Necrons Upgrades
Phase Shifter
- Damage caused by asteroid fields, minefields and spore fields is nullified.
- Applies to all fleet’s ships
This passive ability is a decent upgrade for the fleet that simply removes enviornmental damage. This ability is more useful for kiting/ambushing/harassing types of fleets as these battlegroups tend to hug the outer edges of the map. It also allows players to more easily put their ships into asteroid clusters as being stationary within them allows ships to be stealthed. For the Necrons this upgrade is absolutely useless. Considering you regen your hull points this damage doesn’t apply over time like with other fleets. Pass on this upgrade.
Tesseract Crypt
- Stances can be used even when the deck is destroyed.
- Applies to line ships.
This is a brilliant upgrade which allows you to have the passive upgrades from stances on during the entire engagement. You can have increased hull regeneration if you ships are low, increased firing rate from your weapons or apply splash damage from certain weapon profiles even if your deck is destroyed. One of the better upgrades in the game despite its simplicity.
Shards of Nyadra’zatha
- Each assault action applies a “Fire” effect to the target.
- Applies to the flagship.
Absolute garbage upgrade. The fact that you only apply a single dot (damage-over-time) to an enemey once every 60 seconds or so is bad. If this upgrade applied to the entire fleet or applied multiple fire effects to one target it might be worth it. The only good thing about this upgrade is the cool name.
Unstable Pulse Core
- Damage inflicted by the Star Pulse Generator is increased by 50%.
- Applies to all ships with a Star Pulse Generator.
Star Pulse Waves are an ability that the Necrons have access to in every ship above the classification of Light Cruiser. This Pulse destroyes all ordinance and enemy fighters around the ship instantly and causes 250 damage ignoring armor. This is one of the best abilities possibly in the game and increasing its damage to 375 is very good. I would only take this upgrade however if you have 2-3 ships above the classification of Light Cruiser, otherwise you won’t get enough value out of it.
Residual Absorption
- While the ship is located in a gas cloud, the Hull Cauterization effects provide 1 additional hull points per second.
- Applies to all fleet’s ships.
An absolutely terrible upgrade. Any skill or upgrade which is dependent on terrain features is inherently questionable because you are depending on said terrain to be present (if it is at all) and to be in a good tactical posistion. There is also the fact that this upgrade gives you only 1 extra hull point when healing, that is not good enough to warrant this. This can be useful sometimes, but there are far better upgrades you have access to. Pass on this one.
Nightmare Shroud
- While in the “Reload” stance, the ship inflicts 3 morale loss per second to every enemy ship within its identification range.
- Applies to the flagship.
This is an interesting upgrade as inflicting morale damage is almost always good as you can get opposing ships to mutiny or flee. However there are three fundamental flaws with this upgrade.
- The flagship has to be using the “Reload” stance, sometimes this is not optimal and you may need another stance to fit the situation.
- The enemy needs to be within identification range, which is 4,500 units. This short range means that enemy ships can simply boost or fly away from this small radius.
- This upgrade is comletely useless versus Space Marines since they don’t suffer morale damage. An upgrade which is not useful in all games is one that is not optimal.
Living Metal Substructure
- Escort ships hull points are increased by 25%.
- Applies to escort ships.
This one made me laugh honestly. If you are spamming escorts this may be useful but outside of that there is no point to this. Escorts are meant to augment the fleet by providing additonal firepower, scouting and capturing zones. They are not your primary concern nor should they be. Possibly the most pointless upgrade in the game unless doing escort spam.
Eldritch Bridge
- Lightning Strike range is increased by 4,500 units.
- Applies to all ships with portals.
This upgrade is very questionable in viability. While increased range for a boarding strike is always a plus, it isn’t necessary. The fact that you can teleport around the field makes this upgrade quite silly, on top of that you can usually get in range for a boarding action which does a lot more damage and has the higher potential to cause a critical. Not an impressive upgrade by any means but can still be useful.
Structural Analyser
- Increases Lightning Arcs’ critical chances by 100% against enemy ships which have been marked using the “Scanner” skill.
- Applies to ships with lightning arc weaponry.
I think this upgrade is useful and it increases the critical chance of the lightning arcs from 7.5% to 15%, that is not something to laugh at. The problem comes from having to mark enemies with the “scanner” ability from escorts. While this is an easy thing to do, the problem comes from limited ship numbers, you may not always have your escorts in the right posistion and they may get destroyed. I like this upgrade, but I think it requires to much effort on the players part and it is still dependent on RNG (random number generator) to swing in your favor. Try it and see if it works for you, I believe there are better upgrades however.
Arc Propagator
- Each particle whip hit spreads to the closest enemy target within 4,500 units.
- A partical whip can only spread once and damage inflicted to the second target is reduced by 50%.
- Applies to the flagship.
This upgrade is similar to “Structural Analyser” but requires far less effort on the controlling player. The fact that it just happens makes this strong. Of course this upgrade loses its granduer when fighting isolated ships, but that rarely happens in this game. The only downside is that this ability only applies to the flagship, not the fleet. So this upgrade, just like an skill, requires your flagship to be kept alive as long as possible to get as much value out of it.