Crystalline Shards worth it? (2024)

Early game, I've killed dozens of the things meaning that I'm only a few months off the red Shards.

I'm running the basic lasers, is it worth upgrading because their stats are pretty awful despite the massive tech cost. I also have regenerative armour free from research but I don't reckon it's worth using.

Anyone running with the crystaline shards? Are they worth it? 50% armour penetration might be useless when nobody else can afford armour.

I personally did the same solely because they clogged up all the space around me. I've found that adding a single renerative armor lead to me not having to repair the ships anymore unless I need immediate and quick repairs. Which is really nice.

Fairly sure if you just keep killing them, you'll eventually get the other thing for free aswell or it gets so cheap you can just grab it quickly. If you pick it during a bad draw, you might actually get a reshuffle afterwards (not 100% about this) with more interesting techs.

I have honestly been wondering about this

Not just about the Crystalline Shards, those are decent because its easier to get enough that you can get the tech completely for free and they are slightly better than most starting level weapons

But are the techs you reverse engineer from the various Space Monsters really worth it? They don't seem to be terribly great weapons, maybe ok if you are getting them for free but not really something you would stick with or go out of your way for.

Maybe there is something I am missing, like certain tech paths that only open up after you research into certain Monster's techs, because otherwise while it is fun and cool to get weapons like Cloud Lightning Conduits and Blue Crystalline Shard Throwers, its seems like its just better to get things like Plasma Throwers and Space Torpedoes and not bother with the weird monster tech.

-Marauder- said:

I think one of them gave me a permanent 5% evasion boost imo from researching the debris. I'd say that was worth it.

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I'm not talking about doing the event chains and early questions based around them

After you kill a few and research them, you will get progress toward some tech based on them, almost all of them give toward Regenerative Haul, but there are the various types of Shard Throwers, the Cloud Lightning Conduits you get from Void Clouds, Space Amoeba give you a type of Hanger tech, the Drones have a weaponized mining laser

Sometimes you can kill enough to get these techs for free, but are they actually worth going out of your way to get? I won't claim to be an expert, far from it as I am almost certain I have no real clue what to prioritize and why about my military currently, but is it worth going out of your way to get, what I would consider, tier 1.5 weapons at best? I say 1.5 because they generally seems to be better than base weapons but seem to quickly get out classed by the next tier in the normal techs.

blackchoas said:

But are the techs you reverse engineer from the various Space Monsters really worth it?

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Space Amoeba Flagella are quite nice over normal scouts in your cruisers.

Ju Li An said:

The red crystal armor is the best defensive piece of equipment you can get, if you can get that researched then you are set for life.

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This