First I want to shout out to the High Intensity Laser. While by itself it is pretty much useless, as it is pretty much 100% negated against any shield, it has the benefit of creating a constant threat. The AI is forced to keep it's shield up and facing the HIL at all times or die, which means that anything else you have will be able to quickly flank or overwhelm the shields (or the AI will do it themselves shooting back), and once they do go down the HIL quickly finishes the job before they can come back up again. UNLESS your ships are being ADD *** and swapping off of the fluxed-out ship as soon as the shields go down. Can't really help that.
Anyway, the real reason I came to this thread is I wanted to ask, level 1 impact mitigation, does that +150 armor apply even when the ships actual armor has been stripped to 0? If so, than is that enough to make it particularly valuable in practice, especially for frigates who shouldn't be taking high-damage hits to begin with? I don't really understand the math all that well, so I really just want an answer as to whether this is a strong skill compared to other options that might consistently raise or lower damage by 20-25%.