Hi there.

In the grimdark future of space warfare, officers are cloned and their abilities are improved by pushing chips into their hind brains. These chips are called 'implants', and you can get them from pods, from promotions, your login and game rewards and on the weekly rotation sale, which is actually more of a daily thing, as one implant per day is on sale. Implants, like crew members, are purchased with DNA in the crew tab, or as implant pods from the store tab. Now, why do these things matter? Because they can help you cover a weakness (Author's note: Don't.), or push a strength even further. (Author's note: Do that instead.)

The only problem is: You cannot munch implants like candy and stuff your crew with as many as you like. You can only bring 15 implants total, 5 of one type, 3 per crew member, and they are color-coded, just like the slots crew members are willing to get these doodads crammed into. And to cut through the fat and chew the bullcrap, this guide's here to... guide you. Ugh, I need to get better at this entire writing thing.

You can find my extensive guide on crew here: https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=896782839 Have a seat.

Last edit: 12th of April, 2017



Opinions are like butt openings, don't touch mine and I won't touch yours. As many guides are, this is also one huge wall of bias, coming from someone who has certain logical preferences and personal predispositions that make me pick one implant over another, or minmax to a degree others might not. Or, I could favour something you don't care about. We might be at odds. If you are successful, I cannot argue with your results. So, let#s all have fun and be excellent to each other.

"I did not have implants, I just had a growth spurt." - Britney Spears
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Implants are additional boosters to a ship's performance, and they are equipped in the same screen as your crew. As you rise in levels, you will unlock more and more implants. When you hit level 10, the crew is your oyster and you can slot all available ... slots. I will run out of synonyms shortly, bear with me here.



Implants are divided into three major categories:

• Attack (Red)
• Defense (blue)
• Utility (yellow)

I'll assume you know what colors are and won't describe those any further. See, I have faith in you. Yet, I am dividing these sections further in their specific sections. You'll see. For now, just go with the flow. Implants have a few limitations to take into account:

• Can't have more than 5 implants of one kind in your inventory.
  (Further copies will become DNA, just like doubled crew)
• Each crew member can only carry three implants...
• ... and only one of a specific kind.
• Crew members have color-coded slots. You have to match colors.
• Purple ("chroma") slots are universal.

This is all like that shape game, where you need to push the square block into the right hole, and not the star-shaped one. Red goes into red, and so on. I'll talk about it some more later. Furthermore, there is the same implicit limitation to implants that crew members have. A CAG does nothing on a ship without air wings, just as a +Repair Efficiency does nothing on a ship that cannot heal.

To achieve the most versatility in how you can fit a ships, you'll need to level up some crew members, so their color-coded slots become chroma. That's the purple-ish shade. Each level, one slot turns chroma, starting with the lowest, then the middle, then the top most slot. So, if you need a yellow and two red on a crew member, it ain't so bad if they start out blue at the bottom, then red, then yellow. Level 1 will suffice to get that RRY fit. If your crew member is yellow, followed by two, blue, though, you will need to level them all the way to level 3 before they have the slots you need for that fitting.

"My center is giving way, my right is in retreat; situation excellent. I shall attack." - Ferdinand Foch
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Red is all about doing damage, either directly or implicitly. To that extent, this section's going to be split into two parts so it's easier to follow and spot the differences. Also, when more of these come, I'll be ready.

"Aww yiss." - You, probably.

• Attack Damage is straight forward. Just like your Captain, it increases the numbers on screen your attacks produce. This affects primary fire, missiles, combat abilities like the Gauss Driver, and mines. If you want to put bigger holes into the enemy, this is the implant you want. Each implant adds 0.8%, for a total of 4% for all five. Which is the same as you can get from a decent Captain, which stacks to 8% increase of raw damage. Now, if an ability deals 800 base damage or 864 may not seem that much of a difference, but remember: The best form of crowd control is killing your target.
  
  
• If +Attack Damage is the sword, Fire Rate is the magic fairy dust. At first glance, the poor increase of 0.8% per implant seems meek, even when stacked 5 times and coupled with a tactical officer like Dice Caplan for 8%, because it does not increase the damage you do per hit. But what Fire Rate also does, is, hold on to your chairs, decrease the cooldown of combat abilities. That Sycthe of the Reaper? -8% cooldown. Cool. The Fusion Beam of the Levi? -8% cooldown. Yeah! The refire rate of the Enforcer? -8% cooldown. Wait. So, that Interceptor? +8% heat capacity. Hold up. The Persecutor's magazine? +8% reload rate. What? The Leviathan's 60 shot firing Tempest cannons? +5 shots. No, no, stop.
  
  Stop. STOP. STOP! Just, what the hell is up with this implant?
  
  Fire Rate does not just increase the rate of fire between two shots. It is pure magic. Fire Rate always ends up giving you more of what you already do, even if what you do is not shooting a stream of bullets. And if it is a stream of bullets, it does things for those streams. Fire Rate is the magical, universal cooldown reducer, and does anything short of doing more damage directly. God, I love shooting fast. Sorry, ladies.

"Aww... yiss?" - You, probably confused.

• Missile Range increases how far your missiles will go. This means, you can shoot them sooner, which means, you can shoot them again when you close the distance. Indirectly increasing the times you fire volleys, this is a mild DPS increase, as it suffers from the inate properties of missiles. The longer they fly, the more easily they can be dodged, guided into cover, or run into active PDS. Still, does something.
  
  
• Ramming Damage might appear like a direct damage increase, but only works if you actually ram someone, or, are rammed. People will try not to, as it deals quite some damage. For instance, a Ranger hitting a Colossus deals about 275 damage base, while also doing armor damage. With 5x Ramming Damage, you are looking at about 450 base. And more armor damage. But at that point, you smashed your ranger into a Colossus, and you might not want to do that. Not a stronge contender for any slot.
  
  
• Turret Traverse, on the other hand, is a situational DPS increase. You need to hit your target to deal damage, obviously, and this implant helps with tracking. It also helps weapon abilities like the Fusion Beam of the Leviathan to stay on target or shift to a new target. Ships like the Executioner or the Venturer greatly benefit from this implant, as it allows their really slow turrets to be agile enough to follow a target in CQC. Probably the best out of all implicit attack implants.

"Resilience is all about being able to overcome the unexpected. The goal of resilience is to thrive." - Jamais Cascio
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Blue is all about taking less damage, either in all or in some situations. This section's going to be split into three parts, not only to highlight the differences, but also as a preparation for when more implants are introduced.

"Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability. " - Edsger Dijkstra

• Damage Reduction is also straight forward. Your Captain has this, and you can use implants to increase it. For every 100 points of damage you take, shave off this value, and that's how much less damage you take. Always. Any situation. This is a good and usefull implant that will not let you down. There'sn't much to say, other than combining it with a 3.75% or 5% Captain for up to 10% damage reduction all the time.
  
  
• Hull Strength is a deceptive implant, and also, an outlier. Rather than being percentage-based, it's a flat increase. For each of these, your ship gets +200hp, for a total of +1000hp when you slot all five. These hitpoints are multiplied when you level up, and get even higher when you use Defensive Upgrades (by pressing 'N' at level 3/6/9). Now, on a heavy with 15,000hp base, this is less than 7% increase. On a light with 6,000hp base, this is almost 17%. Does this make it a good implant for light ships? Not really. Hitpoints are meaningless once they are gone, and while you will be healed for more (as heals are percentage-based), you will not regain these hitpoints in a fight. TL;DR: Don't.

"60% of the time it works all the time." - Brian Fantana, Anchorman

• Armor Strength takes whatever armor your ship has, and adds to it. Armor is a measure of damage reduction each ship has that, when overcome, makes you take the full brunt of pain enemies can inflict. This implants delays that onsetting doom by giving the enemy attacks more to chew through before they can get to the juicy core of the candy that is your ship. Consult the Armor Values[edgecasegames.zendesk.com] table to see what kind of armor your ship has, and that'll tell you if this implant is right for you. Hint: Stealthers usually don't benefit much from it, with the Basilisk being the odd one out. Heavies and the Brawler thrive with it.
  
  But, as armor can be stripped away, these implants only do their job when armor is hit. Mating strong armor with +Armor Strength and a navigation officer and increased mobility allows you to rotate broken armor away from enemies and give them more things to nibble on. Consider this when opting for these implants, too. The Brawler needs to turn away once the side armor is gone and flip to the other side fast.
  
  
• Broken Armor Damage is a form of damage reduction that only applies if your armor is gone, so, it's not going to help you if you keep rotating armor or get healed by a Venturer or Superlifter. if you invest heavily here, without letting your armor get broken a lot, you're wasting implant slots. Most times, the BADR provided by a repair officer suffices. Keep in mind that broken armor means extra damage taken, which is then mitigated by this stat - where general DR always applies, this only applies at a later state. It does, though, mitigate abilities like the Reaper's Sycthe and the Venturer's Armor Breaker and if you are going tank hjeavy, this will only make you tankier, as broken armor does not degrade your hp as fast.
  
  
• Jump Damage Reduction is simple and highly situational. When you jump, your ship takes more damage - so far, so good. This implant reduces that extra damage, but even 5x won't save you from doom if you get focussed. You can eschew these implants all together by navigating out of fire zones when jumping. Additionally, if you want to jump to suicide and get ready for a Gamma fight, these implants will make it harder - very situational, very double-edged sword-y, and thus, back of the pile it goes.
  
  
• Station Damage Reduction is doing it's best to be even worse than JDR. This implant only applies to the automated turrets of the enemy homebase. This makes it 100% useless in Frontline (no station turrets), and kinda meh in Conquest. A good base push is not stopped by turrets, and turret generators are usually killed fast, for both the 1400 resources and the simple attraction something you can shoot has on players. Voting this one off the island.

"In politics, sometimes the best measure of success is the reaction of your enemies. " - Jerry Falwell, Jr.

• Armor Repair Rate determines how fast your armor is restored after it got damaged or broken. A repair officer has the same stat, and in theory, you could repair armor at a +50% faster rate when stacking it. The thing just is... this does nothing for you in a fight, and it does nothing for you if a Superlifter or Venturer heals you. Or if you fly into a FOB/Base. If you combine this with Armor Strength and good navigation to turn broken armor away from the enemy, this would have some merit, but at the end of the day, it's a weak contender versus the other implants.

"Utility is the great idol of the age, to which all powers must do service and all talents swear allegiance." - Friedrich Schiller
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Yellow is all about doing things. More often, longer, less expensive, and so on. This is the largest family of implants, and you will be hard pressed not to find a reason to equip a few of these. Some are specialist implants, utterly pointless to use on some ships, but combined with the right crew and space boat, these things are going to leave a noticable increase in performance. Split into five parts, because, holy cow, there's a lot of these things.

"As an athlete, I used my speed, agility and quickness to go out and play against the big guys." - Michael Chang

• Forward Thrust is for going fast. This allows you to cross a lane quicker, react to enemy pincer movements, get out of dodge, and so on. Speed is both defense and offense, and since we're looking at percentage-based increases, this implant does lots for fast ships, less for heavies. On stealth ships, it has an indirect detrimental effect, as speed governs how much energy staying stealthed consumes. Still a great implant for lights.
  
  
• Maneuvering is going up, down, and strafing left and right. If your ships uses a lot of verticality, such as the Basilisk, or a heavy with weak bottom armor, this implant has merits not to be ignored. Reaper and Interceptor, with their flat cones of fire, also benefit from them. Paired with a navigation officer, you can get to rather impressive elevation changes, and make tighter turns by strafing into your turns, too.
  
  
• Turn Rate is a prime mobility implant. Fractured Space has maps that are mostly wide and long , and not so much tall, so being able to turn rather than maneuver is quite important. Several ships, such as the Leviathan and Hunter, have limited cones of fire, and keeping your 100% coverage on target is important. Additionally, turning broken armor away from the enemy is a key to survival - my personal preference on most ships when it comes to mobility, this one.

"I'm not planning to jump off a bridge with no bungee." - Norah Jones

• Jump Cooldown allows you to jump more often, and thus, suffers from the same issues that Jump Core officers suffer from: weakened in general by the reduction of 'JUMP HOME' cooldown, weakened in Frontline mode because you don't jump as much as in Conquest. Still, to react more often to changing demands, this implant helps. Sadly, it competes with other, more persistently usefull implants.
  
  
• Jump Prep has similar problems, only that it is even more specific. You'll only get a benefit out of it if you need to make a quick jump, as it reduces the time needed from pressing the jump key to making the jump. Since that time isn't all that long to begin with, it falls even shorter in terms of usefullness as Jump Cooldown does. Meh.

"I flew on Air Force Two for eight years, and now I have to take off my shoes to get on an aeroplane." - Al Gore

• Squad Cooldown helps your air wings to recover from damage faster, or get out of the bays quicker after refueling. It applies to drones, fighters and bombers alike. Obviously, if you don't have any of these, it'll do nothing at all. But on ships like the Disruptor, or the Paragon, these implants are almost mandatory. Combined with a CAG, you can reduce the downtime of air wings by 30%, and if a damaged air wing takes 90 seconds to get back out, that's a mere 63 seconds after stacking SCD. Oh boy.
  
  
• Squad Survival is the other side of the shoe. If you have air wings that cause a strong defense response, such as Ion Drones or Repair Drones, Bombers, Squad Survival rate will make them a lot harder to get rid off - so they can carry out their mission. Paragon and Disruptor benefit the most from these implants, and regardless of the CAG, should probably dedicate at least some slots to them. Otherwise, your air wings will get shot up and spend more time not doign their thing, dealing less damage, or repair less.

Thanks Steam, I didn't want to put all utility implants into the same section anyway, really great idea, this character limit. Please, an image limit would be great, too, and while we're at it, why not forbid my from centering images, or using color codes for texts. Oh wait. You already do all of that, too.

Anyway, here is Wonderwall the rest of the utility implants.

"Sometimes, you have to get angry to get things done." - Ang Lee

• Utility Cooldown is one of the strongest implants from the yellow family, on many ships. That PDS suppresion the 'Widow needs to get missiles in? Benefits. Heal Beacons on the Superlifter? Replenish faster. The Boost the Enforcer uses to get around, in and out? Same. What a great implant this is. Consider this one of the first implants to look at when you look for contenders for the yellow slot on your crew.
  
  Addendum: As of today, 4th of April 2017, Utility Cooldown implants have no effect on any abilities. That makes them pointless to slot, even if they are one of the strongest implants around. Once this bug is fixed, these are the undefeated kings of the utility implants in most cases. Mobility implants are the queen, though. Fixed, as of 7th of April, 2017.
  
  
• If UCD is the shining star of utility management, Utility Duration is the red-headed step child of it. In theory, it allows a ship to use an ability for longer, such as +20% longer boost for the Colossus, or longer lasting Ion effects for the Basilisk, br a more severe Disarm from the Disruptor. At the same time, it only applies to a scarce few abilities, and many of these do not last all that long, which means that even the 20% increase has a rather weak effect - and you would be better served with using an ability more often. And as such, also on the "Meh" list of things.

"The trouble is that after nine years as a Jack of all trades and Master of the Dominican Order, I have no expertise on anything except airports and exotic foods." - Timothy Radcliffe

• Capture Rate is the implant you want for your stealthy, sneaky, annoying back capping ship sorties. At the point where utility implants are considered, you will more often than not find other implants that are stronger, better choices than this one, outside of the specific use to back cap. That being said, WHIM or Matsokah, with five of these implants, can almost capture as if they were 1.5 ships. That's nothing to scoff at for that specific purpose.
  
  
• Now, Energy Regeneration is an all around decent implant. Not only does it help with general energy management when you aren't pestered, it also helps recover from an energy draining effect faster. While this may seem like a very reactive measure, energy regeneration beats energy efficiency in that regard - if you have no energy, efficiency is meaningless. Keep in midn though, that energy regeneration only goes up to your natural maximum - which means, on the Aegis and Raven, it only fills up to half. From there on out, it does nothing.
  
  
• Repair Efficiency seems like the quintessential implant for healers, but it's not. These also increase the heals you receive, which is something that can also be accomplished by selecting Defense Upgrades at 3/6/9 (press N for that). They do not increase the repairs you give to others. So, this is a good implant for a heavy with lots of hitpoints, and a weak implant for a light with low hit points. These implants do nothing for the self-repair of Rangers, but they do increase the rate at which you repair while in a FOB/Base bubble.
  
  Since heals are percentage-based, this implant has a bit of a weird interaction, But, no worries. I'll explain. It does not add it's value to the heal percentage. Say, you pop a Venturer heal, which goes for 20%. These implants don't make that heal 40%. Rather, if that 20% hits a pool of 15,000, it will heal 3,000 hp, and +Repair Efficiency will add 20% to that value. So, that now becomes 3,600 hp healed. Applies to armor heal in the same way, so, when you repair 100 points of armor, you would repair 120 points with five of these installed.
  
  
• Ah, yes, Sensor Range - the implant that can replace an entire officer, and at the same time, has a hard time being justified in it's existence because lanes are short, intel between team mates is shared and the increase in sensor range is so weak that snipers and artillery ships barely benefit from it. There'sn't much to say about Sensor Range implants. Unlike other implants, this one is fine if you only use two or three of them, Stacking Sensor Range has little benefit, and implant slots are too precious to be wasted like this.

Now, all that put into thought leads to some colorful ways to combien crew and implants. Here#s some fittings I use on my ships.
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The Infiltrator is a bit of an oddball. It does have the hitpoints of any regular medium attacker, but it also has the armor of those (1000 all around), unlike other stealth ships. Additionally, it's main source of damage is an ability and drones tied to it. Thus, I opted for a combined +15% of armor, with an increase to maneuvering and turn rate for better positioning and armor twisting, and, as for most stealthers, a hefty increase of attack damage. The kicker, though, is the +30% survival rate for the ion drones, making them much harder to get rid off. The cooldown of the ion blast is shortend by the tactical officer to the point where you can blast a target twice in the life cycle of one drone swarm. Squad cooldown is almost irrelevant on the Infiltrator, though - it's extremely short.

Implants:

• 5x Squad Survival
• 2x Turn Rate
• 2x Maneuvering
• 1x Armor Strength
• 5x Attack Damage

Crew:

• Engineer: IMMIX-r
• Navigation: Charion Lloyd
• Captain: Evan Sterling
• Tactical: Dice Caplan
• CAG: Ernest Grimur

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With this fitting for a Raven, a couple of things happen. The first is, the Raven recovers from energy drain very fast, the second is from the synergy of Fire Rate cutting the cooldown on the Overcharge Beam whereas Energy Efficiency and Utility Cooldown on Zhang Tao put both Absorb and Overcharge Beam on comparable cooldowns, while the primaries fire faster, which leads to the Raven filling up the energy banks as fast as needs to use the Overcharge Beam as fast as it becomes available. The engineer and navigation officer help getting in and out of fights. Attack damage, for a light attacker, is self explanatory.

Implants:

• 5x Energy Regen
• 5x Fire Rate
• 5x Attack Damage

Crew:

• Engineer: Elvy Cooper
• Navigation: Bonny Reed
• Captain: Evan Sterling
• Tactical: Cornelius Baptiste
• Utility: Zhang Tao

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Now, this Superlifter Crew is optimised to do three jobs the Superlifter is good at: Go fast, make heal, do boom. With the decrease to beacon replenishment, increase to repair amount and doubling down on damage dealt, this amplifies the Superlifter's role of being a more combat oriented healing ship. The mobility is to increase survivability, ending up with a balance between all aspects - fast, turn, up/down/strafe. Marie-Anne as a captain helps with those aspects, too.

Implants:

• 5x Repair Efficiency
• 2x Maneuvering
• 3x Forward Thrust
• 5x Attack Damage

Crew:

• Engineer: Elvy Cooper
• Navigation: Charion Lloyd
• Captain: Marie-Anne Moreau
• Tactical: TAU-IS
• Utility: Palam0n

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The Venturer is a really confused ship, but, with a fittign like this, it is quickly transformed into a solid backbone multi-role ship. Pushing the healing makes the long cooldown bearable, reducing the cooldown makes it more responsive, increasing turret traverse helps with tracking despite the dreadfully slow turrets, and the fire rate increase makes the armor breaker available more often, too. It also reduces the cooldown between laser emissions. The armor strength is a no-brainer: The Venturer can repair armor, and thus, having more to repair results in increased survivability before damage is taken and after broken armor is repaired.

Also, it's a themed crew - if there is one ship crying for a pirate crew, it's this one. Add the Jolly Rogers skin and a red FX mod for additional piracy. Sadly, there's no pirate utility officer, and ALABAMA has no place here. He's here in spirit.

Implants:

• 5x Repair Efficiency
• 5x Fire Rate
• 5x Armor Strength

Crew:

• Engineer: Ragnar Zoref
• Navigation: Bonny Reed
• Captain: Caesar Morgan
• Tactical: Jules Valentine
• Utility: Palam0n

"Goodnight my kitten." - Ernest Hemmingway, last words.
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This guide was written with the intention to explain the landscape of implants to new players, but also shine some light on certain interactions, and how to get the most out of crew fittings. With this hope, I leave it there, may it guide you well. And if you didn't like it one bit, well, too bad. Leave me scathing feedback, so I may have a moment of delight.

Cheers,
Ced.