It completely overwrites the existing mod.
It completely overwrites it, BUT with a caveat. The numbers and sliders that it generates are relative to the current state of the mod - which may or may not be vanilla. So if you have already engineered a mod, the RNG works on those updated stats rather than the base stats.
At least, that's what it looks like to me.
At least, that's what it looks like to me.
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It completely overwrites it. Also the potential stat increases are still relative to the original stats, not the modified ones.
For example (and note, I am NOT trying to use figures that represent the real stats increases that engineers will offer here, just to explain the way the rolls work) say you had a vanilla FSD that will jump your ship 30LY and you're rolling a mod that includes a potential optimised mass improvement between 10% and 50%.
Forget the effects that the other changed attributes will have, just for simplicity of the example - all of them work the same as this anyway. With a range of possible increases between 10% to 50%, you can expect your FSD range to increase between 3LY (10% of your stock range) and 15LY (50% of your stock range)
Your first roll gives you a 33% increase in optimised mass, which will essentially increase your FSD range by 10LY (33% of 30) to 40LY - you like that and accept it.
Then you roll again. Your next roll isn't going to give you a range of potential increases between 4LY and 20LY (10% to 50% of 40LY) It will still give you between 10% and 50% of your base (i.e. unmodified) range and whatever you roll will replace what you already have, not add to it.
You can see that when you look at the sliders - if you check the slider for optimised mass when you're about to do your second roll and compare it to how it looked when you were rolling on the unmodified drive, you would see that there is a red section (bad) which simply wasn't there when you did your first roll because the first roll could not possibly have decreased your optimised mass value, the worst possible result was a 10% increase.
Your second roll can reduce it though because you're rolling to change your stock optimised mass between 10% and 50% but the FSD already has a 33% increase on the stock value. If you roll a 10% 'increase' on your second roll what you have actually done is changed your FSD range to 33LY (10% increase on stock) which is actually a 7LY decrease compared to the 40LY range you had from the first roll.
I can't stress enough how important it is to stop looking at the sliders moving and just look at the numbers on them instead. The numbers before you hit the button to spin show you the ACTUAL minimum value you can get from this roll, the ACTUAL maximum value you can get and the ACTUAL value you have for that attribute at the moment.
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It shows you the current stats so you can see what the actual changes to your values are going to be but the potential range of improvements are calculated relative to the original stats, not the already updated ones. We'd all be flying ships with 5,000LY jump ranges if the RNG actually worked on the modified stats.
Ah OK, I stand (sit) corrected then. Must say it's quite confusing if that's the case - the UI clearly shows the sliders moving relative to the current state of the module, not the base stats.
Sure, but you'll see a narrower range of potential improvement. So if you're engineering a module from base to G5, you might see a blue zone on a slider from 20% to 50%. But if you are working on a G4 module that already has a 40% improvement on that stat, only 40% - 50% will be blue. Below that will be red because anything lower than that will be worse than the stat on the G4 module you already have.
In the case of re-rolling on the same grade, if you were lucky enough to have maxed out a stat there would be no room for improvement, and the slider would only show red, because the only way to go is down.
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Exactly. I would have stuck some screenies in my earlier post to make it clearer, it's always better than trying to get it across using just text but unfortunately I'm over 35,000LY away from an engineer base at the moment so it will have to wait.
If you have multiple ships and only limited resources/time for mats gathering its generally sensible to give your lower ships the G3/G4 'hand me downs' until they get G5's.... since the rolls are absolute not relative you gain nothing by throwing away the G4 item instead of buying a new clean one and rolling that
I still have the odd G3 / G4 mod laying around on my less used ships
I still have the odd G3 / G4 mod laying around on my less used ships
