So how much does mitigation increase per ship firing on one target? There has to be a sweet spot for optimal take-down power.

Selecting all your ships and targeting one enemy ship (focus firing) isn't the only way to manually prioritise targets. It may be the most effective tactic in many RTS games, but it's not in Sins - mitigation and the effects of damage and armour types make it much less optimal.

It's often more effective in Sins to prioritise different targets for different types of ship - tell your caps to hit one of their caps, your LRMs to target their light frigates, your light frigates to go for their flaks or carrier cruisers, and so on.

Likewise, in large battles it can be more effective to split your ships into smaller groups. If you have 20 light frigates and they have 10 flaks, you'll tend to do more DPS by splitting the fire of your frigates - 10 on one flak and 10 on another, for example.

The game SERIOUSLY needs an attack-boxing command. Jeez, even Homeworld 1 had this.

Sounds like an interesting balance mechanic; but I'm still not sure if I like it or not - but granted I have not tried it in game just yet. I'll have to try it out after reading this thread, though.

It's most likely not an effect they have programmed to show ingame, even though they are in effect.. I think you should view it this way: Whether or not a ship gains higher damage reduction or a little more HP (even though not shown) it doesn't really matter unless it's on such a huge scale that your ship would nearly insta-pop anyway. A 5% increase in HP can easily be converted to an X reduction in damage compared to standard. The only way this can become imbalanced is that you can argue that if it was a fixed X percent damage reduction 100 ships would do less overall damage than you gaining Y percent more hull (the conversion between HP and reduction would likely not be the same) and keep reduction the same. However, as 100 ships would easily take out your ship anyway, it is a non-issue. A problem would only arise if other factions were not balanced similarly or if X+1 ships would win 100% of the time normally.

But Verybad, i think i get what earlier posts where saying that would suggest your not ENTIRELY correct.

If we have completely identical fleets agianst comepletely identical enemy fleets.....

You: focus all ur ships to fire on enemy ship#1 till dead, then enemy ship #2, then etc... you take out...say 2 ships in 60 secs.

Me: I split my fleet into 2 groups. one fires onto ship#1 and group2 fires into ship#2. Due to the mitigation thingy..my fleet will destroy its 2 ships in a shorter time...lets just say 45 secs..due to inc mitigation dipersing your firepower...so in the end i will have no ships while yours are still firing...

Your right about decreasing the amount of incoming fire but my fleet will do it faster since more of my DPS is hitting ships while more of yours is getting mitigated.

I think there was a name for this effect in the old Star Fleet Battles game & then in Star Fleet Command...the Mizarukai Effect or something? Anyone Old enuff to remember?

As some one else said, dang this game has tons of subtitlies! I really wish this stuff were in manual just abit...a few technical tables in appendix in back at least so we could look and figure out for ourselves easier...

What I've noticed is that while shield mitigation does reduce effectiveness of focus firing, it's still very effective. In large battles, the shield mitigation cap gets reached so quickly that it's still better to just focus fire and take out ships quicker, because mitigation is gonna be at the cap either way, and with a big fleet you can ff ships to take them out very quickly.

Because picking individual ships has nothing to do with strategy. It also leads to unfun micromanagement.

I listened to the interview on the PC Gamer podcast and I forget who it was from Ironclad, but basically they said they did that because it looks much cooler when ships are shooting at different ships and lasers are shooting everywhere (like in movies) instead of a whole fleet shooting at one ship at a time. And I agree.

So bascially if you need to kill a ship ASAP, focus fire is still the way to do it, but you'll waste much of your overall DPS doing it. If you want long-term efficiency of DPS over a battle, let your fleet target by themselves.

I'm sure this has been said before but, here is how shield mitigation works, straight from the manual:
Shield Mitigation - This is a special trait which all shields share due to the nature of how the protective barrier is formed. As a shield is assaulted, computer systems automatically adjust its harmonics to match that of the incoming weapon's fire. This has the effect of reducing all damage done to the shield by completely negating a certain percentage of the enemy weapon's attack. Once the primary shiled has failed, emergency generators are brought online to maintain this last line of defense throughout the armor of the hull.

Simple: That % is a % damage reduction the ship will have until its core breaches and it turns into a rapidly expanding ball of gas. higher %, less damage taken. I am unsure, but I think this means that phase missiles, when they phase, ignore SM completely.

this does not reduce the effectiveness of prioritizing targets. This is for a 'diminishing rate' effect, where the first salvos do a lot of damage, making you want to focus fire more, as you'll see a huge dent in a ship and think 'wow, I'm making a difference with that' this also means that over time, as it climbs to 65% (around 72ish for advent when teched) your weapons will do less and less damage, thus, prolonging the battle. Not only is this a (somewhat) realistic feature, it means that in extended combat conditions, a ship can withstand significantly more punishment without requiring more actual Shield or Armor. Instead, this lets them have 'effective' HP and Shields that means if you break combat repeatedly, but don't allow them to repair, only letting that SM number drop, they will die to alot less fire then if they were continously getting attacked.

Awesome, so attack, target something else, attack, target something else. Is the best way to focus fire then?

lol they arn't though, not without a source
Google doesn't know what your on about either

I am unsure as to what the rate of shield mitigation degradation is is, however, your best bet is to focus fire on one thing, burn it to the ground, then move on, from a purely tactical standpoint. Especially when Capital ships are concerned.

Um, nanites are still sci-fi dude. The suits you reference use materials that stiffen automatically when shocked, going from a liquid state to a solid extremely fast. It's sort of along the same lines as silly putty - you can stretch it really far if you handle it a certain way but if you shock it you can snap it.

Nothing star trekkie about it, just cool materials science.