Something along this lines is quite a good idea because it balances Advent specifically against Vasari phase missiles without screwing with other aspects of game balance with TEC.

The +2 / +2 Mitigation benefits might also give a few % of phase missile penetration reduction.  Or there could be another high level shield tech added that reduces phase missile penetration by 5% / 5%.

I think it should be the same tech.  If you're up against phase missiles, an expensive tech that increases your mitigation isn't all that useful, so combining them into one item makes sense.

Just out of curiosity, I'm going to look at a hypothetical case:  base mitigation is 80%, and this upgrade raises it to 84%.  I'm going to look at how this affects both PM-weapons and non-PM weapons.

30% bypass * 100 damage = 30 damage
70% non-bypass * 0.2 (mitigation) * 100 damage = 14 damage
70% non-bypass * 0.16 (mitigation) * 100 damage = 11 damage
100% non-bypass * 0. 2 (mitigation) * 100 damage = 20 damage
100% non-bypass * 0.16 (mitigation) * 100 damage = 16 damage

So convention weapons take a 20% damage reduction here from this upgrade.  This is very very nice against TEC and Advent opponents, which is why Advent loves their mitigation.  However, maxed out phase missiles are practically unaffected, since the bulk of their damage is already dealt by their bypass component.  It's a mere 7% damage reduction (44 damage reduced to 41). 

My question at this point is how much phase missile block chance would be needed to "equalize" this tech against both conventional and phase missile attacks?  In essence, if Vasari was dealing 44 damage before this upgrade, we want them dealing 35 damage afterwards (20% less, just like TEC).  How far down would we need to push the bypass chance to do this?  We'd need to hammer it down to 22%. 

22% bypass * 100 damage = 22 damage
78% non-bypass * 0.16 (mitigation) * 100 damage = 13 damage

This should underscore just how powerful both Advent's late-game mitigation and Vasari's phase missiles really are.

I think the struggle is not to equalize everything so much that every weapon is essentially the same with just a different name. 

I like the idea of all sides having something distinctive and not directly comparable--if they can balance it.

Great posts on the details--the changes are much more comprehensible after reading through this thread.

The goal isn't to disable the effect of phase missiles, but rather give a blocking effect that has the same impact as +4% mitigation.  I punched the numbers (for 80% base mitigation) that would produce those results.

I like GoaFan's idea of adding a phase missile block to the Domina's Perseverance.

that last post I had was actually in support of Darvin3's idea to make the last advent shield upgrade add mitigation against phase missiles.

I am starting to get ticked off that the quote button doesnt always work and other 'mysterious' forum problems are plaguing me.

Darvin, not sure your math is quiiite right. I think your startng number should be 44, not 34.

Cause you have 30+14.

I think.  Not totally sure wehre you got that 34 from, which is why i am concerned.

Thank you, Pbhead.  That would be an oversight on my part.

I'll go back and edit in the results.  Using 44 as the base damage, the target would be 35 after the reduction.  This gives us 22% (which is still a pretty significant drop from 30%) bypass rate as our target rather than the much lower 13%.

I would advocate the shield projection of the guardian over the domina's perseverance as a means of PM blocking...dominas only affect one target at a time and take too long to select targets, meaning that they would only be useful for capital ships...sure, that has some use, but not much...

Besides, PMs are a problem from the very beginning of the game as PM techs start at very low levels...dominas and especially perseverance are very late game techs...sure, you could give perseverance a PM block buff, but it would be far too little, and far too late...

Guardians are a level 3 tech, and already are not as useful against Vasari as they are against TEC...

If PM block were to be granted through shield techs, it would most certainly need to be at the first 3 levels of shield techs, and not backloaded for that final level...again, giving PM block at level 6 or 7 techs is just pointless and doesn't solve the problem...

If your primary concern is not PMs, but instead on buffing the domina, there are far better ways to make the domina's abilities useful...number one would be an increased turning rate so the domina can actually use its abilities, and a much faster cooldown wouldn't hurt either...the real problem with the domina isn't the effects of its abilities, but how difficult it is to use them, so buffing the effects of the abilities is really the least important area for improvement...

Too much concentrated awesome on a single ability.  I agree with the others that perseverence is the way to go if we're going to put PM blocking on any ability.

Which would be the most useful kind of target.

While PM's are a problem early, they only go nuts later on as they start to get maxed out.  I agree the solutions being tossed around appear very late in the tech tree, but we don't want to put this too low otherwise it will be a bee-line item for Advent in this matchup.

When I first started this train of thought, I was specifically addressing late-game 1400+ command fleets where sinking this much cash into a research line isn't just viable, it's sensible.  You're talking about something else, bringing in phase missile resistance starting some time in the mid-game and maxing out in the late-game.  I don't think that's off the table, but it's a little more of a grey zone.  This raises the question of how early this should become available and how it should phase in.  Putting it at the end of the shield upgrade line keeps it well out of beeline range so we don't have to worry about it mucking up the mid-game balance when it's intended to affect primarily late-game.

Actually, the Vasari and TEC shield upgrade techs are quite worthless currently since +5% shield is far inferior to what the armour and hull upgrades offer.  If we're going down this road, perhaps this bonus could be applied to all shield upgrades to grant some phase missile protection.  This would mean all factions would then have a counter-measure to phase missiles, and since shield upgrades are usually ignored by TEC and Vasari it could finally bring some purpose to them.  That still doesn't deal with the issue of deciding where to put these bonuses on the tech tree, or how quickly they should scale.

That's kind of the icing on the cake, not the actual objective here.  I agree with you that targeting is the domina's primary issue, and if that were fixed its abilities would be far more useful.

I actually recall last week someone mentioned that targeting was the main issue with demo-bots, and its power has increased radically as a result of the relatively minor change to allow it a 360 degree firing arc.  This is because it acquires targets instantly and therefor doesn't waste time chasing after targets it's acquired or multiple individuals pegging the same target.

Changing the domina so that it does not require to face its target to use its abilities may well fix it.  Because it already has the limitation of channeling, allowing it to acquire more easily shouldn't be that big a deal, but would fix its most egregious behavioral issues.

Holy cow.   I haven't been here in months and months.  Surprised as hell to see any remnants of the muliplayer community here at all (names like Cykur, JohnJames, Darvin, etc).  You guys still play?  You have to be the only ones... right?  I mean the online player counts have to be abysmal?

At any rate, this game will never be balanced.  Period.  Are you guys hoping that it will be?  It's not gonna happen.  I'm not knocking the devs, they just don't have the manpower and resources to do it.  Look at Starcraft 2.  It's nowhere near balanced yet, won't be balanced for months at the minimum, and may take years.  But how much resources does Blizzard have to throw at it?  Now, how much resources does this developer have to throw at balance?  I'm guessing not a fraction of what Blizzard can do.  So realistically, what chance does this game have to ever be balanced?  I mean, God bless the developers for trying, and it's good that they are updating their game, but nerfs and buffs at this juncture will simply rearrange current imbalances, and produce (or expose) more or other imbalances.  Come on, you guys know that.

EDIT:  I see there is "cycling" with the subverters.  First distortion field was nerfed.  Then it was (justifiably, in my opinion) buffed.  Now it's been nerfed again.  This is just case in point with the balance problems of this game - the devs lack the resources to balance it, and there isn't enough of a player base to gather balancing data from even if they did.

So I'm guessing you just still play because it's fun regardless of balance issues?  Cool, I guess I understand that, and wish you all luck.  It's interesting to still see some people around.

The game is always fun but the balance thing is why I think they should really expand easy modability so new players could dive right in and tinker.  I'm still trying to repair a map after cutting and pasting something and then removing it.  Sometimes this thing is annoying in how picky it is.  Letting players have a tool to quickly modify entity files and the like, in-place would be great.

It will never achieve "perfect balance".  From the old days of board games where imperfect rule sets were the norm and house rules had to be created I can tell you that one man's passion is another's poison.  I never once saw a universally embraced house rule addressing balance--they were always grudgingly tolerated with great dissent...everything old is new again.

I applaud the designers for making a non-symmetrical match of opponents--the high road less traveled.  Worth the bumps along the way and makes for a brilliant game.  Better to light a candle...

Actually.... if dominas did grant mitigation/block vs phase missiles.... and you used them on guardians... and your guardians shield protected your whole fleet... would it not cover your whole fleet with protection from phase missiles? and it would make dominas very useful vs vasari with that added benifit of shutting down ships

No passive Jump Degradation for Vasari Overseers?

That sounds great to me , they would grant the whole fleet a portion of the phase missile block through the guardians, this is total Advent synergy...

Additionnaly you could better protect specific targets by further casting perseverance on them...

Yeah i agree with ThreeLeafIvy the Jump Degradation on the Vasari Overseer is almost useless. It would help if this ability would slow the enemy by 50% more than what it does now.

I don't think it needs a buff to double enemy phase jump travel time if it were made passive, but yeah, I somewhat remember seeing unanimous support to make it passive in some old thread on the forums.

well, im not 100% sure how it would work because if the domina granted shield block, that might only work for that ship unless its tied to shield properties somehow. if it was able to work across the fleet /w a shield block 1/3rd (just making this number up), im not sure if youd get that 1/3rd blocking all the time due to it being an inherit part of the shield, or 1/9th of the time due to the guardian's damage absorbtion working 1/3rd of the time stacking with the 1/3rd shield block. It's further complicated by how multiple guardians with shield projection on at the same time would affect the statistics.

where as if it simply granted shield mitigation vs phase missiles, you'd get the full mitigation 1 out of 3 times no matter what setup you had due to it being attached to the shield. And you could insure your capitals always get the full mitigation bonus. However, there is still a complication due to guardians granting the mitigation through their shields and the dominas possibly also directly applying the buff. Would that stack? im not sure. i guess it comes down to whether shield mitigation translates through shield projection and if so, how it works. if it doesnt, then the whole guardian-distributing-phase-missile-protection-thing might not work.

questions questions questions... but, me likey

If the devs had decided that mitigation affects all weapon damage then the argument would probably be around how fast mitigation rises. Even with the current mechanic Vasari would be pretty much exclusive with being able to hit a target with 15% mitigation. With a Subvertor fleet they could get the initial mitigation down to 5% with an additional 25% shield penetration buff (nerfed to 8%/20% with beta). Slow down how fast mitigation rises a little bit and Vasari could hit 2-3+ times before mitigation peaks out (still great against frigates). Not to mention with pacts Vasari could hit 75% shield bypass and 10% mitigation decrease by synergizing with Subvertors. All in all this still sounds like a great game mechanic, just not OP compared to the current form.

We might also have seen more diverse fleets from Vasari with a little more emphasis on the light frigate and heavy cruiser.

I want to play around with these ideas about phase missiles, but I'm not sure what file to look at. how exactly do phase missiles by-pass the shields? is that hard-coded?

For research method, I'd start with 2% block per level on each shield tech. (Also, pretty sure this method isn't moddable.)

For Guardian, I'd go with between 10% and 15% using some stacking to get max.

Domina is a bit harder to work with, as you gotta balance the synergy there but not make it too strong on it's own. You'd need a fairly high block amount to really make it a good synergy. Something like 50% to get block 1/6th of the time.

My preference would be some combination of the three, tweaked from those numbers of course.

This doesn't sound too bad and seems balanced considering the impact this research already has against TECH.

The guardian is my second favorite approach compared to the shield research above. In fact it seems more in line with the shield research listed above. Adding a phase missile block would provide the same value the shield damage spread does against TECH. This would still be counterable by Vas with large fleets or balanced fleets with subs or upgraded lights with cripple abilities.

I really don't like the Domina approach. First this ship doesn't even work well for it's current abilities due to targetting issues. Second, waiting for a 6 lab ability to protect a single unit against phase missiles seems a bit iffy. I know the 'Raised Shield Harmonics' is Tier 6 too, but that idea would atleast apply to the whole fleet, so it makes sense as a tier 6. Perserverence as channeled healing ability is ok, but I doubt it would be flexible enough in a battle to target and protect units before they are battered by PM.

Hard not to like this approach.

As for block, it can only be done via an ability currently.

BuffAdaptiveShield.entity

Definitely agreeing with others on the necessity of Advent PM block. I play mainly Advent, and those PM's utterly own me later game. Advent have a higher percentage of shields than hull, and Vasari ignore shields. It couldn't be a worse combo.