Edited:
-Tesla aug option 2 has been slightly changed and I've added 2 more options to be considered.
-Mechanical Hound option 1 has been beefed and I've added another option to be considered.

Hi everyone,

We've been talking about some reworks / nerfs to Engineer specific augs. I'm writing this post to bring some suggested changes to the augs and I'd love to hear some of your feedback on preferences between different suggested options. Although we of course love to hear your feedback I want to ask you guys to keep your responses short and sweet (for example Tesla option 1 'cause X and Banu option 2 'cause Y). We'd prefer not to read any unnecessary essays.

We're going to be nerfing the Twisted Tesla Augmenter simply because it has far too much Drone Ops across the augmenter. Below are current stats and two possible reworks.

Twisted Tesla Augmenter (current): Shield +125%, Shield regen +60%, Energy +80%, Energy regen +60%, Capacity +16%, Drone Ops +20%, Offensive ops +20%, Defensive ops +20%, Everlasting -20%

Suggested new Tesla #1: Shield +125%, Shield regen +60%, Energy +80%, Energy regen +60%, Capacity +16%, Drone Ops +28%, -10% Everlasting Ops

Suggested new Tesla #2: Shield +125%, Energy +125%, Energy regen +60%, Capacity +16%, Transference Power +60%, Transference Efficiency +40% Offensive ops +50%

Suggested new Tesla #3: Shield +125%, Energy +125%, Energy regen +60%, Capacity +16%, Tractor Power +30%, Drone Ops +28%, -15% Everlasting Ops

Suggested new Tesla #4: Shield +125%, Shield regen +60%, Energy regen +60%, Capacity +16%, Tractor Power +30%, Drone Ops +28%, -15% Everlasting Ops


The Banu aug is also losing some power and we're making this change mostly because it has everything an Engineer could ever want, resulting in making the best setup ingame simply 3 (or in LF Engi cases 4) of these augs stacked on top of each other. We want to encourage variaty in augmenters in a given setup and thus we're creating some gaps for players to fill with other options.

Qa'ik Banu Akk'oj (current): Shield +116%, Energy regen +32%, Capacity +14%, Resists +38%, Drone Ops +28%, Defensive Ops -6%, Everlasting Ops +12%

Suggested Qa'ik Banu Akk'oj #1: Shield +116%, Energy regen +32%, Capacity +14%, Resists +38%, Drone Ops +28%, Defensive Ops -6%

Suggested Qa'ik Banu Akk'oj #2: Shield +170%, Energy regen +32%, Capacity +14%, Resists +25%, Drone Ops +28%, Defensive Ops -6%

Finally the Mechanical Hound Augmenter is losing some of its speed bonus and the 2% offensive ops (cause, 2%, really?) We've had some cases of exceptionally speedy Engineers and although we don't want to discourage this playstyle, Engineers beating Speed Demons in speed is less than desirable.

Mechanical Hound Augmenter (current): Shield +20%, Shield regen +80%, Energy +200%, Speed +50%, Resists +10%, Transference Power +90%, Transference Efficiency +90%, Drone Ops +30%, Offensive Ops +2%

Suggested Mechanical Hound Augmenter #1: Shield +20%, Shield regen +80%, Energy +200%, Speed +30%, Turning +65%, Thrust +110%, Resists +10%, Transference Power +90%, Transference Efficiency +90%, Drone Ops +30%

Suggested Mechanical Hound Augmenter #2: Shield +20%, Shield regen +80%, Energy +200%, Speed +30%, Tractor Power +40%, Resists +10%, Transference Power +90%, Transference Efficiency +90%, Drone Ops +30%

If you have any other suggested changes to stat distribution for these augs feel free to post them. However, please keep in mind that any hefty changes will result in us having to provide the players with a free augmenter reset which we'd like to prevent.

Thank you for reading.

tl;dr from discord general: Please test the augs before nerfing them into the trash. Alternatively, please nerf the banu aug further because as it stands it's recieving a love tap compared to either tesla option.

Tesla change 1 is terrible, it makes it a worse banu aug. Change 2 might work but it's in kind of an an awkward place vs ares offensive. You could give it some healing type bonuses or even more offensive ops, but I doubt the later would happen.

I like banu change 1 better; resists are useful.

Mechanical hound, if you're going to remove the offensive ops, give it a little gen ops to compensate. It's kind of a glass cannon aug so some tractoring/agility could compensate for loss of speed. I doubt anyone actually wants the energy bank on there either so feel free to replace it with elec regen or something, lol

Edit: Actually could you provide an example of an engineer legitimately being quicker than a proper SD?

These are the two strongest options. I personally just like using general ops and would rather have it than just offensive probably. Although these are quite strong nerfs to the augmenters and hopefully it doesn't kill the class.

The intent of twisted tesla seems to be to give a bonus to both offense and defensive ops, while ignoring Everlasting ops. Might i make a counter proposal then?

first proposal; Shield +125%, Shield regen +60%, Energy +80%, Energy regen +60%, Capacity +16%, Offensive ops +30%, Defensive ops +30%

Or, if this is felt to be to powerful still;
Shield +125%, Shield regen +60%, Energy +80%, Energy regen +60%, Capacity +16%, Offensive ops +30%, Defensive ops +30%, Everlasting -10%

Obviously i do not deal with this particular aug, as my engi is only level 700, and f2p, but this seems more in line with the original purpose of the aug.

I've made some changes to the original post. Edits are listed at the top leave your feedback below

If that's how heavily tractor power is weighed in the stats sheets might we see how much negative tractor power is needed to keep the tesla aug the same? 30% tractor power for even worse in ever lasting seems like a terrible trade. Also, as said before options 1,3, and 4 make the tesla a worse banu.

The Tesla keeping its current stats isn't a possibility. That being said, I might be able to wiggle the everlasting ops to -10%. I'll ask for a second opinion on that matter.

As for your other concern I have to disagree. Besides the basic Drone ops stats their stat values aren't the same and Tesla has different stats all together in some of the options. At best the two augs are similar at their cores but that's to say for a whole lot of augs in Star Sonata.

For the second point, I think you might be over-valuing the amount of stats that an aug applies to the ship. For a class that relies solely on drones ship stats are more of an afterthought.

As for the first… why not? The hurt to everlasting as is already makes it so that you can’t kite without using an aug to give an everlasting somewhere else. It forces you to choose damage and shields over powerability and range.

Honestly with these changes it just seems that you want every aug to give the exact same amount of general drone ops which leads to very boring, very bland diversity in engineering setups.

This is a great observation and I want to give you a little behind-the-scenes on it. We very much agree that augs should NOT all be the same. In a perfect world, we would never be in this position to begin with. Unfortunately, some items like Banu and Tesla were put in game despite not being aligned with that goal. We basically have three options at this point, and two of them are worse than the other:

1) Leave them as they are. This option is bad because it makes it really hard to create new content that's worth obtaining. We had the same issue when Olympus first came out: most of the new gear was considered worthless (and is still considered worthless) because of lower tech stuff that was just much better for any realistic setup. We would be looking at the same issue down the road with Engineer augmenters.

2) Revise the stats completely so that they don't all just give Gen Ops. This option is bad because it would seriously mess up people's setups and play style. I would really love for the Banu aug to give great ship stats, plus a hefty Everlasting bonus with negative Defensive. This would make it attractive since it would help so much with sustained DPS. However, the loss of Gen Ops would really hurt people who rely on it for all-around drone stats.

3) Revise the stats more modestly so that there's room for growth. This is what we are attempting to do.

The reason 3x banu is currently so desirable lies in the absurd gen ops. Reducing that is all good and well, but I don't think the current suggestions stay true to the idea of the aug. I figured the reason why it has a focus on everlasting is to encourage it to be used with the tesla, filling in the hole it leaves. Then it's just a matter of preference between offensive and everlasting focus as to how many of each.
Also keeping that extra everlasting on top of the gen would go a long way in making it different from just a worse mech hound. Which from the current suggestions, it would be.
Yes the side stats are very different, however they just are not as important as ops to the engineer.
Having mech hound give more total ops of every type than banu just feels like a step down despite it being far harder to get. Banu, for me and at least three other engis I know has served as a large motivation for getting together and doing content. It has been something to strive towards. With the suggested changes even if we were to switch, it would feel awful. Though none of us would more than likely.
I would suggest the following for banu.

Qa'ik Banu Akk'oj #1: Shield +116%, Energy regen +32%, Capacity +14%, Resists +38%, Drone Ops +24%, Defensive Ops -6%, Everlasting Ops +12%

This reduced version of the current was probably not in the suggested revisions because it "has everything an Engineer could ever want", however that's not explicitly true. There should be some ratio of general ops to everlasting so that the aug provides a balanced choice between offensive power and sustain.

On the dev meeting of October 3rd, it was agreed that the effect of drone ops was to be reduced, base stats on drones buffed, and the effect of controllers buffed.
I'm worried that these aug changes - which have yet to be discussed in a formal meeting - will force players to change their setup before implementing the adjustments I mentioned previously. Are you sure it wouldn't be better to implement those balances before these aug nerfs, or at the same time?

The buff bit will be shelved quietly

We've decided on the following stats after yesterday's meeting (red=nerfed or removed, green=beefed or added):

Twisted Tesla Augmenter (current): Shield +125%, Shield regen +60%, Energy +80%, Energy regen +60%, Capacity +16%, Drone Ops +20%, Offensive ops +20%, Defensive ops +20%, Everlasting -20%

Twisted Tesla Augmenter new: Shield +125%, Energy +125%, Energy regen +60%, Capacity +16%, Transference Power +60%, Transference Efficiency +40% Offensive ops +30%, Defensive ops +30%

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Qa'ik Banu Akk'oj (current): Shield +116%, Energy regen +32%, Capacity +14%, Resists +38%, Drone Ops +28%, Defensive Ops -6%, Everlasting Ops +12%

Qa'ik Banu Akk'oj new: Shield +116%, Energy regen +32%, Capacity +14%, Resists +38%, Drone Ops +28%, Defensive Ops -6%

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Mechanical Hound Augmenter (current): Shield +20%, Shield regen +80%, Energy +200%, Speed +50%, Resists +10%, Transference Power +90%, Transference Efficiency +90%, Drone Ops +30%, Offensive Ops +2%

Mechanical Hound Augmenter new: Shield regen +80%, Energy +200%, Speed +30%, Turning +65%, Thrust +110%, Resists +14%, Transference Power +90%, Transference Efficiency +90%, Drone Ops +30%

Is there any way the transferance stats could be forgone in favor of <slightly> more drone stats? or are they not weighed heavily enough?

I like transference stats... how about removing/severely nerfing the energy stat entirely?