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.

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.

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

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

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 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!

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.

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.

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) .