This is discussing ship modules (aka pretty much everything except weapons, armor, and shields. Much of my review is from previous versions that I was holding on to see if anything changed with them in v2.2.
I will use a simple scale
S - Critical component, often the crux of a strategy. Might be OP.
A - Solid, the ideal balance level.
C - Niche but it has a time and a place.
F - Weak, hard to make good use of it.
Evasion
- Chaff - A
- Very mass light so has a nice niche, decent enough for its cost.
- Point Defense - C
- Too mass heavy in general, and has a pretty expensive strategic cost. Generally armor is better for the mass, but has a use on very large ships where armor depletion is a major concern.
- Weapon Jammer - F
- Way too big for the little bit of evasion. I would always take other defenses over this.
Engines
- Boost Engine - F
- Way too much mass for too little a benefit.
- Interstellar Drive - F
- Probe Module is generally better, still too little bang for the buck.
- Unshielded Thruster - A
- Good niche for scout and frighter type ships, its a solidly good engine.
- Promethean Drive - C
- Still a bit expensive for what it offers but does have a use.
- Warp Drive - A
- The first "good" standard engine to me.
- Slipstream Drive - A
- Slingshot Accelerator - A
- Fleet moves is where its at!
Special
- Hull Support - F
- Even under the most optimized scenarios (Onyx Hive + 300+% hp from academy orbital upgrades, etc), I still question if this is more effective than just more armor for the mass. but that aside, this module is CRAZY EXPENSIVE. In theory you would put this on fighters....but this module alone costs as much as a full railgun fighter. Again CRAZY. So ultimately the ships I would consider it for its too expensive, and bigger ships it provides way too little benefit per mass.
- Probe Module - A/S
- A real gem of a module, provides a lot of benefits all in one package for a reasonable cost and mass footprint.
- Life Support - F
- This module simply put....should not exist. Now the knee jerk reaction is that the probe module is OP, but I don't think so. Ultimately the probe module provides me exactly the right choice....do I want to invest into range or not. If I do I pay the probe price (which is not cheap enough to be an automatic, it is a true decision), and if I don't I don't. But I'm never paying for a "partial range boost", and especially not at these prices. I personally don't think this module needs to exist, but if you really want it to, it should be 1 mass and like 2 mil cost.
- Subspace Sensor - S
- While this is a very expensive module, its stackability gives you an incredible power. With one sensor focused ship you can obtain a sensor score big enough to basically see an entire sector by itself. This modules obsoletes all other sensor needs (why spend Sb modules for "ok" sensors when you can have a super sensor ship), which is why its an S (and I consider it OP).
- Deep Space Sensor - F
- In theory this is an upgrade over subspace sensors in terms of sensor power per mass. But in practice it is just too expensive even for a single sensor ship, and then amount of extra range I get I find not worth the cost.
- Titanic Eye Scanner - F
- Similar to Deep Space Sensor, its overkill for an extremely high cost.
- Targeting Computer - C/A
- This module has a narrow but solid niche so I debated a C or an A. Its good when you have cruisers+ whose offense is "too much" for your enemy fleets. Aka you don't need to be doing 50+ damage on a shot if your facing frigate only fleets. In those situations its better to lower your weapon and add these modules to increase accuracy, as hitting more often becomes much more valuable than doing more damage that will be wasted anyway.
- Repair Bay - C
- The best niche for these is churning out a bunch of cheap ships with repair bays to create a super fast repairing area. Its a specific niche but it gets the job done. On the other hand I rarely find waiting around for repairs worth it in my combats, its normally better just to bring in new ships.
- Carrier Module - ?
- I get them so rarely really not sure how they stack up.
- Antimatter Bomb - A/S
- The late game changer, completely shakes up combat in a cool way. You could argue that its OP right now in human hands since the AI doesn't deal with it well.
- Integrity Cloud - A
- Very nice on bigger ships