All I'd ask is that it was based off incoming DPS rather than simply scaling linearly.

The nice thing about the little formula I gave above is that once damage drops off, the mitigation levels out to baseline again anyway, while the higher it gets, the faster it drops if the DPS is cut off. Also, computationally inexpensive. I'm a big fan of that fact.

The reason mitigation makes it more effective is because ships automatically regenerate shield. So if you have 100 damage and only 33 units make it through, but a ship is repairing at 5 shields/s (this is an arbitrary number i pulled out of my behind) then you're only doing 28 dmg. Where 1000 damage lts 330 units make it through, but the ship is repairing at 5 shield/s which leaves you at 325 dmg.

EDIT ( maybe it's just the shield regent hat's the problem hahah)

Another way of looking at it is that if all ships in a fleet are not being attacked except 1, then the total shield regeneration of that fleet is only 5 shields/s. If you attack every ship in that fleet then it is increased by the factor N (number of ships). So in a 100 ship fleep the regeneration rate is 500 shields/s. If you attack every single ship at the same time, you are wasting 495 damage points of damage lost to shield regeneration.

dead-on, this post. only, I'm not sure if 80% would be enough. in some instances advent come pretty close to that value already with 65% or so on caps, plus 6% from culture and 4% from shield tech. not so sure here.

Isn't that how mitigation works right now? The only difference is that your method climbs at a slower rate and maxes out sooner?

Or is it based on total damage recieved?

I always thought it was based on total DPS. Now I'm really confused why it was ever based on damage received in the first place.

If you take regeneration into a account though, focus firing would still be more beneficial until you start doing really high DPS. Also, you're kinda working uphill because the larger the fleet, the more beneficial it is to focus fire due to regeneration, but then less beneficial due to (the new) mitigation.

I was going to crunch some numbers with this https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/177320 but it looks like they've taken them down. So unfortunately I can't give any hard numbers to come up with anything.

OH I see. I think there should be a trade off. You can focus fire, but you do less damage overall. Right now, and even with a changed mitigation, if you aren't focus firing, you're losing.

The problem with shield mitigation is that it takes 2 minutes to down a light frigate with firepower small enough not to cap the mitigation.

Such firepower ( ~10 or 12dps, which is enough to max shield mit) is never a threat to anything. Basically, whatever comes under any serious fire in this game, it always has its mitigation bumped up.
Why not focus fire then?

The easiest way to do this would be to have shield mitigation fall at a faster rate when it's higher.  I don't think there should be much additional overhead to this.

Personally, I don't mind the concept of focus firing. To me it makes sense as a tactic, and you see it in lots of other games because of one factor - a unit that is at 5% health does the same damage as one that is at 100% health.

Consider a game like Icewind Dale or Neverwinter Nights 2. It is better to sic all of your party on one goblin at a time becasue that's the quickest way to lower the overall enemy DPS. Sins works on the same principle - a ship or starbase has the same offensive capability no matter what its health (as far as I know) so the quickest way to lower the other fleet's overall DPS is to focus fire on a handful targets at a time.

I think the only way to not use focus fire is not to fiddle with shield mitigation (it seems to me to be a minor factor in battles anyways) but instead to have damage decrease along with health, which makes sense - a ship at 5% health probably has fires all over and everything's broken, so it probably wouldn't be very effective. Perhaps speed and firing rate penalties would be relatively painless to implement.

The other option would be to use a model like the infanty in Company of Heroes. In that game a squad of 5 riflemen is far more lethal than a squad of two, and each member of the squad can be killed. In that case, a choice between taking one squad out entirely or reducing two squads to three units could work either way (though I would still FF). The strike craft in Sins work on this model, perhaps they could add other units to the game that work like this as well.

And as far as Capital ships dying quickly goes.... I find that only really happens when you have a large amount of heavy ships (kodiaks/destras/caps) FFing on a cap. But in two fleets of the same size they would be able to FF on each other, so it wouldn't be an advantage for either player.

Just a few thoughts!

What about if they just eliminated mitigation altogether? I think that would make it alot simpler.

Really the problem I see with ff and mitigation is this...

Mitigation goes up WAY too fast.  It is essentially instant.  If you focus fire, the first wave of damage brings it to max miti and everything else is just at 50%...  I think it should be more gradual as the computer dials in on the weapon harmonics.  Simply put, don't make it go up instantly, but rather have it go up slowly with the cap determined by DPS.  Focus Firing SHOULD beat miti as an entire fleet aimed at one ship ought to take it out in one or two volleys...  Mitigation prevents this thing that is common sense.  If you make it increase at a relatively steady rate (based more on a constant than DPS), you could get something that doesn't do anything to 1 on 1 fights, and mass focus firing more powerful.  After all, good luck mitigating damage from fifty cannons as opposed to one single weapon...  Make it climb with time, perhaps 3-5% of max per second but have the max mitigation scale to DPS, thus making 30 ships firing something you could ultimately mitigate highly, but in practice you won't have time...

Perhaps this would work, perhaps it wouldn't.. This is the system I have always wished mitigation to be as it is both realistic and also good for gameplay.  No longer would miti shoot up when focus firing, but rather would increase slower.  Now of course because a large fleet attacking would give a bigger max miti, the mitigation would go up faster because it is going a a % of the current max miti.  If you went from ff to 1 on 1, it would slowly fall back down to the one and hold steady....

Hope that all made sense, but if not, I'll explain it in a way that does...

Simply put, 1 on 1, not really all that much of a change...

20 on 1: mitigation goes up but, as you are not dealing a whole lot of damage, it would discourage it.

70 on 1: Mitigation would have no hope of stopping it in real life.  You would completely overwhelm the ship and neutralize mitigation completely.  

And thus, frigates would die almost instantly while a level ten cap could withstand a quite a few volleys.  It makes small ships more disposable and makes capitals more important...

Oh, and don't make ships statistically weaker as they take damage...  That would screw up gameplay and though it would add to realism... There is a reason that in FPS's getting shot in the arm doesn't make you drop your gun...  If you want a justification in lore terms... Just say that the repair crews are capable of keeping weapons and engines online and only focus on actual hull plating once you are safe...

No... mitigation neutralizes said damage... ex:

100 damage incoming with 50% miti

It neutralizes half of that so your shields only take 50 damage.