Vanguard Augment

"The Vanguard Augment is experimental tech procured from an unknown military source. This aftermarket modification augments a Titan's systems, elevating combat performance allowing them to sustain against enemy fire and support allies via additional utility."

General
The Vanguard Augment is a special intended to boost the effectiveness of ships with the Titan role in combat.

Note that this special is mutually exclusive with thrusters.

Advantages
This item is essentially a thruster with no downsides, as it gives a massive boost to forward speed without any reductions to other ship speeds. It also provides a minor acceleration boost which helps the ship recover from being slowed due to Stasis Dealing effects or, in the case of the Ajax, its Fortify overdrive.

Moreover, it significantly increases the ship's defense rating, which in normal circumstances decreases the bleedthrough damage by half, enabling the ship to last much longer as long as it keeps its defenses up.

Finally, it projects a decent-sized stasis-inducing field which slows down enemies in range, making it easier for your fleet to catch them.

Disadvantages
The Vanguard Augment is only available to Tier 8 ships with the Titan role. Although the Spectre Switch is a Titan as well, it cannot use the augment because it's Tier 9.

Although Titans are meant to counter Fighters, the latter's Augment grants them stasis resistance which reduces the effectiveness of this Augment's stasis field against them. The DPS boost is also not particularly useful as Titans generally carry less weaponry than other Tier 8 ships.

The Support Field generated by ships with the augment will trigger enemy Overdrives dependent on the prescense of one, like the Phoenix Frigate's Bloodhunt.

Trivia

 * It is one of the two specials released for Tier 8, the other one being the Spearhead Augment. Interestingly, there is no Augment for ships with the Ranger role.