This is primarily a concept from the MOBA genre of videogames (most popular example: League of Legends), but I find it a useful concept to attach here as well.

Mitigation is anything that reduces incoming damage, rather than increasing your health. It may be called protections, agility dice, et c., but the point is that it supplies a threshold that damage must pass through to be effective.

In this game, we have two different forms of mitigation: Constant, and Chosen.

Constant mitigation can be variable (agility dice) or non-variable (reinforce). The only stipulation that it requires is that it applies to every attack.

Chosen mitigation can be variable (focus token) or non-variable (evade token). The only stipulation that it requires is that it cannot be used against an arbitrary number of attacks in a round.

Notably, the mathematics I shall be using from here on out are going to be Discrete, rather than Statistics.

The difference is that Discrete math deals with indivisible units (e.g. damage, health, et cetera), whereas Statistics project the likelihood of those events with indiscrete divisions.

E.G.: When dealing with C3P0, a Statistician might say that he adds 5/8 of an evade result to your roll of a single die, while a Discrete Mathematician says that it increases the odds of achieving an Evade result on that single die to 100%.

That being said, let's look at a very frustrating example of the mitigatory arts: Baron Soontir Fel, with Push the Limit, Stealth Device, and Autothrusters, as it both common and uses both forms of mitigation very well.

Fel, in this configuration, rolls 4 agility dice, or 5 or 6 with Range Bonuses and/or Obstruction involved. However, we're going to keep it at an easy to digest 4, assuming he's attacked at Range 3 by a secondary weapon, or out of arc at Range 2 or 1 by a primary.

Fel, with Autothrusters active, mitigates 2 or more damage appx 82.3% of the time.

That means that a ship that rolls 3 attack dice must find that failure point (appx 17.5%), or roll perfect damage against an appx 42% full negation rate.

Even when that happens, Fel has at least one focus token, and often multiple.

Fel, with Autothrusters and a Focus token, mitigates 3 or more damage appx 84% of the time.

Again, that completely shuts-down someone that has rolled perfectly with 3 dice.

Heck, with Autothrusters and a Focus token, rolling perfectly with 4 dice is still likelier than not to deal 0 damage (54% cancellation rate of 4 with both modifiers active).

Couple this with Fel's mobility and Pilot Skill allowing him to either dodge arcs entirely or ensure that Autothrusters are working properly, and it's a wonder that he's ever damaged at all.

Now that I've explained about mitigation, how do we counter-play ships with high mitigation?
This answer also comes from MOBA terminology: Penetration and True Damage.

Penetration is a stat that lowers enemy mitigation, rather than increasing one's damage directly.

Fel's mitigation comes in 3 parts: Positioning (for Autothrusters), Actions (for PtL Focus and added Positioning), and not being Hit (for +1 Die from Stealth Device).

If you can stress him, he loses his ability to perform actions until he's cleared the stress you've dealt, which also hurts his positioning. You've removed the Focus for the following turn, and given yourself a wonderful opportunity to remove his Autothruster bonus as well.

Once you've hit him, you've cleared his Stealth Device, cutting his numbers fairly strongly across the board. You'll also typically break his morale upon achieving this, leading to a play difference that can be more profound than the sheer change in the mitigation of your dice.

Some upgrades and abilities are designed as Penetration as well. Wedge Antilles, Intimidation, and Outmaneuver, to name the obvious.

Autoblasters, Autoblaster Turrets, Darth Vader, Ten Nunb's ability, and non-combat damage, however, are examples of True Damage. It doesn't matter how much damage your opponent is capable of mitigating, these upgrades deal the same amount of damage regardless.

Similarly, having an absurdly high damage expectation can create a true-damage effect ; If your opponent negates 2 of the damage from your attacks with regularity, but they can only negate 2 damage per turn (lookin' at you, Han), while you're throwing 4 hits on most turns, then you've basically got 2 dice of true damage sitting pretty on top of what your opponent can reasonably cancel out.

Notably, this is why fleets with high amounts of damage concentrated on a few attacks still do well: they are threatened less by mitigation.

Notably, there is one method of mitigation that still works against True Damage in this game: Reduction.

These are abilities like the R7 Astromech, Sensor Jammer, and Elusiveness: that which steals damage directly from your opponent before you attempt to mitigate as normal.
These abilities are highly conditional and/or unreliable; balancing their ability to completely cause your opponent to roll no damage.

Regeneration can also be seen as a mitigation method, but one that happens after shots are fired.
A shield regenerated is a previously dealt damage canceled, after all.

It is theoretically powerful as it is a non-variable choice (like Evade) that does NOT fade at the end of the turn when un-spent. It's taken in retrospect, and so only fails to matter when you pass its trigger at full or 0 health, a rarity in this game.

MOBA?

Multiplayer online battle arena.

DOTA, League of Legends and Heroes of Order and Chaos are all this style. If you haven't played any of them you really should. League is free download.

MOBA?

Multiplayer Online Battle Arena.

It basically replaces DotA as the term of choice for DotA-like and LoL-like games.

Thx.

you've forgot to add an integral, global means for literally any ship in the game to get through fel's mitigation:

blocking

obstructions help too

now if only crap like c3po could be dealt with like that

Regeneration can also be seen as a mitigation method, but one that happens after shots are fired.

A shield regenerated is a previously dealt damage canceled, after all.

It is theoretically powerful as it is a non-variable choice (like Evade) that does NOT fade at the end of the turn when un-spent. It's taken in retrospect, and so only fails to matter when you pass its trigger at full or 0 health, a rarity in this game.

If that were true then it would mean that killing Corran Horn is a rarity, and I can assure you that it's not

Though in all seriousness I understand that you probably meant "more often than not" or something along those lines.

Thanks for the writeup and giving a framework to classify the different defensive and offensive abilities in this game. I imagine that most of us know from experience to not waste shots on a turtled up Fel at range 3, but perhaps thinking about it in more abstract terms can help players figure out why some tactics fail to work in certain situations.

Pretty cool. Thanks for the run-down!

That being said, let's look at a very frustrating example of the mitigatory arts

Regeneration can also be seen as a mitigation method, but one that happens after shots are fired.

A shield regenerated is a previously dealt damage canceled, after all.

It is theoretically powerful as it is a non-variable choice (like Evade) that does NOT fade at the end of the turn when un-spent. It's taken in retrospect, and so only fails to matter when you pass its trigger at full or 0 health, a rarity in this game.

If that were true then it would mean that killing Corran Horn is a rarity, and I can assure you that it's not

I said it was theoretically more powerful than an Evade token, which it is.

It is NOT, however, a guarantee, or a shield against risky flying.

If I'm flying a regenerator that has taken some damage, I get them out of combat, then back to full health.

Horn's Pilot Ability is made for this, as there are quite a few rounds in which him being in combat doesn't give you any positive effect.

I quite prefer R5-P9 on an E-Wing than R2D2. A free shield on a Green maneuver is nice, but being able to spend a defensive action to gain a free shield after performing a 5 Forward or a 3 turn is nicer.

Meanwhile, Horn is probably flying with only his raw 3 agility as additional mitigation, so he's likelier to take damage than our Fel-beast example.

Multiplayer online battle arena.

DOTA, League of Legends and Heroes of Order and Chaos are all this style. If you haven't played any of them you really should. League is free download.

I like SMITE. Its the only of the above that's from a third-person view, rather than an isometric, so it feels more natural for FPS gamers, even though its abandoning the RTS ancestry of the genre.

I am fairly certain when I first used the term, I mentioned League, though.

Pretty cool. Thanks for the run-down!

That being said, let's look at a very frustrating example of the mitigatory arts

Definitely imagined Alan Rickman's Snape voice reading "mitigatory arts."

Well, he DID say that he'd teach you how to put a stopper on death...

you've forgot to add an integral, global means for literally any ship in the game to get through fel's mitigation:

blocking

obstructions help too

Shh! Don't give away my master plan, man!

In all seriousness, good Fel players tend to move to places they will NOT be blocked, then Boost/Barrel-Roll into a more favorable position afterwards.

Still, if you're just that froggy, it's worth trying

problem with not getting blocked is that Fel doesn't have a turret

sometimes he actually has to give up his offense in order to maneuver more defensively

Idk, I think it's worth mentioning the dangers and influences of blocking when defensive tech is actually action step dependent versus when it is not...

Regeneration can also be seen as a mitigation method, but one that happens after shots are fired.

A shield regenerated is a previously dealt damage canceled, after all.

It is theoretically powerful as it is a non-variable choice (like Evade) that does NOT fade at the end of the turn when un-spent. It's taken in retrospect, and so only fails to matter when you pass its trigger at full or 0 health, a rarity in this game.

If that were true then it would mean that killing Corran Horn is a rarity, and I can assure you that it's not

I said it was theoretically more powerful than an Evade token, which it is.

It is NOT, however, a guarantee, or a shield against risky flying.

I wasn't disputing the fact that regeneration is generally more powerful than an evade, I was jokingly disputing that the conditions where regeneration isn't useful (at full health or dead) are a rarity, i.e. if it were really that rare then dead Corran Horns would also be a rare occurrence. Perhaps my attempt at levity would have been clearer if I would have only quoted your last line.

What regeneration doesn't protect you from is getting one-shotted. Regeneration can't help you unless you survive the attack.

Recently I played in a tournament where I k-turned with a full health Corran that I knew wasn't going to be taking a lot of fire. He got shot at by an RGT Interceptor that had spent both its actions moving to get a shot and a Storm Squadron with Accuracy Correctors. RGT rolled 3 natural hits, and Corran rolled blanks against both attacks and died.

Not saying that R2-D2 wasn't good there, it did recover a shield earlier in the game, but I'm saying you can't view damage recovery the same way as damage mitigation, and vice versa.

I dig this writup, a lot. Bravo!

Thinking about the MOBA/X-Wing parallel a bit: Ten Numb is a bit like me Twitch: a theoretically great true damage ability that doesn't quite work.

The other way to deal with resistance in LoL (not sure on other MOBAs, tbh) is through critical hits. In LoL they work differently than in X-Wing, in that a critical hit in LoL doubles the damage dealt. I know what you're thinking here: Bossk.

In X-Wing, getting critical hits through shields is a great way to expand the amount of damage being dealt, even if it's still difficult to pin the slippery buggers down. What other abilities can we think of that mat not make your attacks more likely to hit, but will do more damage when they do?

What other abilities can we think of that mat not make your attacks more likely to hit, but will do more damage when they do?

Well, doing more damage and making you attacks more likely to hit often go hand in hand as you can achieve both by rolling more attack dice... but other ways might be indirect (stress and ions) or capped damage like the new heavy laser turret will supposedly be (two three-dice attacks capped at one damage each). Maybe a new missile or torpedo will say something like "if this attack hits, cancel all dice results and either inflict two damage or remove up to four shields from the defender" it's sort of capped damage that's good against large ships and B-Wings but you can choose which effect you prefer if you happen to shoot at an interceptor or something. Now that I think about it, that would be quite effective against just about every list that's won a regional this year... but might be overkill against Firesprays and shuttles.

Notably, there is one method of mitigation that still works against True Damage in this game: Reduction.

These are abilities like the R7 Astromech, Sensor Jammer, and Elusiveness: that which steals damage directly from your opponent before you attempt to mitigate as normal.

These abilities are highly conditional and/or unreliable; balancing their ability to completely cause your opponent to roll no damage.

Regeneration can also be seen as a mitigation method, but one that happens after shots are fired.

A shield regenerated is a previously dealt damage canceled, after all.

It is theoretically powerful as it is a non-variable choice (like Evade) that does NOT fade at the end of the turn when un-spent. It's taken in retrospect, and so only fails to matter when you pass its trigger at full or 0 health, a rarity in this game.

Aren't mitigation and reduction subsets of overall durability? So Fel or Luke with R2D2 might be more durable than a B wing even though the B wing has more "HP" than Fel or Luke,

Notably, there is one method of mitigation that still works against True Damage in this game: Reduction.

These are abilities like the R7 Astromech, Sensor Jammer, and Elusiveness: that which steals damage directly from your opponent before you attempt to mitigate as normal.

These abilities are highly conditional and/or unreliable; balancing their ability to completely cause your opponent to roll no damage.

Regeneration can also be seen as a mitigation method, but one that happens after shots are fired.

A shield regenerated is a previously dealt damage canceled, after all.

It is theoretically powerful as it is a non-variable choice (like Evade) that does NOT fade at the end of the turn when un-spent. It's taken in retrospect, and so only fails to matter when you pass its trigger at full or 0 health, a rarity in this game.

Aren't mitigation and reduction subsets of overall durability? So Fel or Luke with R2D2 might be more durable than a B wing even though the B wing has more "HP" than Fel or Luke,

Yes. Mitigation improves the effectiveness of the health you have. Fel does better against a swarm than a Decimator, which has 13 more health.

So as a card carrying member of the not that good at advanced math club is there any way to create a measure of durability, similar to jousting values, to operate a way of evaluating defensive efficiency? I realize jousting values aren't perfect but they do provide a simple way to evaluate ships against each other.

So as a card carrying member of the not that good at advanced math club is there any way to create a measure of durability, similar to jousting values, to operate a way of evaluating defensive efficiency? I realize jousting values aren't perfect but they do provide a simple way to evaluate ships against each other.

The problem is that the defender is only in control of half the equation. As the opponent's dice increase on individual ships, the less durability a mitigation-build gets you.

Fel struggles quite a bit vs 4 Sigmas, for instance, but completely owns against a Bomber Swarm.

I'd calculate it as the full set of odds, collected to determine the damage distribution, and divide the total health of the ship in question by those odds, to determine an average number of attacks required to kill the ships.

The full set of odds, incidentally, is "The ability of my ship to produce a damage threshold of X" multiplied by "The failure rate of the defender to mitigate that threshold". Each individual mash-up of those will simply be added to each other.

E.G.: An Advanced TIE with an Accuracy Corrector is attacking Baron Fel.

The odds of the Adv. TIE of producing at least 2 damage is 100%.

The odds of the Adv. TIE of producing 3 or more hits is 0%, except at Range 1.

The odds of Baron Fel being hit by this, with his full combo up, is appx 2%.

The odds of Baron Fel being dealt 2 damage by this, with his full combo up, is 0% (he will have either a natural evade, focus, or blank).

Therefore, the first HP will take around 50 attacks to penetrate, on average.

Following that, the Baron's numbers falter a bit, due to the loss of the Stealth Device.

His new odds of being hit by 2 damage, with the full combo up, is approximately 5%.

Appx 40 attacks will kill both of his remaining HP.

The moral of this story? If you're flying a TIE Advanced with Accuracy Correctors vs SuperFel, you NEED to be either at Range 1, or remove some of his combo through blocking, or it will take you around 90 attacks to destroy his measly 3 health.

Of course, when you're dealing with such long odds, you will encounter wild swings of variance. It takes 50 attacks on average, but sometimes it only takes 1 attack if he's unlucky, or 300 if he isn't.

So as a card carrying member of the not that good at advanced math club is there any way to create a measure of durability, similar to jousting values, to operate a way of evaluating defensive efficiency? I realize jousting values aren't perfect but they do provide a simple way to evaluate ships against each other.

So as a card carrying member of the not that good at advanced math club is there any way to create a measure of durability, similar to jousting values, to operate a way of evaluating defensive efficiency? I realize jousting values aren't perfect but they do provide a simple way to evaluate ships against each other.

The problem is that the defender is only in control of half the equation. As the opponent's dice increase on individual ships, the less durability a mitigation-build gets you.

Fel struggles quite a bit vs 4 Sigmas, for instance, but completely owns against a Bomber Swarm.

I'd calculate it as the full set of odds, collected to determine the damage distribution, and divide the total health of the ship in question by those odds, to determine an average number of attacks required to kill the ships.

The full set of odds, incidentally, is "The ability of my ship to produce a damage threshold of X" multiplied by "The failure rate of the defender to mitigate that threshold". Each individual mash-up of those will simply be added to each other.

E.G.: An Advanced TIE with an Accuracy Corrector is attacking Baron Fel.

The odds of the Adv. TIE of producing at least 2 damage is 100%.

The odds of the Adv. TIE of producing 3 or more hits is 0%, except at Range 1.

The odds of Baron Fel being hit by this, with his full combo up, is appx 2%.

The odds of Baron Fel being dealt 2 damage by this, with his full combo up, is 0% (he will have either a natural evade, focus, or blank).

Therefore, the first HP will take around 50 attacks to penetrate, on average.

Following that, the Baron's numbers falter a bit, due to the loss of the Stealth Device.

His new odds of being hit by 2 damage, with the full combo up, is approximately 5%.

Appx 40 attacks will kill both of his remaining HP.

The moral of this story? If you're flying a TIE Advanced with Accuracy Correctors vs SuperFel, you NEED to be either at Range 1, or remove some of his combo through blocking, or it will take you around 90 attacks to destroy his measly 3 health.

Of course, when you're dealing with such long odds, you will encounter wild swings of variance. It takes 50 attacks on average, but sometimes it only takes 1 attack if he's unlucky, or 300 if he isn't.

Of course, when you're dealing with such long odds, you will encounter wild swings of variance. It takes 50 attacks on average, but sometimes it only takes 1 attack if he's unlucky, or 300 if he isn't.

I'd argue the opposite: When dealing with such a large number of a events, the "swings of variance" as you call them will be much less extreme.

Example:

If I flip a coin 4 times, I will get on average 2 heads and 2 tails. However, since I'm only flipping it 4 times, the chance of getting 4 heads is actually pretty high.

On the other hand, if I flip a coin 400 times, I will get on average 200 heads and 200 tails. The chance of getting 400 heads is incredibly slim.

See the Law of Large Numbers:

In probability theory, the law of large numbers (LLN) is a theorem that describes the result of performing the same experiment a large number of times. According to the law, the average of the results obtained from a large number of trials should be close to the expected value, and will tend to become closer as more trials are performed.

The law of large numbers tends to kick in around 30. Which always feels small to me.

Notably, understanding Mitigation is also key to understanding another core concept i'm writing up: Critical Vulnerability.

I'm likely to post a new topic about that tomorrow