Mitigation Pipeline

Concept · Damage and defense

In short: The order a hit is cut down in: standard and isolytic mitigation, then Apex Barrier, critical mitigation, the shield split and hull repair. On a critical hit, isolytic damage loses a share before Isolytic Defense. Infusion and Polaron take routes of their own.

Every incoming hit runs the same layered cascade. Each stage reduces what the previous stage let through. Critical hits against a ship with Hull Breach deal +50% critical damage, which enlarges the hit before the first stage.

1. Standard mitigation reduces the standard damage pool (capped at 71.2%, 65.7% for survey ships and armadas), while Isolytic Defense separately reduces the isolytic pool. On a critical hit, critical mitigation’s isolytic share has already been removed from the gross isolytic pool before Isolytic Defense runs.

2. The two remainders merge, and Apex Barrier mitigates the combined pool (soft-capped; weakened by the attacker’s Apex Shred).

3. Critical mitigation cuts what remains of a critical hit a second time, at the same rate, from the whole merged pool: the isolytic remainder as well as the standard. Isolytic damage has now lost the rate twice, standard damage once; the game displays the two cuts summed as a single mitigated-critical-damage figure.

4. The shield split routes part of the surviving damage to shields; the rest reaches the hull. It is a split, not a cut: Shield Mitigation decides the shields’ share and removes nothing.

5. Hull repair heals back a percentage of the previous round’s hull damage (including Burning ticks), capped at 95%.

Infusion and Polaron damage are types of their own: they never merge with the standard and isolytic pools, and both skip standard mitigation and the shield split, so what gets through lands on hull. Infusion is reduced by its own mitigation, Apex Barrier and, on a critical hit, critical mitigation; Polaron by its own mitigation only.