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O/S Upgrade Tier List

By Sir Digby Chicken Ceaser

Small infographic ranking the O/S upgrades into tiers, with accompanying explanations.

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Sir Digby Chicken Ceaser
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Category: Characters, Walkthroughs

Languages: English

Posted

7 Oct, 2020 @ 5:08pm

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Guide Index

Overview

O/S Tier List

S Tier: Unique and valuable boosts that are excellent in any character build

A Tier: Extremely powerful upgrades, but only for certain builds

B Tier: Solid upgrades that are useful in most builds.

C Tier: Decent choices for most builds, provide unique benefits.

D Tier: Useful, but only for certain builds

E Tier: Extremely niche use and/or another power/item does the same thing

F Tier: Utterly useless in all builds, never pick these.

Comments

O/S Tier List

Hello! There's been discussion about O/S upgrades for different classes, but I couldn't find a general guide to O/S rankings so I decided to make my own!

This is based on my opinion after playing though the game at various levels, but I welcome any input or corrections. This guide assumes you will be playing on Hard or Impossible in single player.

There are 16 possible O/S upgrades(Permanent boosts to your character with no stat or cyber module requirements) in System Shock 2, but only four O/S upgrade stations, located in the following places:

MedSci Deck: Opposite the Crew Lounge (between the Bulkhead and Security Station).
Hydroponics Deck: Close to the Recharger in the Security section guarded by two Laser Turrets, reachable from the Von Braun's Elevator through the nearby doors.
Recreation Deck: On the ground floor of TriOp Galleria in the Mall, nearby the Stats and Tech Upgrade Units.
UNN Rickenbacker's Bridge: Behind the very first door, on the right side.

As there are so few stations spread out so widely, it's important to be discerning in which upgrades you select. Thankfully, many of these upgrades are clearly better than others. Here's my ranking:

S Tier: Unique and valuable boosts that are excellent in any character build

Cybernetically Enhanced: This upgrade allows you to use two implants at once and it's an absolute game changer. Pair any implant with a strength implant for an inventory boost, or a strength implant with an agility implant for melee. You could swap in a Research implant whenever you need to research an item without sacrificing your other buff, or you could combine an Endurance implant with WormMind to tank lots of damage. The possibilities are extensive, and I can't imagine any build that wouldn't benefit from this upgrade.

A Tier: Extremely powerful upgrades, but only for certain builds

Smasher: This upgrade allows you to make a charged melee attack by holding down the left mouse button with a melee weapon equipped. The attack does a couple extra points of damage(except in one important case)

I struggled with where to put this upgrade because it's only useful for melee builds, but it's absolutely essential for those builds. This is especially so when you combine it with Lethal Weapon and the Crystal Shard. The Crystal Shard has a bug in its code where instead of doing 15 points of damage (instead of the normal 12), 15 points are added to its base damage to deliver a whopping 27 points of damage. This will usually be enough to one-hit any enemy when combined with Adrenaline Overproduction, and two blows will normally destroy any turret. Pair this up with Photonic Redirection and Adrenaline Overproduction and you'll be able to sneak around one-hitting any enemy. It also synergizes well with Cerebro-Energetic Extension by raising its damage from 18 to 24.

One criticism of this upgrade is that the slower attack time means it deals less damage per second than would be dealt while swinging normally. This is refuted when considering the high buffs it does to the Crystal Shard as well as its ability to deliver stealthy takedowns when combined with Photonic Redirection. It's not going to be useful to anyone who doesn't use melee weapons, but for those who do, it's indispensible.

B Tier: Solid upgrades that are useful in most builds.

Sharpshooter: A 15% damage bonus to non-psionic ranged attacks. A quality upgrade for anyone who uses guns, which even for most melee builds is probably everyone. Some reports say that due to a bug, it actually provides an extra 35% damage. That's sorely needed on Impossible difficulty.
Lethal Weapon: A 35% damage bonus to all melee attacks, including Cerebro-Energetic Extension. Practically mandatory in melee builds, this is also a good pick for ranged users who want to save ammo now and then. If you plan to use exotic weapons, you're going to be able to use the Crystal Shard anyways, so the upgrade will be beneficial to you. The damage buffs (except in the case of the Crystal Shard) are comparable to Smasher with no speed penalty, so you may be better picking this before Smasher, especially since you only get to use the Crystal Shard in either Operations or Recreation(depending on your research and exotic weapons skills) and the latter has an O/S upgrade station anyway.

C Tier: Decent choices for most builds, provide unique benefits.

Pharmo-Friendly: Extra 20% benefit from all hypos (except for anti-toxin hypos) and, for some reason, Annelid Psi Organs. This is most useful for OSA/Psi focused builds due to their reliance on Psi hypos and the buff to Psi boosters(they last 1 minute longer), but the fact that it improves med hypos as well pushes this up to the C tier. However, the fact that it isn't *strictly* necessary keeps it out of B and A tier.
Replicator-Expert: All items purchased from Replicators are 20% cheaper. Not bad, and beneficial to all builds since this will let you buy frag grenades, bullets, and the all important Psi and Med hypos much cheaper. At the same time, you can already use the hacking skill to make the price of replicator items pretty cheap. Replicator has a *slight* advantage over Pharmo-Friendly due to the wider variety of items available, and nanites you gain from the Item Recycler will go a lot further with this upgrade.
Tank: 5 extra hit points, not great not terrible. Useless on lower difficulties but on Impossible this boost is equivalent to 175% of a single endurance point, so it could save you plenty of scarce Cyber Modules when you already have very low health. Alternatively, you could just try not to get shot like a scrub.

D Tier: Useful, but only for certain builds

Psi-Power: This is absolutely useless for almost all Psi users, as higher Psionics stats both reduce burnout damage as well as extend the window for overloading. However, for users who want to use powerful Psionic disciplines with a low Psionics stat, this upgrade may be useful for avoiding burnout. This is doubly so on Impossible difficulty, where you have so few hitpoints. At the same time, you're better off just getting better at overloading.
Cyber-Assimilation: Destroyed robots drop Diagnostic/Repair modules that heal 15 points of damage. This may be useful for non-Psi users on high difficulties, but Pharmo-Friendly and Replicator Expert allow greater versatility. Do note, however, that this is a guaranteed drop from large robots, and healing items are expensive and hard to come by on Impossible difficulty. N.B.: This is useless as the fourth upgrade as you won't encounter any more robots past this point.

E Tier: Extremely niche use and/or another power/item does the same thing

Speedy: 15% movement speed increase. This sounds great, until you realize that speed booster hypos do the same thing. You can also put 2 points in Agility or cast Psychogenic Agility and do the same thing plus reduce falling damage and weapon kickback. Or you can do either of those things and combine it with the SwiftBoost implant for an even greater buff. Oh, and slow moving speed is almost never a problem in this game except when dealing with Cyborg Assassins and that problem is solved through the aforementioned methods or just shooting them. The fact that its buff stacks with speed booster hypos and agility points/buffs is the only reason it's E tier, because it could potentially be useful for speedrunners but seriously, do yourself a favor and pick something else.
Pack Rat: Unlocks an extra column of inventory slots, equivalent to one strength point. You could easily just wear a BrawnBoost implant or cast Psychogenic Strength or, hear me out, put a point in strength. You also probably won't need the inventory space that badly in most builds. If you absolutely need to save cybermodules then this might help but there are many, many better options.
Security Expert: +2 to Hacking(assuming you already have at least 1 point in Hacking) when hacking security computers. This is useful only in builds with almost no points in Hacking or Cyber-Affinity that somehow can spare an O/S upgrade slot yet are too stupid to not set off alarms. Security computers are one of the easiest things in the game to hack and almost all of you will become a great hacker over the course of the game. You can also cast Psychogenic Cyber-Affinity for the same effect. Open question over whether or not it should be in F tier but I suppose that such a build could, theoretically, exist.

F Tier: Utterly useless in all builds, never pick these.

The fact that one fourth of O/S Upgrades are in this tier should say something about this game's balancing.

Spatially Aware: Fills in the automap for all Von Braun decks(with a small exception on the ops deck). Exploring spooky levels and not knowing what you might find is a core game mechanic and key to the game's survival horror atmosphere. This fills in no details about the UNN Rickenbacker, the Body of the Many, or "Where Am I?", so if you get this as the fourth upgrade it's objectively a waste of a slot. Just read a strategy guide if you're that keen on knowing where everything is. This is upgrade is stupid and so are you if you pick this deliberately.
Naturally Able: One time bonus of 8 cyber modules. Some might say this is the worst upgrade in all of System Shock 2. I disagree only for the fact that it at least provides a tiny benefit at every point in the game while Spatially Aware becomes pointless at station 4. But 8 cyber modules is nothing. It's not even 1% of the total cyber modules in the game. On Impossible you're going to spend this on a fraction of the cost of an upgrade or Psionic Discipline and then poof, it's gone forever and took an O/S Upgrade slot with it. I honestly think the devs put this in as a trap for newbies.
Tinker: 50% Nanite costs for using the Modify skill. Pointless. Modify costs are already cheap and there are already several pre-modded weapons and enough French-Epstein devices to fully upgrade two weapons. Don't waste a slot on this garbage.
Strong Metabolism: 25% damage reduction from toxins and radiation. There are a million and one ways to deal with the few radioactive areas in this game, including your Hazard Suit, hypos, and Neural Decontamination(Which I also don't recommend buying). Toxins are more common but you can use the Hazard Suit and since toxins still need to be purged from the body you'll need to use anti-toxin hypos anyway so it's pointless. Utter waste of an upgrade.

16 Comments

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Cynical 20 Jul @ 6:28pm

Speedy being in E tier when it's objectively the second-best OS upgrade in the game is insane. Putting it below Smasher, an upgrade that only is useful for one very specific build and only because of a bug, is even more insane.

aaKakariko 19 Jul @ 11:21pm

I'd like to see you redo this list for the 25th Anniversary Remaster. The remake improves most of these. Naturally Able now gives you 20 Cyber Modules. Tinker adds a 20% boost to weapon modifications (made AFTER acquiring Tinker; it's not retroactive). Strong Metabolism now completely prevents any loss of health or psi points when using cigarettes or alcohol, respectively. Spatially Aware now marks all enemies on the minimap. Replicator Expert now reduces difficulty when hacking Replicators by 20%. Tank now gives you 10 additional hit points. Pharmo-Friendly now increases the healing rate of healing items by by 20%. Security Expert now makes you invisible to robots while the security is hacked. I'm curious to see how these improvements would affect these placements on this tier list.

Also, I cannot confirm whether or not the Smasher bug with the Crystal Shard carried over into the remaster. I can't find anyone talking about it online.

bigbuff_guy 13 Jul @ 4:10pm

I definitely agree that Cybernatically Enhanced is the best. I like Sharpshooter, Pharmo Friendly and Tank (on Impossible difficulty) for the other three. I mostly agree on Speedy. I'd probably put it a bit higher, but it's not that great. Just equip a SwiftBoost Implant or use Pyschogenic Agility if you really need the extra speed. It costs just one Psi point and gives +2 to agility for a few minutes. The opportunity cost is just not worth picking Speedy for one of your upgrades.

NEON XERXES 25 Jun @ 1:40pm

Speedy is A or S tier. Most of the time you won't invest into psi and speed hypos literally kill you if you touch anything while running. Absolute nonsense.

Clarke 16 Jun @ 5:49pm

nice

PhoenixRisen77 27 Apr @ 5:07pm

I really appreciate all the thought and effort that went into this guide! I might have placed Speedy higher but given the fact of Speed Boosters and that increasing Agility will make you quite fast anyway, I think it definitely deserves to be low on the list.

One thing about "Tinker," there are actually enough French-Epstein devices to fully upgrade THREE weapons. I have 2 weapons fully upgraded using those and still have 2 devices left at the moment in my current playthrough.

Hoots 26 Feb @ 3:32pm

I have to disagree about speedy. its an easy A-tier for me but I may just have a different play style

The Many 29 Feb, 2024 @ 9:48am

Are the upgrades not ordered within the tiers? Usually in lists the items within the same tier are ordered in left-to-right descending order, but yours appears to be ranking Spatially Aware higher than Naturally Able even though your reasoning implies the opposite.

TheBlueSalamander 15 Jun, 2023 @ 12:59pm

Did someone say SexMod

Sikobae 3 Apr, 2023 @ 7:16pm

Do a SecMod O/S tier list.

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