phase missles and phasing through shields

Because everyone knows Advent aren't the masters at shield buffs and mitigation, and so nobody in their right mind would want to bypass their #1 defense entirely, right?

well this is the point: you dont bypass their defense entierly , actually you will destroy their shields with this and the hull at the same time at best, but most of the time you will destroy shields way sooner then the hull.

Im speeking from a mathematical point of view, i just dont see this happening, maybe im wrong i dunno but im pretty sure im not, i would like to hear some examples where someone destroyed advent ships hull with significant shield left on them

I have seen and done this on several occasions. I always max phase missiles.

You are correct in that not all of the damage hits the hull, but the more research you do the more damage is done to the hull vs mitigation against the shields. I have always started with the missile cap ship as it annihilates the militia frigates guarding planets, especially the cobalts as they have shields.

Phase missiles are extremely important playing against the Advent. Advent are the shield masters. I would like to know that the majority of my damage is going to the part of their ship that can't regenerate as fast (nor can it be restored by abilities) and is quite a bit less substantial then their shields. This works just as good against TEC opponents.

With the Vasari, the Assailant (LRM) frigate is formidable opponent along with bombers.

If you would like to play sometime, my ICO screen name is Caboaddict.

Actually, I've noticed the same thing as the OP. Unless you have a fleet composed almost exclusively of the assailants and subverters, advent ships lose their shields before their hull. Admittedly, they will have sustained hull damage by the time the shield is down, but only rarely will they die with shields intact.

What he means:

Lets say an enemy ship has 100 hull and 100 shields. That is unlikely since most ships have in fact more hull then shields but lets just assume its 100 / 100.
If you have a 40% chance to bypass shields and do 1 damage per hit then after 100 hits the enemy will have 60 hull and 40 shields left.
After a few more hits the hull and the shields both will go down until the shields are depleted and then, later, the hull gives up.

The point is: Since the enemy ship will lose all its shields before dying anyway the shield penetration simply makes no sense. It would die just as fast with no shield penetration at all.
It is only useful in 100% missile fleets and with enemies that have a lot more shields then hull.

I humbly disagree Megavolt.

I don't disagree with the numbers. I disagree with your opinion on the validity of pursuing the tech and when it is applicable in battle.

If I have a balanced fleet consisting of heavy cruisers, assailants, and carriers, the cruisers will work on the shields while the assailants and bombers do a 60/40 (in your example) shield/hull mix and the cruisers doing 100% shield damage. Since most of the ships are balanced that way with shields/hull points, you essentially maximize the damage output of your fleet so that you destroy the ship in a parallel manner instead of a sequential order (shields then hull).

A parallel attack can be beneficial against the Advent since they are very well adapt at replenishing their shields. If you play against a good human player, they will be able to consistently replenish the shields effectively sending you back to square one (going at the shields then hull) since they replenish their shields and you haven't even scratched their hull.

With phase missiles however, you can keep hitting the one part of their ship they cannot assist repair, the hull.

Eventually you might get their shields down, and then kill their hull. Unless you outnumber them, it will be a close battle if not a loss.

you got to take other factors into account, as in shields can be restored by specific abilities (advent mothership), things like massive shield projection from the guardian and a minor thing how shields regen much faster than hull for caps, so if your doing 70% shield and 30% hull, the amount of regen is like 2.55 instead of 3 however this point is minor.

well this makes sense if advent replenishes shields fast enough, but from what iv seen they dont have any fast shield chargers, only some aoe slow recharging on some cap ships, and this kind of replenishing makes no sense if you focus fire on one target.

"you essentially maximize the damage output of your fleet so that you destroy the ship in a parallel manner instead of a sequential order (shields then hull)."

No,it does not matter in witch manner you do those 200 points of damage, is it first shield , or part shield part hull, in both cases you do 200 damage. You can actually minimize the damage output because you give your enemy the chance to regenerate its hull along with his shields if he has domina subjugators and then he gets twice the regeneration....

It would be usefull if you could first destroy the hull leaving like 50 poin ts of shield intact, but i thik this happens rarely that is it not worth the investement

This can be usefull in some circumstances , if enemy recharges shields fast enough, but that is very rare, and some advent units dont have lots of shields like cruisers, it has something like 1100 hull and 150 shields, actually average shield vs hull ratio in the game is around 70/100 if im not mistaken, not 100/100.

Although i must say i dont do multiplayer and i have not seen any advent AI replenishing his shields fast enough.

The thing about phase missiles is that they can bypass mitigation. Thats what their strenght is.

Lets say you have a ship that does 100 damage a shot and you have a sheild phase chance of 25% and are attacking a ship wich due to other attacks on it has got shield mitigation at 50%.

Your ship will have 3 out of every 4 attacks hit the shield and do 50 damage (100 -50% mitigation) and have 1 out of every 4 attacks do 100 damage.

This means that it will do 250 damage in 4 shots as opposed to 200 damage done by the same ship with 0% phase chance.

So when attacking a ship with 50% mitigation x% phase chance = x% damage increese.

This guy has the right idea.

Focused fire on shields is inefficient.

Thanks to mitigation, you're wasting a huge amount of damage when you take down those shields through massive damage. With maxed out phase missiles, you don't have to force fire on single units to kill them.

Since no one has mentioned it yet, try killing a high level capship group with two dunovs in it. You can do it with phase missiles just fine, but those dunovs can negate a few hundred fleet points in damage without even trying.

Phase missiles would make sense if they can pass damage mitigation, but can anyone actually confirm that this is the case? Remember that damage mitigation is effective even when shields are down (they use "emergency generators" or somesuch to keep mitigating damage to the hull.)

Phase missiles make focus fire worth it.

A ship allready has a base shield mitigation of 15% and just 2 ships fireing at it will easily increase it to 25-30%. So it doesent take a huge amount of ships to get mitigation to high levels.

So unless u can make sure that no enemy ship is targeted by more then 1-2 of your units then focus fire is not such a bad ideea when you have phase missiles.

And against the advent, the shield recharge ability is a LOT more powerfull when it restores 10 frigates being attacked by 10 dps then 1 frigate being attacked by 100dps.

Yea, its not exactly that great as everyone makes it out do be just like the topic creator said. No ship has 70% more shields than hulls.

But as a guy above me said, phase missles bypass shield mitigation when they work. So they do increase your damage somewhat. Not so much when the ship first takes damage and is only sitting at 15% mitigation, but works great when the ship has taken enough damage for mitigation to hit 60% or more.

There is another pro and con to phase missles. If the enemy shields are being repaired, but not its hulls, phase missles will kill it even quicker. But, if the enemy hulls are being repaired(and they have the hull research upgrade), phase missles will kill even slower(vasari utility cruisers have an ability that helps phase missles counterbalance that, though).

According to the manual mitigation also works when the shields are down! damage to the hulls is STILL mitigated by shield mitigation.

This means there is absolutely no mitigation benefit unless it specifically bypasses mitigation and doesn't say so.

The only instance where I can think will be useful is when fighting an enemy capital ship with superior forces and it keeps on escaping.

It takes the exact same time to kill the opponent regardless of shield bypass, but if the enemy escapes halfway through the battle then he is more severely damaged if you had shield penetration, and will take much longer to heal.
Shields also regenerate during battle faster then armor, but I am not sure how that impacts things. (I can see it doing both bad and good things...)

Lets say a 3000/3000 capital ship escapes after taking 2000 damage. If you had no penetration it escaped with 3000/1000 left and will heal in 30 or so seconds to full power.
If you have 30% penetration then it is at 2400/1600. It's shields will recover in 30 seconds. But the armor will take several minutes to heal...

So lets say it intercepted again... and takes another 2000 damage before escaping. With no penetration it is simply again at 3000/1000... and will very quickly recover.
With shield penetration it had a little time to heal and is now at 2600/3000 (assuming just enough time to heal about 200 hull, it could be less or more). It will escape with 2000/1600...

Thus slowly over time it whittle away more health off of escaping capital ships... This can be useful... whittle away at the enemy capital strength, and then attack his homeworld... He will most likely recall his capital ships and you will have a much easier time to pop them and escape/finish him off due to them being already damaged...
I am not sure if this benefit is realistic marginal or significant... I haven't play tested enough.

Ofcourse, the enemy's research also matters... if the enemy maxed out their hull bonuses but didnt research shields it matters little, but if the enemy maxed out shields but didn't touch hull then it will be more effective.

It's impossible to know if this interpretation is correct, unless someone peeks into the data files or tests it extensively. Phase missiles might negate mitigation too, for all we know. In any case, they're next to worthless if they DON'T bypass mitigation, and well worth researching if they DO bypass mitigation. Would be kinda nice to know for sure...

Yes the second ship do 200 damage pher 4 missles ... untill it depletes the shields and then it will hit the hull and do full damage pher missle or 400 pher 4 missles. The first ship will still have to deal with shields and will still do 250 damage pher 4 missles...

Phase missles bypassing shields can be usefull but i dont think the investement is worth it

would you rather have the ability to do some damage to the hull before you destroy the shields, or would you just rather have 20% more damage and kill that target 20% faster.

and focusing targets is always much more effective especcially if you have slow regeneration like shields do.

Gave it a quick test. 10 Assailants took about 40 seconds to kill a lone Garda Flak Frigate without phase missiles, with 30% phase missiles it took 24 seconds. (The Flak's damage mitigation quickly ramped to 57% in both cases.) Right now I'd say that Phase Missiles indeed defeat damage mitigation, which makes sense.

That's their main selling point, and makes them pretty much equally useful against all races.

The point of it is, When the shields are taken out by your other ships, the hull is already damaged so the other ships can take it out faster.

Nope, you didn't get it. Phase missiles are basically a damage increase when focus firing. Poster #9 has the right idea.

I apparently don't understand the idea of shield mitigation. I *do* understand that it mitigates a certain amount of damage coming in. What I don't understand what this has to do with focus firing, how the shield mitigation ramps up to high levels, etc. Can someone explain this in more detail?

Thanks.

the other way around... damage increase for UNFOCUSED firing... in a 20 vs 20 battle if ships are randomly attacking without focusing their fire then each individual ship has time to recharge its shields... While with phasing they take direct hull damage.

If everyone focuses on one ship then the shield charging is insignificant and it takes about the same amount of damage either way. The longer the battle lasts, the more effective it is. Thats why escaping enemies are the ultimate effectiveness with it, that "battle" lasts the longest.

That is unless they bypass mitigating, if they bypass mitigation then they are always useful...

Wrong. Sorry, but that's flat out wrong. Perhaps it's a math error, missiles do more damage to hull unless I'm mistaken, but with maxed phasing missiles my fleets drop enemy ships long before their shields drop, Advent in particular but also TEC. My fleets were built from phase gates so they're far from 100% missile. Math < Actual gameplay, and in actual gameplay phase missiles are awesome.

You're probably using subverter cruisers, which tack 25% shield penetration to everything.

Shield mitigation is an anti-focus firing measure. As ships take damage, their mitigation % increases until it hits a cap. This percentage is reduced from all incoming damage, regardless of the status of shields (a ship with collapsed shields still benefit from mitigation - in this sense the name is a bit misleading.)



Yeah, phase missiles bypass mitigation.



You're right in a sense - when phase missiles bypass shields they also bypass damage mitigation, doing relatively more hull damage. This can probably result in ships dropping before their shields fail, especially against units with strong shields when compared to the hull.