For those who dont know how mitigation works.

Mitigation is a percentage of damage that is reduced from the attack. For example: 20 mitigation means that an attack that does 100 damage will do 100-20%=80 damage.

The base mitigation level of each ship is 15, it is never lower then this (except with some special abilitis). Mitigation increeses every time someone shoots at a ship, but it decreases over time. So the more ships you have shooting at another ship the biger the mitigation of that ship will get. It does have a maximum limit of 60.

Also mitigation is always on for the shield and for the hull, even if sheilds are DOWN.

Phase missiles dropping caps well before their shield is out is not a theory, but a fact. Especially if the capital has shield recharging specials.

Just had a game where i did drop a handful of advent caps with a fleet composed of assailants, enforcers and transporters packed with bombers. Bombers also get the phase upgrades, or so it seems.

Anyway, maxed out missile branch in the research tree can mean the difference between winning and losing for a vasari, especially considering the insane command costs of their ships. I think advent can pump out 50% more illuminati for the same command cost than a vasari can build assailants.. 6 pts vs 4 or so if im not mistaken.

So yea, awesome tech but not just that, its an absolute necessity to have a fighting chance against other races.

Hm mathematically it should not be possible.Perhaps hull has damage mittigation also and missles bypass that to..

can you tell me approximately how much of shield points did the cap ships have before they went down?

It mostly depends on the scenario.. i have the replay but its a few hours into it and i dont have time to fastforward there at the moment.

Anyway, from the manual it seems to be clear that hull also has damage mitigation, through emergency backup generators that kick in once the shield is gone. The hull damage mitigation however is fixed at the level where the shields collapsed, so if its 50% then the hull will have that much as well.. now since every now and then the shield recharges, you can still get mitigation up high if you start focus fire on a ship that has hull only..

anyway, phase missiles bypassing shields and damage mitigation can kill the hull of a cap ship before the shields are gone. for normal ships they usually kill the shields sooner, but i've seen frigs with some shields and barely any structure already after my bombers had their way with them

remember.. it is chance based, so very well possible to get 4 out of 4 shots hitting the hull directly completely bypassing shield / damage mitigation, despite of it being 40% only.

On average tho things will even out themselves.

hmm checked the replay and there was only one battle when a battleship actually went down seemingly with some shields intact. At the very end two advent lvl1 battelships. One had like 302 hull left after its shields were gone (that is from full hull/shield, with fully researched phasic tech) and the other went down from one volley with about 300 shields and 500 hull left.

Some otehr stats.

Imperia (blue) - 2519/2519 | 2316/2316
(1671/2519 hull left when shields fail with 2 phase research)
Malevesant (blue) - 2631/2633 | 2048/2316 DEAD 0 sh left
(2375/2840 hull left when shield fail with 2 phase research)
Immaculata (blue) - 2683/2737 | 1820/2532 DEAD 0 sh left
(2296/2737 hull left when shiels fail with 2 phase research)

TDN Ithica (red) - 3562/3562 | 1075/1182
(2302/3562 hull left when shield fail with maxed research)
TDN Karamazov (red) - 3500/3500 | 1237/1237
(2780/3500 hull left when shield fail with maxed research)

Valouria (blue) - 2530/2530 | 2100/2100
(has 302 hull left when shields fail)
Furia (blue) - 1980/2530 | 1706/2100
(dies from one volley of missiles when it has like 300 shields and 500 hull left.)

I think those number pretty much speak for themselves.. even against tec which has a ridiculously low shield and decent armor, you get about as much hull damage (or more)in, than you get shield damage at the same time.

In the case of an advent player, the ratio is a lot more scary. Not to mention, that these were low level caps and were not really usign any shield enhancing specials. Plus my fleets were rather mixed, so while i had more than enough assailants and bombers, i also had quite a few conventional weapons that only did shield damage to these targets (like 1 enforcer for every 4 assailant i had)

by the way, there was one tec BS that kept running long enough for his shields to recharge, so that when i cornered it it had like 500 hull and 800 shields. I think that went down with some shields intact, but it was a one volley kill basically so i can't be sure.

Ok from what i can see this tech upgrade is not good because it kills targets with some shields on, but rather because it bypasses 50% damage mitigation and does full damage 30% of the time witch is around average 15% damage increase.

and in some cases it can help more then pure 15% damage increase like when enemy has good shield regen,or if you get very lucky.

So it is worth the resarch

It seems to me the phase missiles are all sorts of goodness, especially against advent. Advent caps are usually 2 hull per 3 shield, with a starting ship a little more than 2000/3000. If you have full phase (30%?) plus the special vasari ship that gives the 20% bonus you end up with roughly 50% for missiles (unless those don't stack, awkward...). If it's half to shields, half to hull, you need to do 4k (2k to hull, 2k to shield to make up the other 50%) damage, which is 1k less than you would have to do if you didn't have phase. As long as the hull is weaker than the shields, you're coming out ahead, otherwise you're coming out about the same as if you didn't have it.

If phased missiles aren't affected by mitigation, there doesn't seem to be a question. When those shields get up to 51% mitigation, phased missiles are doing a bit more than twice the damage than their unphased cousins. You'll still probably work through the shields before destroying, but you are doing more damage over time. That's assuming phased missiles don't take mitigation though.

Okay for those not fond of math like me (not saying that I don't get the theory, I just prefer practical examples), just make a simple test with a friend. 3 Prognator Motherships, 5 Iconus guardians and than some random targets. Try it wihout phase missiles and with them. You'll notice one hell of a large difference And thats all you basicly need to know.
Important note though... don't use autocast for the shield refill ability of the Mothership. They are a bit... brainless sometimes

heh "no, not the light frigate, the battlecruiser you stupid mothership!"

This thread is getting stupid because quite a few people do not understand the idea of hull damage mitigation that kicks in when the shields fail. Its not that "math" can't solve it. Its that the models people are using do not accurately represent the game mechanics.


Take technical details that most people don't know about and/or aren't interested in, add a forum conversation where most people don't bother to truly read replies and have coherent conversations... and what do you get? this thread



In summery, don't waste your time running calculations at this point because its obvious that they do not contain all relevant information, run in game tests. Then try to figure out why the calculations are wrong.

I'm not sure that's the case. Personally, I think that phase missiles ignore mitigation (see below).

But even if they don't, the maths examples people have given aren't taking into account regeneration of shields and hulls.

Shields regenerate quicker than hulls, and continue to regenerate even once they're knocked down. This alters the effective DPS you inflict. A (purely hypothetical in order to demonstrate what I mean) example:

Suppose the target ship has 100 shields and 100 hull. Say it regenerates shields at a rate of 5 DPS, and hull at a rate of 2 DPS.

If you attack with a ship with 10 DPS and no phasing, it'll take:

20 seconds to take down the shields (10 DPS damage - 5 DPS shield regen = 5 DPS done, 100 shields / 5 DPS = 20 seconds)

33.3 seconds to take down the hull (10 DPS damage - 5 DPS shield regen - 2 DPS hull regen = 3 DPS done, 100 hull / 3 DPS = 33.3 seconds)

Total: 53.3 seconds.

If you attack with the same 10 DPS ship, this time with 40% phasing, it'll take:

100 seconds to take down the shields (60% of 10 DPS is 6 DPS to shields. 6 DPS damage - 5 DPS shield regen = 1 DPS done, 100 shields / 1 DPS = 100 seconds)

50 seconds to take down the hull (40% of 10 DPS is 4 DPS that ignores shields. 4 DPS damage - 2 DPS hull regen = 2 DPS done, 100 hull / 2 DPS = 50 seconds)

Total: 50 seconds to destroy the ship (which will still have half shields at the time).

So, even if phase missiles don't ignore mitigation, they can still be more effective than normal weapons.


Mitigation happens whether or not a ship has shields left. This is explained in the manual, and quite clear if you watch the info cards of heavily damaged ships - they still show mitigation even when the shields are down.

As mentioned above, I'm of the opinion that phase missiles bypass mitigation when they successfully 'phase', but even if they don't, they can be more effective than non-phasing weapons.

I like to play Vasari a lot and I have to say that phase missile tech is one of the first things i try to max out along with getting subverters and the heavy cruisers. In multi player games I like to put this exact fleet together to go cap ship hunting.

Two carriers with nothing but fighters and repair cloud upgrades
A couple of subverters
A decent line of Heavy Cruisers to act as meat shields
and a WHOLE MESS of Assailants

The key with how I use this force is to coordinate with my partner, because if someone is focusing on this fleet and micro'ing it doesn't work well. Usually what i do is scout out a target and get my fleet into position. My partner goes all out on his front, pretty much dropping all he had into a gravity well and launching a pitched battle. I then phase into my target with my considerably smaller fleet and sit on the edge of the well. Line up the Cruisers in front and mass the Assailants and subverters around the carriers. The fighters clear up any bombers they have and then work on their long range missiles. The Cruisers sit in front and absorb the brunt of the attack, their regeneration and healing properties make them excel at this job. The Assailants all focus fire on the cap ships, as soon as they go down i phase out and usually loose between 2-3 cruisers and maybe 4-5 assailants in return for usually two cap ships (i never hunt a group that includes more that two cap ships).

The key to this whole strategy is the perception of how long a cap ship will last, in a hot and heavy multi player if someone jumps into a planet that has two cap ships, most players think in their head, well, hell, i have a minute or two to micro out this bigger battle and then I will take care of that, my caps have to last a minute or two.

But that's not the case, Assailants that are fully maxed with subverters take down cap ships FAST, there is nothing quite as enjoyable as watching a cap ship implode like an empty beer can while they still have 1000 points in their shields. Usually right about when i bug out i get a giant "WTF happened to my Cap ships here?" message.

This strategy only works on a distracted human opponent who isn't micro'ing the target, but it is flawless when executed correctly, I am 8/8 on assassinating cap ships using this.

In short, phase missile tech FTW!

why missiles hitting the hull through phasing ignore shield migation even based on the manual:

if anyone bothered reading the manual correctly and actually think its correct (it has a few mistakes), lets read it properly:



please note whats highlighted, so if you are taking the manual as though its correct, then phase missiles do pass any shield migation, since the main shield has not failed.

Im sure the game mechanics dont actually check if the main shield has failed, but the amount of shield regened at shield 0 is what they are referring to as the emergency migation (even though it doesnt absorb all damage being dealt to the target, since it will hit 0 again and still take damage), which means nothing about missiles hitting the hull.

also theres been a few tests whereby shields didn't impact the missiles hitting the hull and passing the shields.

go and test it yourself, get a friend to make 1 kol, you make 10 assailant, try 0% and then 30%, check the time it takes

That test won't prove much, because even if phase missiles don't ignore mitigation, the fact that shields constantly regenerate much faster than hull means you'll likely destroy the ship before the shields go down, making the kill take less time.

Okay, here it is, greatly simplified for non math folks.

30% phasing against a 60% mitigation target is 1.45 times normal damage, on average.
(60% is the normal max)

30% phasing against a 70% mitigation target is 1.7 times normal damage, on average
(70% is a high level capital ship, or advent units with the culture and shield upgrades)

30% phasing against a 80% mitigation target is 2.2 times normal damage, on average
(80% is a high level advent capital ship with culture and shield upgrades)

So, it's a good upgrade in general, excellent against advent, and incredible against advent capitals

These numbers actually ignore the fact that a ship could die with shields remaining, so the actual multipliers can be even higher than listed above.

if your refering to the test I proposed, whereby you check how long it takes to kill a kol:

most frigates have a 1:1 shield/hull regen, so if you do think the differences in shield regen for a level 1 cap (3 shield per sec and 1 hull per sec; extremely minor factor that would actually benefit the cap taking damage to hull) are a flaw with the test, just use a frigate and a few tests.

Does the Stilakus Subverter's Defeat Shields ability only give Phase Missiles a 25% bonus to shield-negation chance, or does it give all friendlies this bonus? I believe it gives all friendlies this bonus, so a Subverter-Enforcer cruiser combo would be hellishly powerful against the Advent. The Enforcer can take tons of their fire and keep fully repairing itself while the Subverter support allows it's Composite-damage Wave cannons to ignore shields and mitigations 25% of the time and basically tear apart any enemy(Composite weapons get bonuses against all armor types).

Played exclusively as vasari I can say that this is THE weapon tech to max out. Assailants/bombers do sick damage with and you can generally kill caps very fast .Especially true for advent. Once you get subverters mixed in you have immensely powerefull fleet (subverters with 1 upgrade can disable ships on top of providing additional mitgation bypass) .