You've been around yourself too long, of course you can't smell what's coming from you! 

Win!

Fix capitals:

+3 armor for all Advant/Vasari caps, +2 armor for TEC (the tec gets more armor researches right?  I can't remember, its been years since I played vanilla sins LOL)

Increase the amount of hull, shields, shield mitigation, armor, AM, AM regen gained PER level.  That way, later in the game, you get stronger caps.  But they wont be OMGWTFPWN mobiles in the beginning.

And nerf-bat LRM frigates....why hasn't this been done yet in 3 years?

I believe the shield mitigation "absorbes" damage, even with the shields taken down?

Yes, even when a ship's shields are down.

If you want to make capital ships harder to kill, just edit the damage tables against capital ship armor...

 

LOLZ

But I do have a question... How strong are the Vasari Phase missiles? I thought they just had a chance of bypassing shields (for each consecutive research they had increasing percentage of chance of bypass)? What do they actually do? Or how do they actually work?

Phase missiles have a percentage chance to bypass shields which gets higher with their research and some abilities.

So even at 10% bypass in  a slug out between two caps, the cap that's taking 10% more damage will die first.  A frigate can poof with a few lucky salvos. When they get to the higher levels they are really devastating especially if combined with the numerous damage increase techs for weapons and if against Advent who have fewer armor upgrades.

Actually the PM advantage is even greater than that Sin. Ignoring shields also bypasses mitigation which means that 30-65% of damage is not being nullified by the shields. This results in exponential increases to the effectiveness of Vasari LRM & Bombers vs other racial counterparts.

Mitigation is not bypassed by phase missiles that directly impact a ships hull, because it is always active, even when a ships shields are down. So the maximum damage advantage of phase missiles is 30% (after you have fully researched the 'Superior Missile Phasing' tech) compared with other weapons.

Phase missiles have a chance to bypass shields...when they do bypass shields, they also bypass shield mitigation...

Consider a ship that is already at max shield mitigation (60%)...a laser that does 10 DPS normally would in fact do only 4 DPS (because 60% of the damage would be negated by shield mitigation)...a technology that grants a 10% increase to laser damage would then make this laser do 4.4 DPS (or 11 x .4), which is naturally a 10% increase in damage...

Now consider a phase missile launcher (that does 10 DPS) firing at that same ship (which has 60% shield mitigation)...without any chance to negate shields, the PM will do 4 DPS (just like any other weapon that does 10 DPS)...if we were to research a tech granting a 10% damage bonus, then we'd be doing 4.4 DPS (again, just like any other weapon)...however, the first 3 tiers of PM techs do not increase the damage, but the chance to negate shields...

Lets say you research a tech that grants a 10% chance to negate shields...for 90% of the time, the phase missile launcher used above will do 4 DPS...but for the other 10% of the time, it will completely bypass shields and shield mitigation, allowing it to do the full 10 DPS...so, if you average the damage done by this PM launcher, you get 90% x 4 DPS + 10% x 10 DPS = 4.6 DPS...

So, a 10% chance to bypass shields is actually comparable to a 15% damage increase...

If one were to have a 20% chance to bypass shields, then the average DPS would be 80% x 4 DPS + 20% x 10 DPS = 5.2 DPS, which is comparable to a 30% weapon damage bonus...

So, in essence, an x% chance to bypass shields is 1.5x better than an x% damage bonus, at least against targets with 60% max shield mitigation...

Against a target with higher shield mitigation (let's pick a high level Advent capital ship that maxes at 80%), negating shields becomes even more powerful...for a normal weapon, 10 DPS results in 2 DPS against this Advent cap (because 80% of the damage is negated by shield mitigation), and a 10% damage bonus would result in 2.2 DPS...but a 10% chance to negate shields would result in 90% x 2 DPS + 10% x 10 DPS = 2.8 DPS...so against a target with 80% shield mitigation, an x% chance to bypass shields is 4x better than an x% damage bonus...

Most weapons in the game get a 20% or 30% damage bonus through technologies...once fully upgraded, PMs get a 20% damage bonus and a 30% chance to negate shields...

Against a target with 60% shield mitigation, a standard 10 DPS normally results in only 4 DPS (as stated above, 60% of the damage is negated by shield mitigation)...the typical 30% damage bonus (through technology) would make that 5.2 DPS...but for PMs, all the tech upgrades would make for (1+20%) x (70% x 4 DPS + 30% x 10 DPS) = 6.96 DPS

So, PM upgrades amount to about 33.8% more damage (6.96/5.92 - 1) than most weapon upgrades...that being said, PMs are generally on the weaker side without any upgrades (for example, kanraks are easily outperformed by LRMs and illuminators without PM upgrades), so PMs are only problematic late game, capital ships, or against Advent...

Indeed, phase missiles bypass shield mitigation as well.
And the Seleuceia's 10%->15% effective damage boost actually gets a lot stronger if you're targetting stuff that has higher shield mitigation (i.e. caps!). For a cap ship with 65% mitigation the bonus slaces to >18% effective damage increase. 

Another Maths post about it by meself: 

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/329828/page/1/#1935796

I stand corrected.