@JJ

My personal feeling on the matter is that you will never actually see a 1v1 in actual online play, so I say leet it go. I'm on the same page in that I'm curious as to what the hell is going on, but even without direct calculation you can get the gist of what's going on.

The dps amounts are so low (which NEVER happens in real battles) that the mitigation factor is actually relevant in determining the outcome of the battle. The mitigation on the Illum climbs faster because the Assailant does more damage than the Illum does, and in the end, the Illum is doing overall more damage because the front beam alone will not raise the mitigation factor on the Assailant.

@EadTaes

I don't think the tier arguement should determine how powerful the ship types are from race to race, and you know what, they don't. What I think the devs did was changed the flavor of each race wisely.

Ok, so the two ship types we seem to be having a problem with are the long range frigates and carriers.

I see the lrf trio like this:

Assailants:

Available at tier 1, they are the worst starting lrf, but are the most upgradable. They don't QUITE get as much armor as TEC (5 vs 6), but get +4 armor by tier 4 ( as opposed to +3 for TEC ). They get +20% shields potentially, and +30% hull. The unique factor is that they get +50% damage as opposed to only +30% for the other races.

Assailants are available early, but start off with the worst stats because they're available so early, but are more upgradable to make up for this.

LRM:

Available at tier 2, they are the middle man. Sure they take up 2/3 the ship slots, but in the grand scheme 3 lrms do only SLIGHTLY less damage than Illums and almost 25% more damage than Assailants out of the gate.

Theyr'e also more upgradable than Illums. Overall can get +6 armor and +20% shields and +30% health. You know which lrf is actually the toughest in the grand scheme? LRMS! Do the math. They actually have more health/shields combined than Illums, but this is compensated for because of missiles for LRMS that tend to go to waste (takes ~6 seconds for a volley to reach it's target, by which time the target is somtimes dead)

I'm interested to see if the tier 4 splash damage missile upgrade does anything noticable now.

I'm not sure what else to add here. To me they're like Assialants because they fire missiles, and like Illums because overall they have very high stats to begin out the gate and do a lot of damage to begin too.

Illum:

These buggers are tier 3 because they're tougher and do the most damage, BUT they are the hardest to upgrade (first weapon upgrade is tier 3, last one is tier 7). Health upgrades are a little more expensive too. Shield upgrades obviously are cheap for Advent (tier 1 and 2). 

My point with Illums is these ships are intentionally stronger and at a later tier, but what people seem to miss is that Illum spammer/rushers tend to have reeeeeally bad economies. I mean really bad.

One of my main grievances with the game currently is that feeding and quickstart (not to mention 4v4 and 5v5 single star matches) have basically nullified the penalty for rushing Illums. Diplomacy, it appears, will at least nullify the first point.

It's not hard to outproduce Illum spammers. Really. It's not. They tend to take a longer time to expand. I almost never Illum rush, and if I see someone doing it, i switch to pure scouts (unless I'm Vasari, which I almost never am. Best try fighters).

Overall, my opinion here is that making the Illum tier 3 does penalize Illum rushers, but perhaps not enough. Unfortunatley, sometimes there are maps that just lend themselves to rushing (start with 3 roids and a desert for example). Best advice I have here when playing someone with that set-up is to play defensively at a border world that he'll want (repair bays right next to frig factories). You will eventually out last his feeble economy and overthrow him. Of course....skill helps.

Carriers

My point with carriers is this. Advent get them tier 2, but are more expensive overall and are actually 40% or so WEAKER in terms of toughness than Vasari/TEC counterparts. Advent get carriers tier 2 because they need an early game answer to being lrf rushed themselves. They can't get their own lrf until tier three, so the carriers come in earlier.

The arguement I'm surprised that hasn't been brought up is that more experienced players tend to be the Illum spammers, so maybe it's not that carrier for TEC and Vasari aren't sufficient counters, but that the newer players tend to be moreso TEC, maybe not so much Vasari.

I still think Vasari don't have a good answer to Illums. TEC at least have scouts, very tough lrms, and repair bays, but Vasari have mediocre flak, horrible repair bays, and an lrf that specializes in single ship assasinations, not fleet destruction like the Illum.

Exactly what I am saying.

The topic is 1v1 which makes T3 vs T1 a valid argument. Small battles like that can only happen at the start of a really small game so it matters if you have 3 ships more than your opponent.

Otherwise, there are so many other factors to overall game balance that a 1v1 comparison of unupgraded units is pointless.

Mechanic-wise, I would say why the Illum wins 1v1 is because of the mitigation and higher shield regeneration rate.

The reason I bring the 1v1 match because it gives you a clear picture of the combat mechanics of the game. Yes I'm aware that 1v1 fighting doesnt happen, but if the combat mechanics is broken for 1v1 how are they not broken when you get more ships in the battle

This is the assumed reason why lums win but its completely false.  If you look at a 1v1 battle, you will see that lums dps on assailant raise shield mitigation as well and the difference range from 5 to 10% in shield mitigation. Both have the same regen rates.

If you look at the difference in their dps 13 vs 8.23 (dps of lum front beam) assilants in 1v1 should win.  Suspect theres a bug or another factor that no one has yet discovered.

BTW in I've tested an assailant, with all weapons upgrades 6 phase (30% bypass) and 2 increase damage (20%), and its luck who ever gets the final shot will win.  Assailant should win hands down with 8 upgrades against a non upgraded unit but it doesnt.

I think the missing factor may be that illuminator damage is frontloaded, while assailants is backloaded. I think the frontloaded damage deals damaged based on initial shield mitigation, not accounting for the shield mitigation rise resulting from current shot. While backlaoded does damage based on the mitigation including the damage from current shot.  This would mean that Illumiantor will have less of its damage mitigated before the ship hits the mitigation cap. Also the Vasari target will reach miitgation cap faster. Just what I brainstormed here.

the change log states that charged missles work now... or something like that (kinda like cluster warheads i guess)

maybe thats your missing fleet destruction?

charged missles and cluster warheads needs to be tested for worth-whileness me thinks.

(hooly shizznits, if it works, charged missles for vasari flack would do EVIL THINGS to fighters/bombers told to hold position teehee)

yeah I saw that i the entity file and was thinking the same thing

Change illum damage type to backlaoded then and test again.

That is possible and certainly would benefitilluminators.  However, I calculated the damage for both front and back loaded damage for both ships.  The link is on the first page.  If you assume assailant has backloaded damage and illuminators front loaded, they destroy each others' shields around the same time and destroy each other around the same time.  This is still quite far from the 200 hp difference JJ observed.

To JJ:  Taking each time immediately after damage raises shield mitigation as the data points, did the mitigation rates of the two ships show a linear increase, or did the shield mitigation show a plateau some time during the fight?

Rapid increase (4 to 5) at first then slowly increaseing only (1-2)

Max mitigation is 60%

What you are seeing is an anomaly of the game's mechanics with 1v1.  1 illum doesnt meet a critical mass as far as shield mitigation against 1 opponent ship.  Any more than 1 or 2 and the mitigation increase is taken out as a factor.  It is something thats not balanced for 1v1 ship fights.  It never really happens in actuality.  As was said by the developer, they aren't looking to a 1v1 ship fight to balance.  They look at the big picture.  You are missing the forest for attention to the tree.  Vasari have other things going for them than trying to go 1 assailant vs 1 illum.

[_]-Greyfox

The shield mitigation factor is not entirely academic.  If we assume that shield mitigation decreases 1.25% constantly to a minimum of 15%, and every 10 damage increases mitigation by 1%, then it will take 4 illuminator side beams to raise the mitigation of a target.  On the other hand, JJ's test suggests that 2 side beams will raise the shield mitigation of a target.  While it is not possible to micromanage the target of illuminator side beams, it is possible to macromanage their targets with fleet cohesion (tighter fleet cohesions increases average number of side beams per target hit with at least 1 side beam).  Since neither illuminators nor Advent is unviable, and the side beams is a major reason illuminators dominate large scale lrf fights, it's a valid factor in fleet formation (which may or may not trump other factors).

And then, of course, there is still academic interest.

Obviously some one needs to make an equation that can calculate damage taken based of damage given. If your math is calculating the assailant should win 1v1 and it doesn't, then your math is wrong. The math doesn't lie. Is there a place to look at exactly how damage is calculated in game i.e. an actual set of equations.

Also do we know for sure 10 dps raises mitigation 1%, And that mitigation lowers by 1.25% when taking less than 10 dps after a 2 second delay?

If some one comes up with legitimate numbers I might be able to make my own models using Vpython. Though i'm not sure if that program can be used in such away. I at least might be able to make a usable equation.

That equation is what we are searching for. Our current equation is basedon our observations and understanding of the game files. How ever it does not predic the rigth winner. Why we do not know we are searching for the reason why to find what we have missed but we cannot seem to be able to find it. We are unable to determine by observations what we are missing or by looking ta teh game files. The missing component to our equation seem to be hident and we do nto seem to have acces to this data. At this point unless someone stumbles across somethign new only a dev can ligth us in our error.