Phase Missiles

from Sins Forums
I was looking at the Vasari tech tree, and considering the worth of phase missiles. The description of the first-tier tech reads 'Phasing technology made small enough to fit into missiles, giving them a chance to bypass shields and directly impact hulls'.

My first thought was that, at low percentages, this could potentially be a bad thing. Normally, when you are fighting a ship, you first must work to break through the shields. While doing this, you are fighting the ship's natural shield regeneration. Once you have broken through the shields and start damaging the hull, you are then working against the shield regeneration and the hull regeneration.

With phase missiles, some of which will hit the hull, you are then working against hull regeneration and shield regeneration from the start. Phase missiles would only seem to be an advantage to me if enough get through to allow you to kill the ship while its shields are still intact. At the low percentage the tech starts at, this seems unlikely to me.

A question I did have was, 'Do phase missiles bypass shield mitigation'? If so, I could potentially see them as being more useful. According the manual though, shield mitigation applies both to shield damage and hull damage, so I would assume that they do not.

Has anybody found success with this tech path, or does anybody have more information?
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7,401 views 8 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
the advent ships have a lot more shields than hull (at least the majority, a few have more hull than shields) and in many cases they have ways to regen shields or share damage among themselves using special shields.
In these cases phase missiles are quite good.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
I went all the way down the tech path before making my invasion, and had 30 of the missile ships and 5 of the missile capital ships. My first target was the TEC, and I noticed many, many ships dropping with decent shields left (had a Marza go down with half shields while running, that was funny :P). It was very useful there, though it would have been less useful had the AI researched the armor improvements (it was obvious that the AI had no armor or hull improvements).

Attacked the Advent next and it did pay off, though not as much. I think the mitigation was hurting my damage but the Advent's weak hull was helping as well. I dropped less ships with shields but when I did they had nearly full shields (one of their psychic caps, the last one in the list, dropped with, as near I could tell, full shields, 100%). This AI did have mitigation, which caught me off guard, but, while it did seem to hurt my damage, getting through the Advent's shields was well worth it.

I think against a human player it would depend on how much they micro'd and who they were. The ability seems to be better against the Advent even if it's affected by the mitigation as the TEC have their awesome armor which would make the missiles nearly worthless. It's an interesting ability which isn't as overpowered as it sounds, but not as weak as you'd think :).
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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

My first thought was that, at low percentages, this could potentially be a bad thing. Normally, when you are fighting a ship, you first must work to break through the shields. While doing this, you are fighting the ship's natural shield regeneration. Once you have broken through the shields and start damaging the hull, you are then working against the shield regeneration and the hull regeneration.

I've long had the same concern. However, hull regeneration is really pretty slow, so its not a big deal - especially considering the hull-penetrating abilities that some Vasari ships have.
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
I believe one of the Vasari Cruisers brings it up from a 35% chance to penetrate to a 55% chance?
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
Yeah, the Subverter has some abilities in that regard. But you're still left with the early phase missile researches being mostly useless.
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
10% first upgrade? I dunno, the way I see it unless it costs as much as a Cap ship, any Upgrade that will let me pwn shields is a good upgrade.
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
Do phased missiles cause shield mitigation to increase like other shots? If not, it's probably something good to have whenever you focus fire, due to how high shield mitigation can get (especially with Advent).
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
I don't suppose Phase Missiles have anything to do with shields and shield mitigation. If they can get past the shielding, they're only left with armor, hp, and hull repair rate to tackle.