I have noticed recently, especially since the Expedition 5 dropped, that my multi-tool says its scan distance is over 700 units, but in actuality it can’t even scan a flying critter that is only a hundred or so unit away. What’s up with that? Anyone know?
And what can I do to increase the scanning distance? TIA.
I have noticed similar things with updates. Jetpack not going as far, grenade launcher not as powerful… it seems my upgrade values get altered. The only solution I have found is to re-upgrade…maybe someone else knows more.
By re-upgrade, do you mean revert to a previous save point and apply the same upgrade again, or remove it and apply a new one?
It annoys me a bit how they made this upgrade system modular (which lends itself to minmaxing), and then they “punish” minmaxers by nor refunding all resources, and slow load times if you quit without saving.
I always thought of myself as someone who would enjoy studying upgrade effects and glyphs, and that’s also a kind of gameplay that I expected when I first heard if NMS. But there were so many inconsistencies (bugs?) in values and formulas over the last few years that it has practically cured me from even trying anymore to find the patterns…
For example those interactions between adjacent upgrades? I would not have been the one to find them… When they were introduced, it was not yet possible to move them around to other slots without destroying them. Someone analysed it painstakingly by quitting without saving - kudos. I would have been too lazy. 
How should we go about testing upgrade strength? Each of us picks a multitool and writes down the before and after values, and then we try scanning animals in known distances?
I do such tests for other games, but they are more transparent and show numeric values. E.g. I’m just testing a conveyor sorter in Space Engineers, its behaviour is quite inconsistent and it’s possible that a bug in another component of the system is causing side-effects, so in SE, I need to build the most basic conveyor system to exclude such exceptions.
But in NMS we don’t have a “most basic” multitool as a baseline, they all have random values, don’t they? Do you know what I mean?
Yes. However, most of the time I just live with the new diminished affects.
With the addition of pirated black market mods and now the ones pulled from the sentinel glass fragments, upgrading things has become a hot mess…I am throwing most of them away.
I agree.That said, you can sell the extras to the mod vendors for half its value (even though there is no “sell” button until after you click the “buy” button). Haven’t tried sell X-market ones though.