Whats the use of phase missiles?

Published on November 2, 2007 By Pithlit In Beta Feedback

I have been thinking about this for quite a bit now, but i can´t really see the advantage of phasemissiles above normal ones.
With the phase missile techs i have the chance to let 30% of my torpedoes bypass the enemy shields.
This means 30% of the damage is directly done to the hull, while shields are still up, right?
In my eyes this barely any matters as ships don´t have 30% in hullpoints instead of what they have in shields (dunno about advent, though)
A negative side on the early damage to the hull is, though that the repair system kicks in.
So a ship damaged by phasemissiles can repair the damage by both its hull repairrate and the shield regeneration rate, effectively countering more of the damage.
A ship hit by normal missiles can only counter by shield regeneration rate, until the shields are down.

I see that i need the phase missile techs to get to the last two damage techs for the missiles (nano warheads) that give an additional 20% damage.

I guess i must be missing something here.
Why are phasemissiles better than normal missiles?
Are the techs doing anything else than increasing the shield penetration?

Comments (Page 1)

Schod

on Nov 02, 2007

the idea being that you can do max damage when the shield would otherwise block a great ammount.

that being said it doesnt appear to have a great big effect

Pithlit

on Nov 02, 2007

so how much damage do shields actually "block" if they would really negate a whole bit of damage this would be nice, but currently i have really only the impression that they migate the damage from hullpoints to shieldpoints.

Schod

on Nov 02, 2007

*shrug* it changes, however it can climb to high percentages, 80% I've heard

and I dunno if it switches from hull to shield damage without mitigation, that sounds extremely pointless...

Pithlit

on Nov 02, 2007

no, what i mean with migration is that instead of the hull, the shields get damaged

i know that mitigation supposedly blocks some shots, but if i look at the damage it seems that hull goes down just as fast as shields.
Has any modder tested this?, by lets say setting the mitigation increadibly high and the shields should be neigh invulnerable.

Shadowhal

on Nov 02, 2007

like schod said, it makes focused fire more attractive.

when I looked at capships under heavy fire, the shield points drop noticeably slower than the hull does afterwards, which is very likely this shield mitigation effect. now, if you have a weapon that can ignore part of this mitigating effect and stack damage directly on the hull it could potentially be very dangerous. whether it works is another issue, I haven't been able to try.

does make for an interesting research position when facing vasari. hull research would probably be favoured over shields if the latter can be - at least partly - be ignored. a bit like in GC II where select weapons do bonus damage against a certain defensive system. actually, now that I mention it, a bit more of that would be cool. like a ship good in taking down shields so other units that are better vs armour can do the rest.

Annatar11

on Nov 02, 2007

does make for an interesting research position when facing vasari. hull research would probably be favoured over shields if the latter can be - at least partly - be ignored. a bit like in GC II where select weapons do bonus damage against a certain defensive system. actually, now that I mention it, a bit more of that would be cool. like a ship good in taking down shields so other units that are better vs armour can do the rest.

Players are more or less forced to do this as it is, though, since for the TEC the shield upgrades start at I believe 5 military labs? Vasari shield upgrades at 2?

Also, one of the Vasari cruisers basically just zaps shields off enemy ships

eetmorsqrls

on Nov 02, 2007

mmm, another tactic you guys havent seemed to notice is that the planet sucker has an ability that reduces armor and deals 30dps, stick that with ignoring shields, and you have one bad ship (especially if you can get a marza to help)

PS, at max level, that ability can solo a kodiak, killing it even while it has full shields

BDUakito

on Nov 02, 2007

Is very usefull, you bypass shields. So 30% means that of 4 misiles fired, 1 will hit hull, so if you have 4/5 ships firing to a Capship you could strike serius damage to hull before even shilds start to go down.

This will work speacily good if Phase misiles are fire from cheap ships. Cost/damage ratio will be huge. Also if they fire quickly.

Pithlit

on Nov 02, 2007

which they sadly don´t, those vasari tropedo frigs fire just so slow

And as said if one of 3 missiles hits the hull that usually means that the shields are down when the hull is around 60-75% (in most of my tests) and then the advantage from the
missiles vanishes.
And while the shields are still up the hull and the shields are regenerating, thus effectively double the healrate.

Annatar11

on Nov 02, 2007

They would probably shine against fleets with those thrice damned Dunovs, though

2 Dunovs accompanied by heavier hitting capitals can make it a nightmare to take them down

Pithlit

on Nov 02, 2007

that could work

But even at max tech (30% passage) you would have to do 3 times the damage to kill the ship than you´d normally do.
I dunno, how much a dunov can restore, but i don´t really think it can restore a caps shields two times completly over.

I have also tried experimenting with the Torpedo Frigates special ability, but it doesn´t seem to increase the range as stated.
Has anyone else experienced this?

Annatar11

on Nov 02, 2007

Depends on how much fire the ship is taking and the rank of the Dunov's skill.. it can easily keep the shields up under moderate fire, as long as it has antimatter. It can restore upwards of 2k or so I believe and the cooldown isn't very long.

I think phase missiles don't really have a noticeable effect on smaller targets. Most frigates/cruisers lose shields quite fast regardless. It's mostly the capitals that take a while to lose their shields, letting you get a slight head start on the hull before everything else is able to damage it.

Whether or not that was the intention of the devs when designing the weapon I don't know

Pithlit

on Nov 02, 2007

It's mostly the capitals that take a while to lose their shields, letting you get a slight head start on the hull before everything else is able to damage it.

Yeah, but its not quite a headstart, as the damage does not increse for a missile bypassing the shields. The 30% that go through the shields and onto the hull are also 30% damage the shields recieve less, right?
If a phased missile that goes through would both damage shields and hull the upgrades would actually increse the damage and not only migrate it and give the vasari a headstart

But currently with the double regeneration of both shields and hull it puts you at a disadvantage.

Annatar11

on Nov 02, 2007

True, but the hull traditionally regenerates much slower than shields. I don't really know how exactly the shield penetration works as far as numbers go, though, didn't get to play with it that much.

It also occurred to me that we don't really know how heavily reliant on shield technology the Advent will be. Perhaps phase missiles are meant to be more useful against them? Because as it is, the best scenario I can think of where phase missiles are really useful is the Kol + Dunov combo, since it takes ages to chew through its shields with its defensive ability up and the Dunov recharging, and then even the fairly small damage that goes straight through to the hull starts looking very appealing

Pithlit

on Nov 02, 2007

Well, especially against a Kol the phase missiles wont do any good as the kol has especially the ability to block those.
And bad as it is that ability is incredible cheap and has short cooldown

I have admit that i like to use LRM as Tec very much, as they have good range, firerate and stuff.
With the vasari i find the Torpedo frigates really lacking, they fire so slowly and everything.
I think they are especially designed to be capkillers, but they don´t really do their job that well :/
Skirmishers are much better and also much more resiliant.
They are quite good at killing the shields and then can cut through the hull awell.

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