Is there any point to enhanced and exceptional mods?

[gilesey]

I've upgraded my lasers with a basic damage mod (called slasher I think) which increases damage somewhere between 30 and 50%.

Looked at the damage increase for enhanced and exceptional mods and these are all worse than basic.

I don't have any spare parts necessary to create the higher mods yet, but even if I did, it just doesn't seem worth it. Why is basic better than the others. Is this a bug waiting for a fix?

[Gregorovitch]

The higher level mods have additional properties that supercharge your equipment,. Usually they have two that super charge (over and above what the headline bonus is) it and one -ve effect and you can (for 250k a pop at level 3 mods) re-roll any number of times to get the stats you want. I choose them according to which -ve effect on offer I'm least worried about usually.

For example a level 3 weapon mod might boost the damage and decrease energy consumption and speed up recharge time. It might also reduce weapon rotation speed a bit.

A shield level 3 shield mod might increase shield capacity as the headline buff but also speed up recharge rate which tbh is more valuable than the basic buff. It might also increase the delay before recharge starts or something like that but since the delay is usually much, much shorter than the overall recharge time it's a massive net gain.

Yeah, grab every level 3 mod material you can lay your hands on and don't hesitate to spend some money to re-roll some good stats on them (unless you got the patience of a saint and want to save scum the re-rolls).

[blackphoenixx]

Because of the additional properties.

Slasher is the best mod for raw damage - it gives up to 50% damage and up to 100% reload speed which is unmatched even for purple mods - but it also has a massive cooling penalty which makes it hard to use with weapons that already produce high heat.

It's great for stuff like pulse lasers or turrets but for things like plasma, destroyer main batteries and similar weapons you're better off with slightly lower damage but better cooling so you don't spend most of a fight waiting for your guns to cool down.

There's also a couple properties aside from damage like projectile speed and projectile lifetime (read: range) which are quite valuable for some weapons (like a Rattlesnake's main batteries).

Also the purple mods often get extra damage, faster reload and/or better cooling as extra properties in addition to their primary effect so they're generally superior to Slasher for sustained damage for any weapon where heat is a factor.

Flak turrets with Slasher mods for 90+% faster reload are pretty awesome though.

[gilesey]

Yes, I'm using pulses on a medium corvette, sounds like basic slasher is the one to stick with then. I'll take a look at later mods when I've progressed a bit.

I've done the research, but I've never found any of the higher level weapon components (the weapon housing or casing or whatever it's called) plenty of basic from dead xenon drops. Where can I find the others?

[blackphoenixx]

Advanced and exceptional components can drop, but they're very rare.
You can get a few by parking a fleet in front of a gate to Xenon space and setting a ship to collect loot on repeat order, but it takes time.
It's still worth doing that for all the basic mod parts and other drops though so it's a nice little bonus to something you want to do anyway.

The most reliable way to get them is missions, specifically guild/war missions (like the Argon vs Xenon or PAR vs HOP ones).
You can unlock those after getting to rep 10 with the relevant faction, you usually get a message and a quest whenever you qualify for a new one.

Aside from the ones that reward parts directly the ones that reward an L miner always come with blue engine and purple shield mods, you can dismantle those and use them on other ships. It's not like L miners need purple shield mods.