Ok, to understand phase missiles, you have to understand mitigation.

Shield mitigation works like this. for every 10 dps a ship takes per second, it goes up 1%. It maxes out at 57%. It starts at 15%. Whatever the % is, that's how much damage will be negated outright. This is before the damage ever even touches the regular shields or the health & armor.

So, what phase missile teching does is take a certain % of the damage and makes it bypass shield mitigation and go straigt to the hull & armor. It actually works out to an equivalent +X% damage, but with the added addendum that phase missiles can take out capital hsips quicker than anything else out there

By default, assailants don't do any damage to bypass. You up it by 5,10,15,20,25,30 % bypass.

Because of the fact that the Vasari bonus comes against mitigaiton, that means phase missiles are ideal for picking out one target at a time and taking them out. Works GREAT on capital ships.

+1 Karma is appreciated!

What I mean is, phase missiles actually work out to being like an upgrade where you get +5% damage. Phase missiles are especialy good against capital ships because capital ships max out with a higher mitigaiton (75% i think). The higher the mitigation on a target, the more effective phase missiles are.

So when you get (+5% phase missile bypass), it's about the same as buying an upgraded that would get (+5% damage done).

With 30% mitigation bypass, what happens is when a missile hits, 30% of the damage ignores the mitigation shields and just hits the hull and only has to go through armor. The other 70% is done to the Shields, wears them down, and then goes to the hull.

This is also why Phase missiles are great against Advent players. They have high shields, but low health. Shield regen doesn't help advent as much if a Vasari player just bypasses the shields.

Caps get an extra % of mitigation for every level they go up - hence with the increase in armor, shield and HP, they get tougher AND take less damage from an otherwise equal weapon...

My understanding is that for each missile there is an X% chance to bypass mitigation. Hence at 30%, you have a 3 in 10 chance of not wasting damage on shields and only applying it to hull (after armor reduction).

Hence with 30% upgraded phase missiles, it is possible to blow up a cap that still has 1000 shields (I've done it a few time - the cap would need to have it's shields repaired so Advent are my normal enemy when I see this occur).

So quick revive on the conversation at what point do assailents start to improve over ilums?

Early Game

Egg +7-10 Assailents (What Level of Phase Missile, Armor,etc reserach should I be?)

vs

Advent Cap + 7-10 Ilums

Who Wins?

Mid Game

Egg +15-30 Assailents (What Level of Phase Missile, Armor,etc reserach should I be?)

vs

Advent Cap + 15-30 Ilums

Who Wins?

Late Game

Early Game

Egg +50 Assailents (What Level of Phase Missile, Armor,etc reserach should I be?)

vs

Advent Cap + 50 Ilums

Who wins?

Of late, Ive also noticed that most BIG fleets rarely have over 3 caps in them. Is this just a fluke of late, or it because caps get targeted too easily by big fleets (ie 50+ frigs)

In my experiance Assailants mop the floor with Illums 6 ways to sunday. This is because Illums may deal more damage, but its split up. The front laser does 50% and each of the side lasers do 25% of the total. Assailants' 5% phase missile upgrades are equal to a 8% increase in firepower, so at 30% phase and +20% damage upgrades the Assalants deal +58% damage. Combined with more total health and the ability to fire before the Illums even get into range... Yeah, they dont stand a chance. Espically with an Egg doing -6 to the armor of the targeted vessel or a Carrier healing your Assailants.

This is because caps suck compared to an equal amount of ships. Usually. Once they level up they are good to have, but before that they are just sitting ducks. A level 1 battleship isnt worth it when you can get more firepower and hull points out of 50 fleet supply worth of heavy cruisers. But at level 10 that battleship has many abilities and deals a LOT more damage and becomes worth the while. The problem is they die so fast in the later stages of the game that it isnt feasable to build very many because so few will survive to higher levels, and the ones that do are always focused on

Caps dying does have alot to do with the fleet size option, small fleet size caps play a more important role, large fleet size and they become fairly worthless, normal is somewhere in between.