Vasari shield penetration useless?

two things

1. most ships dont have that kind of shield to hitpoint ratio (advent trends toward more shields than armor, making them prime targets for this weapon)

2. you did not factor in shield mitigation which with ordinary weapons can reduce the damage by 15% (that is base line) or more (up to 75% with a level 10 Advent Capital ship) were as the shield penetration bypasses completely

I have seen many a ship die by the hands of the Phase Missile while still have a good portion of its shields left (after all, shields just surround the ship, the armour/hitpoints are what hold it together)

hm then maybe it is usefull if you have an advent as opponent.

But wouldn't they still be better of with another bonus?

Tec ships looks like very armor focused and vasari still more than shield.

Even though the can be usefull to kill advent caps who got shieldreped/bosted i think the upgrade isn't that great compared to a damagebonus as advent and tec have.

But lets wait for some more comments on this.

Well when the missle bypasses shield it also bypasses the mitigation. That is the key.

What carbon said... the 30% phase missles that bypass the shield do damage that is not reduced to 40% (down to a floor of 15% for advent cap ships with max research in their territory) of the origionall damage.

well the game sets up kinda like that the TEC have many advantages over the Vasari, the Advent have many advantages over the TEC, and the Vasari have many advantages over the Advent

kind of like the rock/paper/scissors game only it runs TEC>Vasari>Advent>TEC

i did run some cals with the Advent Radiance capital

with lvl 10 and all upgrades it have around armor 4030 shield 4615

now i testet again with 100 damage the 30% pierced damage are reduced by armor by around 50% so only 15 damge goes through.

the shield got the rest of the 70% and is again reduced by 70% because of the shield mitigation (i didn't take into account that the mitigation is lower at the beginning because of easy math so this is pro shield!)

so we look at 15 damage at armor while shield is up and 21 damage against the shield with 70% mitigation.

this leads to (i spare you the full list on excel)

220. shoot armor 725 shield -5        here the shield got beaten and the ship is still alive.
235. shoot armor -25 shield 0          here is the point where the ship dies. (rest of the shoots with 100 dam / 2

now the stats without the pierce

154. shoot armor 4025 shield -5
235. shoot armor -25 shield 0

so this looks for me (again) that even with the 70% mitigation direct at the beginning the bonus doesn't have any use

both ships die at exact the same shoot.

i found the armor and shield numbers on a sheat in this forum the correct armor mitigation should be a little higher than 50% and the shield lower than 70% at the beginning.

even if i trust more experienced players the numbers (or better my numbers) tell a different story.

ps: the numbers for absorb are not accurate als i allready said because of easier math (in favore of the phase missle bonus)

I dont think you are getting the phase missile damage vs shield mitigation factored right, phase missile damage bypasses or is not affected by shield mitigation
hence:

at 100 damage

regular damage verse shield mitigation of 60% will only apply 40 damage

phase damage verses shield mitigation of 60% will apply 40 damage plus 30 damage directly to hull

leading to

regular -116 hits to remove shields plus 101 hits to destroy armor/hitpoints (not factoring in shields being regenerated)

phase missile -116 hits to remove shields and do 3480 points of damage to vessel hull, leaving only 600 hitpoints which are struck for 70 damage total which will take only 9 more hits

so you have 217 hits for regular damage versus 125 hits with phase missiles, mind you armor and early setting of Shield mitigation will shift these numbers slightly (they may even cancel each other out in certain cases) but the overall effect is still in favor of phase missiles

Only the Iluminator has that kind of hp/shield ratio.  That said, I can't really see a flaw with your mathematics so, my guess is simply that your hypothetical situation is so far removed from actual Sins situations that it is producing flawed results.  Also, 1v1 ship battles are truly rare in Sins.

Meh.  Ninja'd by Ryat the Sins mathematician.  Honestly, most of this stuff is just way too numbery for me.  My approach is"X kills Y.  Therefore, X is good.  Spam X."  (Well, not really.  I just try to avoid the numbers and build the stuff which best kills the other guy's stuff.)

hm so the pierced damage is extra?

i calculated

base 100  | 30% goes to 50% absorb armor | 70% stays on 60% absorb shield

15 armor-dam
28 shield-dam

when i understood you right you mean its

base 100 | 100% goes to 60% absorb shield | an "extra" 30% goes to 50% absorb armor

15 armor-dam
40 shield-dam

if that is correct (i will test this) then of course the phase missle is good because it's an "indirect" damagebonus as long as the target have shields (and better if shieldboosting is in the play)

edit: i just testet it and the piercing is not a damagebonus 30% of the shots goes direct to armor and do 100% of there damage there leaving the shield untouched, and the other 70% ot the shots goes 100% to the shield and got mitigated there leaving the armor untouched.

so it looks again not very good for our phasemissle friend

I will concede that your equation is correct, but I refigured the numbers myself and I get 241 hits for phase missile vs 288 hits with out

that is still a wide margin plus I believe the armor was factored wrong and the shield mitigation is rarely at 70% or higher, most of the time it is below 60% which works in favor of the phase missile plus the armor is rarely that high as well

the numbers I got for phase missiles are 220 hits for shields then another 21 to take out the rest of the ship

the numbers I got for regular are 154 hits for shields then another 134 to take out the hull

Phase missiles are, no questions asked, the best weapons upgrade in the game.  Anything with shield bypass properties is awesome.  In battles, mitigation usually hoovers around 60% reduction rate, which means ignoring mitigation means you deal 250% damage.  A 30% chance to deal 250% damage means a 75% overall dps increase.  The other factions get a paltry 30% damage increase, Vasari effectively get a 75% boost.

Most of the time, even with fully upgraded phase missiles, you will not kill a target with its shield points still intact.  The exception is if the enemy is using capital ships with shield regenration abilities, such as the Progenitor or Dunov.  In these cases it's actually extremely common to see ships with very high shields be destroyed. 

I love phase missiles.

I'm sort of new, but with about 10 assailants and a lvl 3/4 egg, i took out an enemy egg equivilent in with relatively full health and about half shields before it could escape.

I believe i upgraded the first phase missile option to the max

I dunno, you be the judge

xSurrealx, I have always noticed exactly what you are talking about.  I almost always see ships die to my phase missles with 0 shields left on them.  The only time I can make a ship die with substantial shield remaining is if I use the "death egg" with the nano dissassembler a few times.  The nano bomb does direct damage to the hull and bypasses shields.  Once you use that weapon a few times you can finish a ship off with phase missles.  But is it worth so many expensive upgrades if you can really only use it in conjunction with the special ability of one capship?

Let's get some real numbers.  Throw the equations away and test this in reality with a friend.  One test with phase missle upgrades, and one without.  Tell us your results.

i will play with a friend against some ais today.

so i have a good chance to mass the vasari misslespammer and look for some results.

as i said i testet it against some ais and against a capital with nearly 1:1 armor-shield and 6 armorpoints it lost at around 90% of the times i tryed (saved befor the fight) all it shields befor it died.

Its all a bit lucky though 1 time i killed it with 1000 shield left so this was very nice result for the phasemissles.

But for the first test i think its save to asume that if the enemy has more armor then shield or very close to it and a higher armor-rating than 6 the phasemissles become pretty obsolete.

Overall i think i can say that phasemissles are good against low armor (absorb) ships with close to 1:1 armor-shield rating
the irony is that the 30% phasemissle upgrades takes a while and until you reached it the enemy will most likely have some armor techs up.

Against small ships as the light frigs or some drone carrier from advent it was also quit usless some time they died befor there shield went to zero but in a larger fleet this doesn't make it up to the ress invested because there are more missles on the way to the ship to kill it anyway.

When i have some more time i will test this in a "fake" 1v1 and build some caps(and level them up to 10) and other stuff to shoot at.
I think most peopel are more interested in the "end-game" balanceing which means phasemissles against full teched and lvl 6-10 caps and the rest of the fleet.

The point is to bypass shield mitigation, which gives you a massive damage boost.  This isn't useless; simply calculate the extra damage you deal by ignoring mitigation and phase missiles are already clearly superior to every other weapons upgrade in the game.  Being able to kill units that still have shields left over is just icing on the cake when it happens.

as you can read i tested it in a game and 90% of the time the units die with no shields left = no benefit from 30% chance to ignore the shield but i will test it against some hightech units and i am pretty sure it just get worse for the missle.

edit: to keep it simple a unit has 2000 armor 2000 shield and dies with no shield left = 4000 damage taken

same unit again 2000 armor 2000 shield dies with 1000 shield left = 3000 damage taken = 1000 damage less needed to kill it if that happens then the phasemissle "buff" is usefull but if the ship dies with 0 shield you still must do 4000 damage to kill it and that means you didn't have any use of the phasemissle.

i do believe darvin knows what he is talking about. and besides, his numbers are simple and easy to understand and add up. yours are complicated and estimated (by your own admission) and clearly don't add up. darvin is saying that it does more damage against the hull, resulting in an increase in dps and a quicker death for your target

edit: in case that wasnt clear, because shield mitigation throws out much of the damage "dealt" to the target, by bypassing mitigation, each shot does more damage. so, even though the same amount of damage is dealt, the target will die faster. if you still dont understand, i suggest reading up on shield mitigation

Also, shield mitigation applies even if the shields are at 0, so the ratio of shields to hull is irrelevant as long as your target has at least some shields (and thus mitigation).

i know how mitigation works and of course you do more damage to the hull by bypassing the shield with the phasemissles but the problem still is that if you kill all the shield befor the ship goes down the phasemissles doesn't helped to kill it.

But as i said i will make a testgame where i can count the time needed to kill a capship with phasemissles 0% and 30%  and i am very sure the time needed will be exact the same.

And i dont understand why it should be so hard to get my point.

if you in my example got the shield to zero befor the ship dies you needed to kill 4000 hp to do so no matter how many shield mitigation or armor mitigation is in the play.

The only way to kill a ship faster is to need to do less damage to kill a ship there is no other way this means the enemy ship must have shield left or all the funky phasemissles that got through befor the shield got down means nothing.

Because without the phaseing the shield is down 30% faster (because all the missles hits the shield) so this 30% missles are just on the hull befor the shield is down nothing more nothing less they dont do more damage.

And if the ship dies with zero hp left on the shield you still "wastet" the shoots to kill the 2000 shield hp with the high mitigation.

go for the test but I used yoiur equations and I got this set 241 hits with phase missiles and 288 hits without phase missiles so I dont see were you are coming from

did you used the 30% "phased" damage as extradamage to the basevalue?

no I did not, I used your equations, were you got your answers I have not been able to reproduce

hm could you send me some more info about your math?

may in a privatmessage because nobody is perfect and maybe i miscalculated something

Your missing the key point to all this....Phase missles bypass mitigation. That mean when they phase the hit for the full damage. And when they dont they are affected by the mitigation. And another key point is this.....