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[SafariJohn]

There are D-Mods that are deal breakers when I see them on a ship (or at least very hard to justify), even if I have the Industry skills. They are:
- Degraded Engines
- Erratic Fuel Injector
- Compromised Storage
- Increased Maintenance


I think if these effects were spread out across more d-mods, they would not seem quite so bad. I suggest:

Degraded Engines:
 Reduced speed and maneuverability
 -1 burn speed

Erratic Fuel Injector
 +25% fuel use
 +50% profile
 
Distorted Drive Field
- Bad drive field sucks extra fuel and requires more shielding for crew, reducing crew space.
 -30% crew capacity
 +25% fuel use
 
Deautomated
- Systems must be closely supervised or their functions performed by crew. Extra equipment needed to make it all work, increasing maintenance.
 +50% minimum crew
 +50% supplies per month
 
Degraded Fuel System
- Stores fuel less efficiently and needs more maintenance to keep the pumps running.
 -30% fuel storage
 +50% supplies per month

Compromised Storage
 -50% cargo capacity

[Thaago]

If you have increased maintenance and the Industry skills, you actually save supplies if you fight something like once every 6 weeks. And repairs are cheaper too. I'd rather have a ship with that D mod than without, if I'm fully skilled up.

Compromised storage only appears on civilian hulls right? That one is a deal breaker for my haulers because they are easy to find.

Erratic fuel injector it depends entirely on the game stage and what ship. Later game having it is just a fuel -> supplies conversion (for a hammerhead, saves 2 supplies per month & combat & repairs are cheaper in exchange for .5 f/ly) at a not-great rate. On the bigger ships it gets rather painful, especially low tech capitals, but on the smaller ones I'll accept it.

Degraded Engines is a bad one, but not a deal breaker for me as long as it doesn't slow my overall fleet speed. So if I'm at burn 8 and a destroyer gets it I will grumble but still keep the ship.

[Megas]

Increased Maintenance on the bigger ships is painful.  (I do not get non-colony Industry skills.)  I do not recover those (aside from Legion14, which gets restored), and will reload game if a critical ship gains it.  On a frigate while I am hauling capitals?  So what?  I can afford restoration if I cannot wait for Heavy Industry to build more.

[TaLaR]

Degraded Engines is imo mostly there to make sure that almost any large npc fleet is slower than player. Well, outside of unlimited Emergency Burn use of course.

[Terethall]

As an industry fiend, I love degraded engines, provided they're not on a ship in my lowest burn tier. Reduce the speed penalty by half, and the burn penalty is meaningless? Yes please! Increased maintenance is even better -- I profit in lower supplies usage (unless I'm sitting around doing nothing -- which, why?), with no harm to the ship's performance? One of the best d-mods. Erratic fuel injector is similarly very, very good to have on most ships when you offset supplies used in maintenance, CR recovery, and hull repair, and reduce the effect by 50%. Also because fuel is easily purchased in huge amounts at any market, and you can get a huge 50% bonus to salvaging it plus a fleetwide 25% reduction in consumption.


Compromised Storage is completely unacceptable for me though, because it largely only appears on ships I am only bringing only because of the storage. Meaning I won't deploy it, and thus don't get a lot of the benefit in reduced supplies usage, and it also doesn't matter that the d-mod doesn't reduce the combat stats, because I wasn't going to use the ship in combat anyway. Top that off with how easy it is to find Colossus, Phaeton, and Prometheus, and how cheap they are to buy, it's almost never worth tolerating Compromised Storage. Even on pure-salvage games, I never bother recovering ships with compromised storage, unless I plan to use them in combat for most/all fights.

[Daynen]

Yeah the industry tree creates an interesting reversal of value for D-mods.  Suddenly, logistical penalties of fuel, supplies, sensor range and other noncombat maluses become sheer economic advantage.  Even cruisers can get down to the single digit deployment cost in supplies and your monthly supply cost plummets as the D-mods pile up.

That said, it's no surprise that compromised storage on a cargo ship is a deal-breaker, given you're bringing that ship literally for that express purpose.  Same for fuel tankers and troop transports, obviously.  Erratic fuel injector is actually one of the more worrying ones in my opinion because I find that as your fleet grows larger, fuel consumption far outstrips supply usage eventually, no matter your skill build.

[Terethall]

Erratic fuel injector is actually one of the more worrying ones in my opinion because I find that as your fleet grows larger, fuel consumption far outstrips supply usage eventually, no matter your skill build.

I can agree with this, except for my own personal fleet comp. I tend to run Efficiency Overhaul on all my ships for 20% less fuel consumed. Plus my first three skill points are into the Salvaging skill for 50% general and 10% post-battle salvage, plus the +50% fuel salvaged skill soon after, and then the -25% fuel used skill, and the -50% d-mod effect skill. I also keep a couple of Badgers/Shepherds in my fleet most of the game for ~50-60% overall increased salvage from the salvage gantries. Once you combine all of those, I find fuel use vs fuel salvaged isn't too bad, even with several capitals and a 30-ship fleet, even if 30-50% of the fleet has erratic injectors. I only need to top up on fuel at a market once in a while, because even with lots of erratic injectors, I'm actually still consuming less fuel than a no-skill pristine ship would (the -25% fuel used and reducing the 50% penalty from erratic injectors by half to 25% means just those two skills alone completely nullify erratic injectors on any ship that has it, and results in extended range/profit on ships that don't have erratic injectors).

But then, saying it's not a problem when my fleet is basically built around cost-efficiency doesn't mean the mod doesn't suck for people who want to optimize for something really weird, like fun, or combat ability, or whatever the kids like in their video games these days.