Someone please explain "Shield Mitigation" to me!

I think some Advent ships may have some special abilities that temporarily boost the bejesus out of this figure. SO that may be what your'e encoutering...

however, I too have no idea what it does, or how to improve it. I'm rigt next to you anxiously awaiting a response

Shield mitigation increases when a ship is being shot at. The more its being shot at, the higher is its shield mitigation (to a cap of course, think its 57% base for normal ships and 65% for caps). Advent get techs that increases mitigation, both overall and when they are in their own culture.

Advent definetly seem to be the shield tanker race for sure...

So, lemme see if I understand this right. Shield mitigation goes up as the ship recieves more fire per second, or just more damage to the shields?

Second, the shield mitigation reduces penetration to the hull always, or just when there's a "few points" left as it tries to regenerate?

I don't know if that is right, because even ships that I am not currently targeting have extremely high mitigation rates.

Yeah, so for example on a tiny scale

Your ship has 3.0 shield hp left

Someone fires at you with a weapon that "would" do 3.0 damage, but you have 50% shield mitigation, so it does 50% damage.

There must be some sort of level guage for the mitigation levels, so says - Okay, after you've taken a cumulative set of 500.0 hp damage points to your shield, increase mitigation by 6% or something - Advent at least have a few sheild mit' skills that I've seen, highest I've ever got a capital ship to was 59%...

But to answer your question, the damage mitigation would only affect the shield - Once they penetrated the shield it would be full damage again.

From the manual:

Once the primary shield has failed, emergency generators are brought online to maintain this last line of defense throughout the armor of the hull.

Damage mitigation is always effective regardless of shield status. It's a bit unintuitive, but that's how it is. Vasari phase missiles do negate mitigation whenever they penetrate, though.

I feel so inadaquate.  (:( 

I've noticed that there are a number of subtleties in the game that are not explained but should have been. In the dev journals there is finally an explanation and chart on counters and damage/armor types. Something that should have been in the manual.

Glad I'm not the only one who doesn't understand shield mitigation. I was thinking of making this post myself.

I do understand that the TEC have the best armor. The advent the best shields. And the Vasari the best anti-mitigation/shield tech.

Also how does armor work as well?

armour is like voltron...the more parts you slap on the better it gets

forgot to mention....with better armour....the longer it takes for the same munitions to deal that same bit of damage

in short: the more ships you have focus firing one target, the more damage you waste because of mitigation.

If that is the case, then focus firing is counter productive?

so ...focus firing is bad? As you get diminishing returns on your damage per second or something?

wow, I never thought about it that way before - When I jump into a system I focus fire on everything, too much C&C play!

Shame there isn't a scatter fire/selective targets option, so you can send in a large fleet of ships and let them free-for-all, or at least set the amount of targets they should attack between them...

Fleets actually split their fire up I've noticed. The ships in the fleet don't all focus fire on a target unless you tell them too. Such as selecting the fleet leader and clicking on a target will cause them to focus fire. If you just jump into a system though and leave them alone they will automatically attack their best targets of opportunity.

Noice, it's a shame the game doesn't work on a fear basis.

One thing I don't like is that when i send in a fleet of 4 gazillion battleships, and 1 colony ship - the entire npc fleet will focus fire on my colony ship....instead of the impending death slowly cruising towards them!

Mitigation reduces incoming damage, regardless of whether the shields are still up.

All ships have a base Mitigation of 15%. The more damage per second the ship is taking, the higher the Mitigation rises.

It's a balancing factor, basically, to reduce the effectiveness of focus-firing.

Phase missiles might bypass mitigation when they 'phase', but as far as I know, this has not been confirmed by the devs.

Likewise, to the best of my knowledge, no one knows for sure how Armour works, other than the logical conclusion that more armour is better.

Wait...strategy gamewants to reduce the effectiveness of prioritizing targets manually. W.T.F.

One that wishes to avoid forcing you to micro every single battle.

That said, it doesn't reduce the effectiveness of prioritising targets manually - it reduces the effectiveness of focus firing.

That said, it doesn't reduce the effectiveness of prioritising targets manually - it reduces the effectiveness of focus firing.


-Ok, well I don't see the difference.

Ok I think I'm starting to get this.

lets say 20 ships in my fleet vs 10 ships in opposing force.

having all 20 ships focus fire on ship number 1 of 10 in opfor isn't as effective as having 2 of my ships per target firing on each one of the enemy ships? (I suppose it depends heavily on the situation)

So many smaller fleets making up a task force really is the way to go as you can make that fleet much more effective than a large mob of ships.

So don't focus fire on siege frigs with your light frigs. Distribute your fire solution out more for better damage effectiveness?

According to Gameplay.constants file, it increases hull 5% per 1 armor point:

HullPointPercentageIncreasePerArmorPoint 0.05

Thanks for the info on the armor.