Item mod balance does not take energy and space efficiency into account.

[Asmageddon]

What I mean is that, let's use a weapon as an example:

• Unupgraded weapon has 100% energy and space efficiency
• A -50% energy cost weapon has 200% EE and 100% SE
• A -50% cooldown weapon has 100% EE and 200% SE
• A +100% damage weapon has 200% EE and 200% SE, in addition to extra total damage.
• A +200% damage, +50% cooldown weapon has 300% EE, 200% SE, while still having +100% total damage

As you can see, this makes damage upgrades strictly superior to energy cost and cooldown reduction. The same applies to weight upgrades - increased damage/defense increases weight-efficiency as well as the actual effect.

The situation gets even worse when you consider upgrades that, for example, increase projectile speed at the cost of damage - aside from range upgrades, which can be more efficient than adding rangemaster units, everything else is largely worthless.

How to solve this? I'm not sure what the best approach would be, but my initial recommendation would be to do something like:

• Change weight reduction upgrades to 30/50/70%
• Similarly, change energy cost and cooldown upgrades to maxing out a bit higher - 60%?
• Slightly increase energy cost for damage upgrades - up to +25%?
• Add small secondary benefits to projectile speed(up to +25% damage?) and weight(up to -25% energy cost?) upgrades
• Buff or remove the +speed, -damage upgrades - maybe just leave them without the +25% bonus while keeping the higher value?

Additionally, I also think that -weight upgrades on modules that are already very light are a bit pointless, what if you replaced them with built-in nanofiber structure? E.g. -5/-10/-20 weight per tile, so for example Automated Reloader weight upgrades as 10->5->0->-10 instead of 10->8->6->5

[xdeadstokex]

"A +200% damage, +50% cooldown weapon has 300% EE, 200% SE, while still having +100% total damage" Well yes but actually no, for weapons that have insanely high damage per shot but very slow recharge rate, they will have a +200% total damage on first shot bcs the first shot does not count cooldown, and in battle, rarely that ship fire constantly so the energy and total damage will benefit more than theory, that lead to some weapons being overpowered (ex: Acid Cannon with High Energy Focus M2 to make your ship into star space destroyer, or acid torpedo into a hit n run type, all railgun,...) And yes, I agree that item modifier balance are silly, if only the dev add something special about item mod (25% slit projectile, -25% damage on kinetic, 100% dectection radius on missle and torpedo,...) or better physic ("Add small secondary benefits to projectile speed(up to +25% damage?)" to kinetic and torpedo,...)

[Asmageddon]

@xdeadstokex On fast-firing weapons, it doesn't matter as much, the difference between 0.1 and 0.15s between shots is minor, while on slow-firing weapons, you probably want a single big alpha strike anyway.

But yeah, having more interesting mods would be really great too. Slight homing for C weapons, weak chaining for lightning weapons, overheat damage over time for heat weapons, stocking up ammo for missiles so you can fire 1/2/3 extra shots at 25% cooldown. Making a weapon slot-universal for a 40/30/25% damage penalty, partial piercing for laser, etc.

[SuplexCity25284]

There is already a -20% damage mod of you make a weapon slot omni slot.