Upgrades

Manouvering Thrusters

Mezoa Pattern Drive

Efficient Plasma Thrusters

Emissions Dissipator

Navigational Shields

Additional Shield Generator

Auxiliary Shield Generators

Voss Pattern Void Shield

Improved Augur Array

Imperial Assassin

Additional Teleportarium

Enhanced Battle Bridge

Belt Armour

Fire Protection System

Advanced Cogitator Linkages

Power Ram

Turbo Weaponry

Targeting Matrix

Amour Pircing Ammunition

Automated Refueling Systems

Disruption Overcharge

Short Burn Torpedoes

Refined Lenses

(+5° turn rate),(+25 Speed),(+25% special maneuver fuel, +25% recharge)Maneuvering Thrusters are useful when fighting escorts but normally you can keep up with every ship by using special maneuvers. The exception to this are Battleships which are very slow without this upgrade.The Mezoa Pattern Drive is useful to give your fleet a uniform speed so all of your ships engage the enemy together.Efficient Plasma Thrusters can be used to further increase the mobility of your ships or to help with more complicated maneuvers like turning to an enemy to shoot torpedoes or turning 180° multiple times to use booth batteries of a ship against a single enemy.Because of their flat increase in mobility Maneuvering Thrusters and Mezoa Pattern Drive are better for bigger ships while Efficient Plasma Thrusters are better for smaller ships.(ships are not revealed by special maneuvers)This Upgrade can be used to easily dodge enemy abilities without being revealed. Also, this can be used as an alternative to Mezoa Pattern Drive by using special maneuvers to increase your speed at the start of the battle without being revealed. This upgrade is best for keeping your ships outside the enemies spotting range which is useful for ships that you want to use as scouts.(No damage from asteroid fields)Normally you should micro your ships to avoid flying through asteroids but sometimes you cant keep up because you have too many ships which can happen if you are using a lot of escorts. They have few HP so flying through an asteroid field hurts them much more than bigger ships. Additionally this upgrade increases the surface area from which you can attack. Your Cruisers could attack the enemy directly while your escorts do a flanking maneuver through an asteroid field. Another way to use Navigational Shields is to hide inside an asteroid field so the enemy cant engage you without suffering some damage.(+ 100 Shields),(+50% shield regeneration),(25% damage against shields ignored)The shield upgrades can be very useful because they are the only upgrades that actually give your ship more hitpoints. They stack with each other so its a good idea to buy as many as you can fit onto your ship. For example against 10 DPS of macro batteries a cruiser with one shield upgrade takes 7% more time to be killed, with 2 upgrades its 18% and with 3 its 29%. If you do the math you will find that Voss Pattern Shields increase the amount of shield HP by 33% and that Auxiliary Shield Generators are equivalent to an increase of 50% shield HP. With this in mind you should pick the order of the shield upgrades accordingly for each ship class.(+2500 detection range)Most ships have 5000 detection range so they get 7500 with Improved Augur Array. Despite this Ships with long range weaponry dont profit from this upgrade as much because they want to fire from even farther than 7500 away. This upgrade is best used on ships you want to use as scouts for the rest of your fleet.(chance to cause mutiny with lightning strike),(+1 attack for lightning strike)Generally each boarding action has a chance to cause a hull breach for direct damage or a critical hit. A mutiny can cause multiple critical hits and a big debuff to the enemy ship. Each ship has a default amount of 1 attack per lightning strike so the +1 attack of the Additional Teleportarium effectively doubles the damage. These upgrades are best used together. Adding the Space Marine favour makes it even stronger by increasing your chance of success.(special orders can be used with destroyed deck),(first critical damage to a system is ignored),(-50% fire duration)These upgrades can offer an alternative to the shield upgrades to increase the resilience of your ship. Unlike the shield upgrades they dont synergize much with each other which means that they are already effective if you just take one.It is very rare that your deck gets permanently destroyed but when it does the effectiveness of your ship is greatly reduced. This is especially true when you are relying on your orders and are using Advanced Cogitator Linkages.Fires can cause a lot of damage but by clever use of emergency repairs the damage can be minimized. If your ship is on fire you probably have a lot of critical damage too and want to use emergency repairs anyways. Small ships dont profit as much from Fire Protection System because they are likely to be completely destroyed if they are already burning but big ships can slightly reduce the damage received by using this upgrade.Belt armour allows you to keep fighting at full efficiency for longer. It triggers on booth permanent and temporary critical hits. Temporary critical hits can be repaired by emergency repairs so its impact is rather limited. Its better on small ships because you get one ignored critical hit per ship regardless of size.(+50% special order duration)This upgrade can be very strong and versatile because you can always choose your order according to the situation you are in. If you rely on a lot of abilities this upgrade is especially strong because by using the Reload order this the only upgrade that can be used to reduce the cooldown of abilities. Orders are reduced by the servitor crew skill. By using booth the total time your orders are active is increased by 70%.(+50% ramming damage)If your ships are using a lot of close range weaponry this upgrade can be used to increase your damage. This synergizes very well with the mobility upgrades which can allow your ships to ram more frequently. Small ships can use this upgrade to kill escorts with a single blow while big ships benefit from the increase to their large base damage.(+3000 Range for macro weapons),(Accuracy at 9000 is 50% instead of 40%, at 12000 40% instead of 20%)Your ships generally are slower than the enemies so it is very hard to stay outside their firing range. The main advantage of Turbo Weaponry is that while fighting you have more enemies in range so its easier to focus fire on one enemy or support other ships from farther away. You are going to fight at close range most of the time so normally this upgrade only gives you a few seconds of extra shooting.Targeting Matrix is a very important upgrade for ships with long range weaponry to increase their damage.The synergy of these two upgrades isnt very high because you either have enough range so you dont have to increase it or you increase your range from 6000 to 9000 where just the 10% accuracy increase isnt worth an upgrade slot.(-25% armour when at less than 3000)Most ships have at least 50 armour so this upgrade normally increases your damage by 33% if you are able to get close enough. This upgrade benefits from mobility upgrades but normally you should be able to get inside a range of 3000 without additional upgrades.(-20% Hangar Bay Cooldown)The strongest upgrade for each ship that has a hangar bay. This works out to be a 25% increase in damage output from your flyers.(lance weapons do +50% damage against shields)Most lances have a forward facing firing arc so your first few lance shots before engaging the enemy will soften up the enemy shields a bit more. The problem with this upgrade is that only a part of your weapons are lances and only a small part of the enemies HP are shields so the damage increase is far less noticeable than you would expect. Escorts have a higher amount of shield HP compared their hull HP so this upgrade can be useful against them.(+50% torpedo speed)This upgrade is not completely necessary when you are always at short range but if you want to hit the enemy from farther away this upgrade is very helpful. With Advanced Cogitator Linkages and Servitors its possible fire 30% more torpedoes so the improvement of this upgrade could come into play very often.(+3000 Range for lances)Compared to Turbo Weaponry this upgrade is much stronger because Lances always have 100% accuracy so you dont lose any damage when firing from father away. With this upgrade its very easy to focus all your fire on one enemy.