It's fairly clear that there's a problem with augmenters, especially around the T21 area. Simply put: T21 ship users are using T20 augmenters. Because of this, people do not get the full capabilities of their ships. So, I thought, what if augmenters could simply have their tech changed?

Of course, this would need to have some sort of penalty, and should not be only for T21 users, it ships be for everyone.

Basically, Acropolis will sell Augmenter Calibraters. There are 22 of these for sale, 1 per tech. Their cost is exponential, with T21 Augmenter Calibraters costing roughly 10b in credits.

So how will this all work? What happens is that when you get a Calibrater, you equip it to your ship. When it is charged it can be used, at which point a window appears with all augmenters of the same tech displayed. Clicking on one will ask whether or not you want to change the tech of the augmenter either up one tech or down one tech. Once you select, the Calibrater is destroyed, and your augnenter which change depending on whether you changed the augmenter tech up 1 or down 1.

When this happens, your augmenter will have the suffix "(T+)" or "(T-)", as well as the changed tech. The new augmenter receives +15% multiplicative boosts to all stats when the tech is changed up, -15% when it is changed down.

Here is an example:

Athena+ (T+)
T17
+57.5% Shields
+41.4% Damage
+230% Radar

Athena+ (T-)
T15
+42.5% Shields
+30.6 Damage
+175% Radar

Note: the T21 Calibrater only goes down, T0 only goes up.

/discuss

This is a trend that will change as people discover different setups and more T21 gear. Personally my Engineer and Berserker uses only T21 augmenters. My Sniper, Speed Demon and Shield Monkey uses 50/50 T20 or less and T21 Augmenters.

So yeah, I don't think this is an issue. May I also point you to the fact that many T20 setups included lower tech augmenters for certain setups.

I'm not specifically against this, but it's nothing new that endgame players use lower tech gear.

Excomm
Forge of the Gods
Thanar's Astral Fire
Love Cylinder
Uu Quu
Toomuch Liposuction
Reach of Prometheus
Various capacitors
Stable Overloaders

Hell, there are even some players who prefer T20 to T21 ships (TFC, Lion over Wattage). The point is, if you really don't want to see endgame players using lower tech gear, you have a lot more work cut out for you. And as Thermal says, T21 augs are catching on fast among those who have found the right ones for their setups. My first AWC had no T21 augs. My current one has 1. My next setup will have 2.

Assuming you could do this an infinite number of times(any tech to any tech), some lower tech augs could get pretty insane

A hestia aug, for example, would give 950% shield bonus...

I like the suggestion a lot, but it's far too complicated. The impact of this would be too negligible for the amount of work it would be.

Btw, for the sake of...something that i can't remember.

Every tech gives 10% bonus to power, so this would be very OP.
I think it would work if it gave 5% bonus to stats. And that way there would also be a penalty.

Well if that's true, then yeah, it should be 5% increase/decrease.

Don't really see the need for it. SS is a game where you're going to have tech levels where there may not be optimum stats for a specific attribute at a specific tech level and you're meant to be forced into being diverse by using lower tech (or higher tech) augmenters to achieve your desired goal.

I don't really see it as a good thing to make it so that you could simply take a set of augs and then make them into another tech variant. I'll accept that in some cases we've gone out of our way and made a few different versions of a augmenter but I don't think we'll make a global habit of it.