Horizons Engineering: Is more always better?

[Stealthie]

Recently, I've been trying to make my ships more focused.

As a rule, I always fit the optimal component (in both size and rating) but then I just apply engineering using whatever mat's I have to hand.
So, a combat ship might have got G2 heavy-duty armor if I had the mat's handy or a multi-role ship might've got G3 long-range FSD if I had the mat's etc.

So, I'm going through my ships, one at a time, applying the best possible engineering to them but I'm starting to wonder if that, in itself, might be a mistake.

I can't help thinking that there are times when it might be smart to deliberately apply more modest engineering rather than always aspiring to G5.

For example, a G3 charge-enhanced Power Distributor might give you a useful ability to boost more often but it still supplies a decent amount of juice to your weapons.
If you upgrade to a G5 PD, you're going to get super-fast recharge rates which will improve boost but is it going to reduce the energy supply to your weapons so much that you'll regret fitting it?

Course, having "run out" of juice, your weapons will recharge faster with the G5 PD so you might not actually notice the reduced capacity as long as you use a bit of trigger-control.


So, has anybody found occasions where they've regretted applying a higher-grade of engineering and then reverted back to a lower grade or is more always better?

 

[Marcus Machiavelli]

I certainly have stuffed up with my engineering in the past and did all my guns before i did my power and distributor and so i made my combat ship worse not better. Got that sorted now, but i feel that it is designed to be as full on as hot-rodding a car so the possiblities are endless and very personal

 

[metatheurgist]

More is not always better. OC power plants have terrible heat (and the blueprint straight out sucks), so if you don't need that much power go for a lower grade. I only went with grade 1 fast KWS because the range reduction was not acceptable to me. Similar for the lightweight sensor mods, I didn't think the negatives were worth going all the way to G5. I'm thinking of trying some long range lasers and I can't see a reason to go past G1 for those either.

 

[Stealthie]

More is not always better. OC power plants have terrible heat (and the blueprint straight out sucks), so if you don't need that much power go for a lower grade. I only went with grade 1 fast KWS because the range reduction was not acceptable to me. Similar for the lightweight sensor mods, I didn't think the negatives were worth going all the way to G5. I'm thinking of trying some long range lasers and I can't see a reason to go past G1 for those either.

Yep, I've noticed that too.

With a lot of the "utility" systems (scanners, shield boosters, PD, ECMS etc) it seems like a modest upgrade is useful without inhibiting other functionality whereas if you go to G5 you end up with, say, super-light sensors with lousy range or long-range sensors that are ridiculously heavy.

I built an extreme min/max AspX explorer and then I engineered the scanners for long-range and found I'd knocked something like 10Ly off the jump-range as a result.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Yes: Less is more and more is better.

It is my general approach to Engineers.

 

[goemon]

you can always come up with some blueprints where the lower grade might be better for overall performance ... G1 longrange on lasers for exampel, G1 overcharged powerplants rerolled for more juice and better heatefficiency... this morning i applied a G1 fast scan on my DSS.

but in most cases the drawbacks aren't increasing as much as what you gain.

what i personally like, though, is coming up with some different base moduls ... d-class shields reinforced instead of a-class low power shelds for exampel. e-class heavy duty boosters. d-class resistant augmented boosters. d-class dirty drive thrusters... etc. pp.

 

[VonBlade]

As most people have said here, more is better on almost everything except OC Power Plants, Scanners and the like. Sure you can turn your scanners into things that weight nearly nothing, but they also have no range and no breadth.

With power plants it's best to engineer and kit out your ship fully, then adjust the PP to either give more power or better heat efficiency to the limit of your power needs.

 

[Jethro49]

Apart for FSD upgrades, I "calculate" the modification of other modules in a ship configuration tool such as Coriolis or ED Shipyard before going to an engineer or before looking for mats/data. And most of the time, I realize that G5 is not what I'm looking for... As said before, downsides are sometimes too important considering benefits. The collateral observation is that it's quite hard to do efficient engineering without 3rd party tools !

 

[rrobes]

TBH, I have gone g5 on everything and sharpened from there. I won't have to think about it too much that way.

Certain mods are desired because of ship characteristics, such as cutting weight to improve jump range, so you try for the most. I know that once you get a good roll on the main item, say 50 milli watts on an OC PP, you can re-roll to improve the secondary effects but keeping most of your primary results, bring plenty of mats for that.

 

[Alex Brentnall]

Totally situational

Lets take the charge enhanced distributor.
Generally on capacity hungry ships outfitted with railguns, PAs etc it's a bad idea to lower capacity too much and vice versa with low usage items.
Similarly on big lumbering ships you want capacity so that when you do finally get time on target you can blast away for longer. For small fast manoeuvrable ships chances are you are on target more often than you are not so a quicker recharge is the way forwards.


Basically think about what the bits mean for the specific ship and role. Most cases it's best to optimise totally one way but there are cases where a G3 mod is better than a G5 due to the downsides of the G5, however, this is rare. Hopefully it makes sense

Also worth saying a lot of mods are reliant on others, people above have said the same. The most obvious are weight adding mods, don't go for the biggest heavist G5 mods then realise your ship has 5ly range, go for the FSD mod first to keep yourself flying. I tend to look at the fully engineered state on coriolis and plan out what I need before even starting putting any mods on, then again I do love my spreadsheets.... XD

 

[Kimosabe_X]

Personally I'm always trying to roll G1 low emission powerplants just because of the minor negative sideeffects and hopefully the positive one that actually raises the power output. Having to use 1 Iron on that is dirt cheap, so you can do this over and over again and the outcome is most satisfying, at least in my eyes. Of course this doesn't apply when you really need more power, but for every other "normal" build it's really worth giving it a try.
G3 DD thrusters from Felicity are more than satisfying for any ship, too. Sure I'll do some G5 thruster rolls to try that when Mr. Palin is finally unlocked but at the moment I don't see any real need for them. My Cobra Mk III boosts at 523 m/s with G3 DD which is more than I normally need. Only G5s are increased range mods on FSDs, but I wouldn't mind a good G4 on that either. Sad to see it somewhat too often, that good G4s outclass already mediocre G5 FSD rolls. Waste of time and materials though...

 

[Spacegamejunkie]

Anyone have a Basic Guide that gives a Good Balance for Outfitting a Python?
or any Ship for that matter.

Something Like best Compatible Mods for a Grade 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Ship.
Multi roll and Also based on ship purpose.

After all the grind to open Engineers,
would like to have some way to use my mats in the most proficient way.

 

[Spacegamejunkie]

Nobody.....?

OK, Can someone suggest which level of upgrade is best without negative effects for the Modules ?

 

[duckofdeath]

I think "most" negative effects for mid tier engineer mods were removed in 2.2 after a lot of complaints. It didn't really make sense that you'd go to a modder, gifting them a bunch of hard earned materials just to end up leaving with a weapon that couldn't hit a Farragut-sized barn door from 6 feet.
So, generally grade 5 would be the obvious best choice. Check on inara's extensive engineer page to see exactly how much each mod level changes things, and to see if any of them adds negative things, like jitter (not sure if any still does that).
The RNG'ness (randomness) of things can mean that an excellent grade 3 "roll" can be better than a bad grade 5 "roll".
As to which is the best combo, that's probably mostly up to who's pew pewing and what you're pew pewing at, and of course how everything else is set up on your ship (power and heat-wise). Efficient mods are popular as they reduce power draw and heat generation a lot.
Excessive heat generation isn't always a bad thing, if you're using special effects that harness heat. Just make sure your ship can handle that extra heat without losing the internals in 5 seconds.

 

[Jarvi Locke]

I try to always take a clean stock module when i go for a higher grade, get the best looking mod I can for the mats at hand.

 

[Kort]

I went with an overcharged power plant on my Asp and had to remove the mod due to over heating issues when I was fuel scooping.

 

[Nazdakka]

Nobody.....?

OK, Can someone suggest which level of upgrade is best without negative effects for the Modules ?

Most of the time, the answer is level 5. Most of the drawbacks come in ways that don't matter or are clearly worth the tradeoff.

Some exceptions are overcharged and low emission power plants, due to the heat/capacity issues, long range lasers because you actually get the most important mod at G1, and a few others. The best way to find out when a drawback has become to big is through experimentation.

 

[Whiskey Galore]

Anyone have a Basic Guide that gives a Good Balance for Outfitting a Python?
or any Ship for that matter.

Something Like best Compatible Mods for a Grade 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Ship.
Multi roll and Also based on ship purpose.

After all the grind to open Engineers,
would like to have some way to use my mats in the most proficient way.

The Python is King once again. I reset my account having ground out 20 engineers and having bought a corvette. But I found the Gunship to be so much better in combat. The first engineering I ground was FSD - got 52 % on my Python with 4% less fuel. Pretty damned good. Next was the fragment cannon engineering.
And that is pretty much it.
Yes! You need nothing more. And only to G3 and not G5. Five fragment cannon. Three fixed at the nose, the two 3's at the back gimballed. I one shot most ships. If a FDL gets in front the incendiary engineering strips it's shield in three shots and the next three ends it all.
You don't need beams or lasers or pulses. Just fragments. Takes down shields faster than anything else out there.

 

[w3bbo]

The Python is King once again. I reset my account having ground out 20 engineers and having bought a corvette. But I found the Gunship to be so much better in combat. The first engineering I ground was FSD - got 52 % on my Python with 4% less fuel. Pretty damned good. Next was the fragment cannon engineering.
And that is pretty much it.
Yes! You need nothing more. And only to G3 and not G5. Five fragment cannon. Three fixed at the nose, the two 3's at the back gimballed. I one shot most ships. If a FDL gets in front the incendiary engineering strips it's shield in three shots and the next three ends it all.
You don't need beams or lasers or pulses. Just fragments. Takes down shields faster than anything else out there.

...unless you're up against a CMDR who realises this and picks you off from a distance

 

[Whiskey Galore]

A good commander knows when it's time to leave a fight. And then there is the Zachary Hudson pacifier fragment cannon. Twice the speed, tighter spread, twice the range and only 25% less powerful. Sorted! It's class 3 too!