Zenith Mirror reflections not quite work like expected

[carldong]

According to the description, it seems that the attack will be reflected back with 10x original damage. This time I encountered an AI Superfortress -- with its 1600x250 attack and 1,500,000 health, I threw full caps of MkI and II mirrors at it, expecting to reflect back 16000x192 damage (or at least, 1600x192 in case I understand incorrectly). If it is the former, the SF will be killed right there, and if latter, have a large portion of its health chewed through.

It turns out that my entire loss of Mirrors (MkI one shot, MkII two shots) only dealt less than (approximately, since I am spamming youngslings too) 1% of SF's health, and gave me a reprisal level 2. Really?? I thought it just happens on guard posts. That basically rendered Mirrors useless isn't it? With its 10x damage to self, slow speed, and low attack.

Now, in this game I wanted to test the ability of several interesting ship type, so Mirror was actually added by editing save file. I know that some ship types (e.g. Protector Starship) cannot be added this way, is there anything special about Mirrors so that they just behave differently because I manually added them?

[Lord Of Nothing]

That seems odd. Were you within range at the time? Mirrors don't reflect damage when the attacker is outside their range, and superforts have nasty range...
I had wondered if it was counter-dark matter on the super, but it doesn't seem to have that. (On the AI version, at least)

[carldong]

Yes, in range. I dumped all mirrors right next to the superfortress using assault transports. I just see the flame waves all getting reflected back and hit the fortress

[carldong]

Yeah, I am really unhappy about how poor the reflection is. I tried that on a needler GP (after I killed the superfortress with an... Armored Warhead), and the reflection does only an ignorable damage, ONLY about 1/10 of the Mirrors' cannons. Were these terribly nerfed some point in the history? If so, then what use are they? An expensive, Missile Frigate range, fragile, low attack, throw away, dark matter emitter?

[Toranth]

Hmm, according to the patch notes, Zenith Mirrors had their reflection multiplier reduced to 4x back in version 5.005 (in March 2011!).  However, 7.045 updated the tooltip and carrier logic for mirrors, and both reference the 10x return fire modifier...

This will require actual checking. 
I've never paid attention to them, as I personally don't like ZMirrors for a lot of reasons, but especially since I zombified a bunch of them and they proceeded to kill me.  That was just too annoying.

[carldong]

Hmm, according to the patch notes, Zenith Mirrors had their reflection multiplier reduced to 4x back in version 5.005 (in March 2011!).  However, 7.045 updated the tooltip and carrier logic for mirrors, and both reference the 10x return fire modifier...

This will require actual checking. 
I've never paid attention to them, as I personally don't like ZMirrors for a lot of reasons, but especially since I zombified a bunch of them and they proceeded to kill me.  That was just too annoying.

Even if it is 1x it will drain the Supefortress/Normal fortress like it is butter. But no, it looks like 0.01x or something like that now.

[Kahuna]

Zenith Mirrors have never done anything except cost a lot of resources to build. At the time when those "Nominations for Worst Ship Ever" polls were done (~3 years ago) there was numerous ships that did even less so it didn't get nominated. Thanks to those polls Raiders, Infiltrators, Anti Armors and so on are now viable options.

[carldong]

OK, after some pause-war, I suspect/confirmed that Zenith Mirror has a 10X damage on itself, and 0.1X reflection damage. Which means, the reflection barely scratch anything, unless something has a ridiculously high damage to health ratio. Probably I will not consider using them because I am just sending salvage to the AI. Unless the Mirrors have a higher target priority than everything so that I can use them as (expensive) damage sponge when I mix in my fleet.

[Toranth]

OK, after some pause-war, I suspect/confirmed that Zenith Mirror has a 10X damage on itself, and 0.1X reflection damage. Which means, the reflection barely scratch anything, unless something has a ridiculously high damage to health ratio. Probably I will not consider using them because I am just sending salvage to the AI. Unless the Mirrors have a higher target priority than everything so that I can use them as (expensive) damage sponge when I mix in my fleet.

I did an experiment myself, and my results mostly agree with you.  The Mirror is taking the 10x damage correctly, but it is firing back with it's own firepower (20 damage for a Mk I, normal/normal).  I tried it out using ilostit against a Fighter Mk I (40 attack, 2 armor) and a Fighter Mk II (80 attack, 6 armor).  The Mk I Fighter correctly did 400 to the Mirror, but took 18 in return.  The Mk II Fighter did 800 to the mirror, but took 14 in return.