Mitigation seems to be instant... in other words... I don’t think the first wave of attacks sneaks through at 15% mitigation... Kodiaks (with some health research) can survive a lv 1 Big Red Button... they have about 2000 hp+shield... at 15% mitigation... the blast should completely kablooie them... but they survive with red hp and have their mitigation at 57%.

Thought I would throw that out there.

It also seems that shield mitigation is determined by damage received before mitigation is factored in.

If this is true... it is ridiculously silly.... a unit that does 12 dps would do much more damage than a unit that did say... 13 or 14 or 15... because the 12 dps unit would deal 10 and change damage to the other guy, while the 13, 14, and 15 would start off doing more... but as shield mitigation climbs... it would begin to do less and less so that when the enemy is at 57% mitigation... its doing 6-7ish dps... about half of what the 12 dps unit is doing... ignoring armor, damage charts, and all that fun stuff... everything else equal... the 12 dps unit would win...

This reverse curve is silly. (I think this was shown in the illums are fubar thread?)

If the only thing that was changed was so that the shield mitigation was increased by the damage that made it past the shield mitigation... Instead of 12.4 being 15%, and 12.6 climbing to max,... you would have a lovely curve* between incoming dps of 13ish at 15% mitigation... and 29 pre-mitigation incoming dps at 57%... and for 66% mitigation... it would take 37.5 incoming pre-mitigation dps to maintain 66% mitigation, for capital ships.

The one problem with this ^^ is that it is perfectly flat... our "lovely curve" is flat. At least we don’t have a negative curve anymore... it’s an improvement... (and if (theoretically) we lifted the mitigation cap... no unit... after stabilizing its shield mitigation... would ever take more than 12.5 dps.... while in the current system units would be taking less than 12.5, or 0 dps at 100% mitigation)  but not there yet.

If we then made it so that the amount shield mitigation was reduced per second was dependant on the current shield mitigation... (In other words, higher shield mitigation means it would attempt to go down faster)... lets say for ever 10% mitigation, the mitigation goes down 1% per second. (Instead of 1.25% per second regardless of current mitigation)...

So... just for ease of calculation...

In order to maintain a shield mitigation of 25%, it would take 25 post mitigation dps... or 33.33 pre-mitigation dps.

In order to maintain a shield mitigation of 50%, it would require 50 post-mitigation dps... or 100 pre-mitigation damage dealt per second to maintain 50% mitigation...

In order to maintain a 75% mitigation, it would take 75 post-mitigation dps... or 300 pre-mitigation dps...

HEY! Look at that! A nice curve! it takes an increasing damage per second to maintain a higher shield mitigation... from only 33 damage required for 25%, for (for, perhaps a few lucky advent caps in the current system) 300 dps required to maintain a 75% shield mitigation... but... when you think about it... and due to obvious numbers you should see this easily... as shield mitigation climbs... the increase in damage is linear...

(think of what would be needed for 90% mitigation... 900 damage per second would be reduced to 90 damage per second... and now think 95%... 1900 dps would be reduced to 95 damage... for 99%... 9900 damage would be reduced to 99dps... while these figures are ridiculous... but it shows how linear the damage is.., a linear increase for an exponential increase is damage is close to what we want... but not quite.)

Our curve is linear... which is better than flat, which is better than a reverse curve... so we are headed in the right direction! Some may be like... those wacked off numbers are not even possible, mitigation is capped remember? And you would be right. that system I laid out would defiantly work to reduce focus fire... it would take 132.5 dps to max frigate shield mitigation at 57%, dealing 57 dps...  that same 132.5 dps, spread between 5 targets would do about 26.5 pre-mitigation dps, or which would peak the shield mitigation at 21% or so at the 5 targets, dealing 21 post-mitigation dps to each target... or 105 dps... almost double what firing at one target would do... (in the current system, spreading that 132.5 dps between 5 targets would max shield mitigation on all of them, and do... 11.4 dps or so to all of them... or 57 total damage per second... the exact same that focus firing would do... so while 21 dps doesn’t seem like much, it is an improvement...)

Now of course, the next step... is to try to make the curve actually curvy... take the system above... and instead of

Shield mitigation % = current + post-mitigation incoming dps/10 - current mitigation%/10

Now there are 2 options I see here... one is:

Shield mitigation % = current + post-mitigation incoming dps/10 - (current mitigation%/10)^(a small number)

it doesn’t have to be big... an exponent of 1.5 would mean that 110 or so post-mitigation damage per second would be required for 50% mitigation... which is probably a bit too high... but you get the idea... and the hard shield mitigation caps could be removed, and the differences between the capital ships and the frigates would be the exponent... in other words.. Give capital ships an exponent of 1.3 and frigates one of 1.4 would cause capital ships to have a higher mitigation for the same dps a frigate would receive... This idea has merit, and was my original thought... feel free to toy with it.

Option 2:

Shield mitigation % = current + post-mitigation incoming dps/10 - (current mitigation%/10) - (1+(current mitigation%-OLD MAX)/10)^2

Basically... the linear system above... but instead of hard caps the current mitigation is... they become soft caps... with the current equation above... 

A frigate at 57% mitigation would be absorbing 132.5 dps, mitigating 57%, and would be dealt 57 to its shields/hull.

A frigate at 67% mitigation would be absorbing 324.24 dps, mitigating 67% and would be dealt 107 to its shields/hull per second... (For ~3times the damage thrown, the damage done doubled)

A frigate that you really really want screwed NOW... at 77% mitigation, would be absorbing 726 dps, mitigating 77%, and would be dealt 167 damage per second. (For 2x the damage dealt at 67%, the damage increased by 50%)

A frigate that is... dead? At 87% mitigation... would be absorbing 1900 damage per second, mitigating 87%, and would be dealt 247 damage per second...  (For 2.6x the damage at dealt at 77%, the damage done would go up by ~50%)

As you can see... a number around 2ish would work great for this role... and you can see how increased focus fire gives diminished returns...

Under this system... between 0 and 132 pre-mitigation dps dealt... the damage done would increase in such a way that things dealt damage would have a lower mitigation than the current system... and therefore would be dealt MORE damage than currently, and so spreading out your fire so that each ship receives a raw damage amount in this range would be very effective, and increase the total damage output of your fleet... however... at 132.5, raw dps (after the shield mitigation had stabilized) the damage you would be dealing would be exactly the same as currently... 57 post mitigation damage done to frigates.... however... if you decide to focus more fire than that on a single target... shield mitigation will continue to rise (although, at slowing rate) and your damage dealt will slowly become less efficient.

Making that cobalt die in ~10 seconds instead of ~20 (at 57 dps) would take 3 times the force, and killing it in ~6 seconds would take ~6 times the force, and killing it in ~4 seconds would take ~15 times the force. (As opposed to 5 times the force under the current system)

In this way... focus firing is discouraged. Attempting to focus fire on the enemy capital ship would mean that the overall damage you deal is significantly reduced compared to if you tried to spread your fire among the enemies’ frigates.  Each ship you tell to fire on a single target would increase the damage done to that target per second, but the damage done goes up more slowly as the number of ships dealing damage on the target increases. 

Note: While I tried to pick numbers that might make a nice balance... I have not considered everything... If you can... try to imagine the idea... not so much the numbers.  I also expect some of you to misunderstand what i have written... so while I really want your all's thoughts and ideas... just check you didnt skip over the middle bits or something.

I really should make another thread for this... heh.

I think caps are fine, i dont know why people cant live with them not being all powerful.

Though I must admit it would be nice if they were a little less suseptable to focused fire. In early game with early techs they serve brilliantly at drawing fire from smaller ships whilst lending their own massive firepower to the fight but later on the combined weopon techs combined with the larger fleet numbers means that so much firepower can be brought to bear on a single target that a capship can barely hold on for half the time so I beleive maybe a few upgrades for capships should be available later on, like increased shield mitigation or secial cap ship armor, stuff like that just to keep the cap ships in line with everything else.

Beyond that the best people can do is change tactics as the game progresses. Like for example I start by using the cap ships  to draw fire from the smaller ships but later on, as flets get more advanced, i find myself using the smaller ships to draw fire from the cap ships or using several capships in order to keep things even.