I would advocate the shield projection of the guardian over the domina's perseverance as a means of PM blocking...
Too much concentrated awesome on a single ability. I agree with the others that perseverence is the way to go if we're going to put PM blocking on any ability.
dominas only affect one target at a time and take too long to select targets, meaning that they would only be useful for capital ships...
Which would be the most useful kind of target.
sure, you could give perseverance a PM block buff, but it would be far too little, and far too late...
While PM's are a problem early, they only go nuts later on as they start to get maxed out. I agree the solutions being tossed around appear very late in the tech tree, but we don't want to put this too low otherwise it will be a bee-line item for Advent in this matchup.
giving PM block at level 6 or 7 techs is just pointless and doesn't solve the problem...
When I first started this train of thought, I was specifically addressing late-game 1400+ command fleets where sinking this much cash into a research line isn't just viable, it's sensible. You're talking about something else, bringing in phase missile resistance starting some time in the mid-game and maxing out in the late-game. I don't think that's off the table, but it's a little more of a grey zone. This raises the question of how early this should become available and how it should phase in. Putting it at the end of the shield upgrade line keeps it well out of beeline range so we don't have to worry about it mucking up the mid-game balance when it's intended to affect primarily late-game.
Actually, the Vasari and TEC shield upgrade techs are quite worthless currently since +5% shield is far inferior to what the armour and hull upgrades offer. If we're going down this road, perhaps this bonus could be applied to all shield upgrades to grant some phase missile protection. This would mean all factions would then have a counter-measure to phase missiles, and since shield upgrades are usually ignored by TEC and Vasari it could finally bring some purpose to them. That still doesn't deal with the issue of deciding where to put these bonuses on the tech tree, or how quickly they should scale.
If your primary concern is not PMs, but instead on buffing the domina
That's kind of the icing on the cake, not the actual objective here. I agree with you that targeting is the domina's primary issue, and if that were fixed its abilities would be far more useful.
I actually recall last week someone mentioned that targeting was the main issue with demo-bots, and its power has increased radically as a result of the relatively minor change to allow it a 360 degree firing arc. This is because it acquires targets instantly and therefor doesn't waste time chasing after targets it's acquired or multiple individuals pegging the same target.
Changing the domina so that it does not require to face its target to use its abilities may well fix it. Because it already has the limitation of channeling, allowing it to acquire more easily shouldn't be that big a deal, but would fix its most egregious behavioral issues.
