Critical Damage Mitigation

Modifier · defense

In short: One critical-mitigation rate, cut twice from a critical hit: from the gross isolytic damage before Isolytic Defense, and from the merged standard + isolytic remainder after Apex Barrier. Isolytic damage loses it at both cuts.

Reduces the damage of critical hits taken, cutting each one twice at the same rate: first from the gross isolytic damage, before Isolytic Defense; then, after Apex Barrier and just before the shield/hull split, from the whole merged pool, the standard and the isolytic remainder alike. So isolytic damage loses the rate twice and standard damage once. The raw stat converts through a soft cap like Apex Barrier’s, with a larger constant: mit% = 1 − 50000 / (50000 + critMit). So 50,000 raw is 50% and 200,000 is 80%; the curve approaches but never reaches 100%. It does nothing to non-critical hits, so its worth tracks the attacker’s crit chance and crit damage.

Canonical key: CritMitigation
Game code: 90001
Subsystem: defense
Badge shorthand: Crit Dmg Mit

Critical Mitigation reduces the damage of critical hits against your ship. It is a single rate, but it is not applied at a single point in the pipeline: it cuts a critical hit twice, at two stages, with the same rate both times.

The raw stat converts to that rate through a soft cap: rate = 1 − 50000 / (50000 + critMitigation). It is not compounding (0.99 per 500) and not linear — "500 reduces critical damage by about 1%" is only the small-value reading of the same curve (500 → 0.99%). Examples: 8,000 → 13.8%, 50,000 → 50%, 250,000 → 83.3%. The rate is a property of the defender, so every critical hit that defender takes in a fight shows the same rate, whichever attacker fired it.

The first cut comes off the gross isolytic pool, before Isolytic Defense runs. The second comes off last, after Apex Barrier, immediately before the shield/hull split, and it takes the whole merged pool: the standard remainder and the isolytic remainder alike. In order: gross iso -> first critical cut -> Isolytic Defense; standard -> standard mitigation; the two remainders merge -> Apex Barrier -> second critical cut -> shield and hull damage. So on a critical hit isolytic damage loses the rate twice, standard damage once: at 50%, isolytic keeps a quarter of what Isolytic Defense and Apex leave it, standard a half. The rate therefore understates what critical mitigation takes from an isolytic attacker’s critical hits: the damage flow chart’s Crit Mitigation node shows both: the rate, and its actual impact, the share of the critical hits’ damage it removed.

The logs show it: on every critical hit, the second cut divided by itself plus everything that landed on shield and hull is exactly the rate, the same as the first cut divided by the gross isolytic pool. Had the second cut taken standard damage only, the isolytic that landed would sit in that denominator uncut and the ratio would come out lower.

Most CSV combat logs expose only one combined Mitigated Critical Damage amount. Recover the rate directly from the CSV with: Mitigated Critical Damage / (Mitigated Critical Damage + Total Isolytic Damage + Hull Damage + Shield Damage). For example, if the two cuts remove 300 total and the logged survivors are 800 isolytic plus 400 shield/hull damage, the rate is 300 / (300 + 800 + 400) = 20%.

For raw JSON combat logs only, the zero-based attack-payload fields expose the cuts separately: payload [15] is the first cut (from gross isolytic) and payload [14] the second (from the merged pool; the game and mod CSVs call it “standard” critical mitigation, but it includes the isolytic remainder’s share). These are JSON array positions, not CSV column numbers. Their sum is the CSV Mitigated Critical Damage value. The rate can also be recovered from either raw component: rate = [15] / ([15] + Total Isolytic Damage) = [14] / ([14] + Hull Damage + Shield Damage), with any Infusion or Polaron that landed taken out of Hull Damage, as it never joins the merged pool. In raw JSON, Total Isolytic Damage is payload [11] + [12], the iso amount left after [15] was removed. Both ratios reproduce the same rate, apart from rounding. Newer mod CSVs may expose the same components as named Mitigated Standard Critical Damage and Mitigated Isolytic Critical Damage columns.

The order matters because a mitigation amount must be divided by the damage entering that cut, not by the original hit. In raw terms, dividing [15] by post-Isolytic-Defense damage, or [14] by Total Damage before standard mitigation and Apex Barrier, produces the wrong percentage. For a CSV with only the combined amount, the parser splits it by the same identity: both cuts are the rate’s share of what each left (r / (1 − r) of Total Isolytic Damage for the first, of Hull + Shield Damage for the second), so first cut = Mitigated Critical Damage x Total Isolytic Damage / (Hull Damage + Shield Damage + Total Isolytic Damage) and the second is the remainder. Some CSV exports of critical isolytic hits also add that hidden iso share to Total Damage, so Total Damage is not a valid Critical Mitigation denominator; the parser detects and corrects that export bug.