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[sotanaht]

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%.

[TaLaR]

HIL is awesome, but AI can't use it. AI will fire it against shield, which is how you suicide with HIL through bad flux management.
There is additional trick - manually targeting corner of enemy ship instead of center. AI always raises shield from center facing you, which means you will get to do a lot of damage every time AI needs to drop-raise shield.

[sotanaht]

It is true that the AI does waste the HIL on shields, but the HIL is very cheap to fire.  When equipped to something like a Paragon with tons of flux and no huge flux hogs on the other mounts (I use HIL+Tachyon) it doesn't really matter.

[TaLaR]

It is true that the AI does waste the HIL on shields, but the HIL is very cheap to fire.  When equipped to something like a Paragon with tons of flux and no huge flux hogs on the other mounts (I use HIL+Tachyon) it doesn't really matter.

It does matter though. Firing HILs on shields vs using them properly can easily mean difference between victory and defeat in 2 Paragon duel.
500 flux per mount per second is a lot. Using that to do about 125 (0.5 from HE, around 0.5 due to efficient shield) soft flux damage is a horrible deal.

[sotanaht]

If you are dueling paragons, especially with HILs equipped, you are doing it wrong anyway.  The loadout I suggested would literally never be able to kill each other in an AI duel, and piloting one won't help either, only risking getting your own paragon killed because you *** something up and take (any) damage.

The point of this ship is a fleet support platform, able to provide pressure from extreme range and clean up after other ships in the fleet do the heavy lifting on shields/flux.  Also, vs any enemy with high cost weapons the AI paragon pilot will flick on their fortress shield and basically cause the enemy AI to waste their flux that way.

[TaLaR]

If you are dueling paragons, especially with HILs equipped, you are doing it wrong anyway.  The loadout I suggested would literally never be able to kill each other in an AI duel, and piloting one won't help either, only risking getting your own paragon killed because you *** something up and take (any) damage.

Well, I'm not going to equip Autopulse lasers just for potential encounters with enemy Paragons. HIL loadout can't do it under AI control, but that's AI problem. Not HIL problem.

Player piloted 2xHil 2x Tachyon 2x Needler + Gravitons/Tacs can definitely win against sim Paragon without having skill advantage. It's just matter of properly timing fortress shield/hold fire and firing HILs at exposed corners (every time that happens).

[FooF]

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%.

If it's at 0, I don't believe that the +150 armor bonus comes into play anymore because there is no damage calculation for armor. At .01 armor, however, it does, or any value >0. Since its for calculation only, there has to be a calculation for it to take effect.

As for whether or not it's "strong" or not, it depends because you have to be really specific. Against a Light Assault Gun, a normal Wolf's armor falls in 1 second/5 shots. With Level 1 Impact Mitigation, the same Wolf's armor falls in 1.75 seconds/8 shots. That really doesn't seem like much but it's 75% increase in time it takes to kill (though 3/4 of a second doesn't do a whole lot!) As base armor gets higher, the +150 does relatively less. For a Hammerhead in the same situation, the difference is 6.5 seconds/27 shots compared to 8.5/35 shots, only a 30% increase. But against high-powered stuff, the difference is going to be negligible.

tl;dr, it's a nice little perk that helps low-armored frigates more than anything else but don't expect it to make a squishy ship tough.

[Aeson]

If it's at 0, I don't believe that the +150 armor bonus comes into play anymore because there is no damage calculation for armor. At .01 armor, however, it does, or any value >0. Since its for calculation only, there has to be a calculation for it to take effect.

According to the 0.8a patchnotes, the armor value for the purposes of damage reduction calculations no longer drops below 5% of the base armor value, and a post by Alex on the first page of this thread suggests that the "base" armor value used for this computation is what you referred to as the total armor value in the first post of this thread. Presumably, then, there is in fact a damage calculation for armor even when the ship's real armor is at 0.00, though I don't know if it'd take the skill's bonus into account once the real armor is stripped.

[FooF]

If it's at 0, I don't believe that the +150 armor bonus comes into play anymore because there is no damage calculation for armor. At .01 armor, however, it does, or any value >0. Since its for calculation only, there has to be a calculation for it to take effect.

According to the 0.8a patchnotes, the armor value for the purposes of damage reduction calculations no longer drops below 5% of the base armor value, and a post by Alex on the first page of this thread suggests that the "base" armor value used for this computation is what you referred to as the total armor value in the first post of this thread. Presumably, then, there is in fact a damage calculation for armor even when the ship's real armor is at 0.00, though I don't know if it'd take the skill's bonus into account once the real armor is stripped.

Right, but I think the 5% armor rating for hull is distinguished from actual armor proper as it pertains to skills affecting the damage calculation. The only skill that looks to actually reduce hull damage is Level 3 Damage Control (-25%). I believe soon after the patch hit people were wondering if HE weapons were doing extra damage to hull because it was now "armored" but Alex or someone else stated that wasn't the case.

I don't believe the Impact Mitigation or Evasive Action 3 skills are doing anything for hull damage. If they were, Impact Mitigation 1 would be by far the most powerful because it's a flat +150. The other %-based ones would have negligible effect but +150 would give even a Wolf over 3x the "hull armor" of an un-skilled Conquest (157.5 vs. 50). I could be wrong, of course, but it doesn't make a lot of sense to me to retain armor calculation perks when all the armor is gone.