Isn't the Assailant missile upgrade useless?

Shield mitigation. I don't know how exactly the mechanics of it work though, but the upgrades are beneficial.

But it also applys to cap ships, and the future missle upgrades increase the chances of it penitrating.

It can be particularly tough on Advent fleets.

I've often wondered that.

You get a small about of Hull HP come off but not really anymore than hey can regenerate. You still have to remove all their shields anyway.

It's not a small amount.. math's been done, and the damage boost from the phase missile tech rivals that from the generic +% damage techs. Phase missiles bypass all shield mitigation, which means they do full damage to the hull 30% of the time. They are very good when fighting shield-tanked Advent fleets with Motherships and Guardians.

Better yet, Vasari bombers actually use phase missiles, so they benefit from the tech as well - it's not just the Assailants and Capitals

What?!?!?! The phase missiles are what makes the Vasari fleet something to be feared. I love those things. No cap is safe, especially with the space whale by their side. Just shoot a nano thingy at them, then shoot the gravity bomb before the cap tries to phase jump out, and bam, no more enemy cap. What is truely amazing about these things is that contrary to one of the above posts, the ship will die once the HP goes to zero even though the shields are probably still up. As others have pointed out, it bypasses shield mitiagtion as well (which can get upwards of 50%).

In summary: Phase missiles rule; it's one of the main reasons to play Vasari.

They also have a support cruiser that increases phase missile chance by 25% was it? Which gives them a 55% chance to penetrate and do full damage. Hard to argue with that

Bypassing shield mitigaiton is extremely useful. To give you an idea, I'd say as a ship is targeted, it's mitigation climbs from 15% to 57%.

Since it climbs so fast and really the ship spends most of its time while it's being targeted at 57% shield mitigaiton, meaning any missile that can get by is a huge boost to your damage output.

Consider if you had 10 missiles that did 10 damage.

Against a target with 57% shield mitigation, you'd do 43 damage, or 4.3 damage per missile. If you had +10% phase missiles (both tier 1 techs), then that means 9 missiles do 4.3 damage, one does 10. That's a net of 9*4.3+10, or 48.7 damage. That's a 13.25% damage boost. Now, that's balanced out by the fact that some of your phase missiles penetrate shield mitigation when its rising from 15%.

Overall, yeah, they're an increase in damage. The higher the shield mitigation on a target, the more you're getting out of the phase missiles. That's why capital ships make ideal targets. Highest shield mitigation in the game. Somewhere around 70% if i'm not mistaken? Please correct me. I don't think that's right. TO be honest, I've never bothered to look, I just know it's higher.

Best thing you'll ever see is when an Advent Mothership is firing shield regeneration and you're shooting at it with phase missiles and the nanite bomb. The hull keeps lowering, shields keep rising, and kaboom. Ship dies with 1000 shield left.

Let me see if I'm hearing you guys: there is something called shield mitigation, which is different from shields, and the Assailant's ability to sometimes bypass shield mitigation makes it a more efficient damage-dealer?

I know the upgrade probably does something (otherwise it would be incredibly dumb), I just want to understand how the game mechanics work. It seems weird to have so many "health" concepts (shields, shield mitigation, hull, armor...) in one game.

Amish- "I'd say as a ship is targeted, it's mitigation climbs from 15% to 57%." The "I'd say" in this sentence is confusing me. Is this an actual figure, or are you guesstimating 57%? That would mean that in general ships do less than half damage. Really?

Shields and hull are pretty straightforward.

Shield mitigation takes a shot that hits while shields are up and then removes that percentage of the damage. Damage-(Damage*Shield Mitigation)

Armor is essentially equal to a boost in the hull of a certain percentage. (I don't remember what exactly.) It's a sizable boost, and high numbers can make the make the hull last up to twice as long if I remember correctly.

Sorry Procumbo, I wasn't trying to be vague.

I was referring to the most common target: non capital ships. All ships have base shield mitigation 15%. That's what it starts at for every ship. For all non-capital ships, the mitigation maxes out at 57%.

For capital ships, it's higher, I've just never bothered to check how much higher. I think it's 70%, but don't hold me to that.

The faster you do damage to a target, the quicker its shield mitigation climbs.

Shield mitigation itself is different from hull points and shield points. Shield mitigation is a multiplier that is applied to the damage being done to a ship. It's a reduction in all cases. This is why having an entire fleet target one ship is not recommended in SOME cases. So much of your damage is negated it could be better used elsewhere.

Whats realy cool is when you kill a level ten cap ship with just strick craft and bombers after you purchesed all of the missle up garades for the vassari. Best explosion ever. When you get like 50 of them they just sworm things, there unstopable.

I didn't realize the shield mitigation is variable. I pretty much always target-fire a single ship with my whole fleet, but maybe that's actually wrong.

Kitkun- "Shield mitigation takes a shot that hits while shields are up and then removes that percentage of the damage." The "Training Manual" that comes with the game seems to say that mitigation works even when shields are down: "Once the primary shield has failed, emergency generators are brought online to maintain this last line of defense throughout the armor of the hull" (p. 45).

So really, "shield mitigation" is kind of a misleading name for something that has nothing to do with "shields." It's actually a game mechanic that universally reduces damage dealt to ships, but to a greater degree the faster they're being damaged. If you took away the variability, it would be the same as reducing all weapons damage by a flat rate - in other words, irrelevant. All of which makes me wonder why the developers included this concept in the game. As far as I can tell, it has two main effects: 1. Discourage target-firing a single ship with your whole fleet. This tactic is often mandatory in RTS games, because by focusing on a single target you kill it quickly, stopping it from dealing damage, and don't allow damaged units to retreat and repair. But punishing a high damage rate counteracts the inherent advantages of going all-out at one target. 2. Give the weaker side an edge in imbalanced fights. It won't allow the weaker fleet to win, but it will allow it to survive longer.

In fact, these two factors fit right in with Sins' philosophy contrasted to other RTSs: slower and less micro-intensive (and therefore, arguably, more strategy-intensive and grander, more epic).

Massed Phase Missles are so disgusting. Playing in the beta i have started to play Advent and i was AMAZED how long it took me to kill a lvl 10 Dunov Battle cruiser. I have blown lvl 10 ships (except a Kol with Adaptive Force Field) with massed phase missles without a thought but when i sat there trying to pound through that Dunov's shields i was amazed how long that thing survived.

SHield mitagation and the way it is done it to ensure that you just don't Focus fire you opponent in such a way that would make Cap ships worthless. That being said Vasari players whom are FF with Phase Missles can FF very effectively until they meet a Kol with Adaptive Force fields.

Rename shield mitigation to shield frequency rotation or so. Then everybody who ever watched an episode of Star Trek will know what it's supposed to do

now it make perfect since. Oh heritor i dont play the beta, and i had like 25/25 fighters and bombers.

Its the same as nothing changed except now we get more fighters/bombers per Lanurak. Which means we kill even faster as we have MORE PHASE MISSLES then ever.

It has everything to do with shields as it is only applied to a shot that hits the shield. Once shields are down or a phase missile gets by, shield mitigation doesn't apply.

Actually, once shields are down mitigation still applies to hull damage. This was a change from beta to final. The only way to bypass shield mitigation is with phase missiles

Really? Then the explanation I read was real old... and I never noticed that mitigation didn't drop once shields are down... :NOTSURE:

So why keep calling it shield mitigation?

Edit: To answer my own question, perhaps it's simply two kinds of shields?

The technobabble explanation from the manual. I know it's a fact that mitigation is in effect shields up or down, but this news that phase missiles completely bypass mitigation was new to me. I remember the arguments about it months ago and didn't realize a conclusion was finally drawn. Last I had heard, it was assumed phase missiles simply traveled through the shield, impacted on the hull and had their damage reduced by X%. So have phase missiles really been confirmed to negate mitigation entirely, Annatar, et al?

Yeah I think so. I think this is the real beauty to phase missiles. Otherwise, as the original poster pointed out, you really don't pop that many ships without taking out shields. At least not in my experience, and not without nano-destabilizer. With phase missiles bypassing mitigation you may still have to knock down the shields but sometimes you are getting through 100% damage (at least prior to armor entering the picture) with the shields up and down (due to mitigation still being present).

Fully upgraded phase missiles are awesome, especially coupled with subverteers.

When you have your RA set up, cash and ressources are here only to build subverteers, and tech/planetary improvement. So you can max out your military techs. Don't forget to grab the special abilities for every ship btw in order to improve the effiency of your RA's ships. But that's off topic

Upgraded phase missiles are neat as said before for targetting a cap ship and make it retreat or even destroy it if his owner doesn't pay attention. It is also useful to help take out HC quickier.

Upgraded phase misisles makes that "oldie" assaillant still an interessting unit in late game warfare.

Yep. But I couldn't point you to a thread, since it was ages ago

i think shield mitigation mostly mean shield focus. the more ships attack one ship the more the mitigation shield (seprate from acctual shields) can focus on defending the general areas as in if you have one gun firing, you cant realy predict where it will land, but with several, you can triangulate (find general area) were they are most trying to hit. does this make sense to anyone?