big clear can be useful.
  
• Energy Leech
  
• Enhanced Evasion
  
• Heat Ray
  
• Link Injection
  
• Node Multiplier
  
• Overdrive Injection
  
• Targeting Lens
  
• Unstable Energy Flow (shield)
  
• Explosive Munitions
  
• Fully Stocked
  
• Penetrating Shot
  
• Unstable Energy Flow (drives)

Tier 5 (Trash, pick anything but these!)

• Ammo Specialisation
  
• Automated Voltite Repairs
  
• Coolant Specialisation
  
• Energy Specialisation
  
• Executioner's Munitions
  
• Running Hot
  
• Voltite Automatic Repair
  
• Emergency Repair
  
• Improved Ballistics
  
• Reflective Shields
  
• Repair Leech
  
• Scramble Enemy Repair

Tier 6 (Actively bad for you!!)

• Repair Specialisation
  
• Scrap Specialisation

[Rovient]

What's wrong with Executioner's Munitions! I love that one :)

[FreedomFighter]

Originally posted by Rovient:

What's wrong with Executioner's Munitions! I love that one :)

When enemy HP reduce to around 15% it is pretty much dead within next turn except if it's defense system still up. It does help if you have nothing better to choose, and it help you kill the boss much quicker but it is not that essential. Unless, you really like overkill your enemy with your supreme power of Britanian!

[Food Fodder]

Pretty accurate list. After a quick look i'd say that I see SHIELD BOOSTER/SHIELD DAMPENER a lot better than HULL REPAIRS. Think HULL REPAIRS should go down to Tier 4. Never even tried it as it's clearly inferior compared to Life Leach. Not sure if it has the same cooldown but if so it should be buffed to HEAL 100HP to be useful imo.
COOLANT REFILL is maybe better than SCRAP EXCHANGE because it's less situational and close to Tier 0.

[TehJumpingJawa]

Yeah, the ordering within each tier is arbitrary. (simply down the order they were written down).

I think you're right about hull repair; the more I think about shield booster, the more its value becomes obvious.
So long as you can maintain your shield strength, Shield Booster becomes essentially 1 shield's worth of damage mitigation every turn - far better than 50 mitigation every 3 turns. (Hull Repair has a longer cooldown than leech)
The only time Shield Booster isn't so great, is when Energy & Coolant availability becomes a non-issue due to other augments.
I've bumped Shield Booster up to Tier 2 to reflect this revised opinion.

Not so convinced about Shield Dampener though; yes it's situationally good, but its effect can usually be achieved through other means without significant cost. (either through knocking out their shields before they become an issue, or waiting for them to miss a shield upkeep or 2 before firing).

[Food Fodder]

SHIELD DAMPENER was just compared to HULL REPAIR. SHIELD DAMPENER it can save you sometimes when you need to take something out through shields quickly and it's a dps boost against steamtanks. Situations where HULL REPAIR may change anything should be pretty rare. I still think it needs to drop one tier. But as I said, all in all the list is pretty good.

[hghwolf]

I rather like additional shot. It`s not AWESOME or anything but it`s great with Energy Lances and Shock Coils, certainly better than ammo leech, especially as Overdrive applies to both shots. It saves, ammo, coolant AND hits the enemy pretty damn hard.

[FreedomFighter]

Shield Dampener work on Armor too, it's cooldown also faster than Arundel's ability. Arundel's ability really need buff.

[TehJumpingJawa]

Originally posted by hghwolf, 25/7 misanthrope:

I rather like additional shot. It`s not AWESOME or anything but it`s great with Energy Lances and Shock Coils, certainly better than ammo leech, especially as Overdrive applies to both shots. It saves, ammo, coolant AND hits the enemy pretty damn hard.

I'd agree if they had the same cool down, but additional shot is 5 turns to ammo leech's 3.

[hghwolf]

Originally posted by TehJumpingJawa:

I'd agree if they had the same cool down, but additional shot is 5 turns to ammo leech's 3.

Fair enough. Differing playstyle I guess.

[Food Fodder]

After further thinking about it I feel that LIFE LEECH also needs to go down one tier 'cause Tier 2 says: Tier 2 (good, will probably remain in use for the entire game.). And as damage and HP increase it becomes more and more irrelevant and I wouldn't wanna use it endgame. There may be situations where it can save you but these will only occur when things go really wrong. So it's very good from the start to later midgame (also economically as it saves repair costs) but will be swapped out endgame and therefor qualifies for Tier 3 (useful, but will probably be swapped out once you get more augs.).

[shteev]

Sweet list, thx :)