Ships & Modules

Long story short Signature radius target velocity explosion radius.


http://www.eve-wiki.net/index.php?title=Missile_launcher

Double-webbed? No. If the target has an AB, you need a single web to get about-maximum damage to most targets. If it does not have an AB, you should be pretty much fine regardless.

^^^ Rage rockets should be reserved for targets bigger than you, faction rockets should do near full dps on any AB af with only one web.

As for why short range missile on the sac is underwhelming it is because of the ship, not the missiles themselves. Rock 3 BCUs and fit the sac like a vagabond and you'll do lots of dps. But you really want to armor tank the sac but with only 5 lows it is really hard to wedge in BCUs. Without any BCUs the sac does seem to have low dps but try flying a vaga with no gyros, it is painful. I like 2x mar 2x eanm 1x bcu on a sac myself.

Oh and once you fly a deimos, everything seems to have low dps

some maths:

Missiles always hit, key attributes are ship signature, ship velocity, explosion radius & explosion velocity of your missiles

Dmg = Base_Dmg * MIN(MIN(sig/Er,1) , (Ev/Er * sig/vel)^(log(drf) / log(5.5)) )

Where
sig = ship signatur
vel = ship velocity
Er = Explosion Radius
Ev = Explosion Velocity
drf = Damage Reduction Factor


Turrets have a hit chance, key attributes are Transversal speed, Range to target, Turret Tracking, Turret Signature Resolution, Target Signature Radius, Turret Optimal Range and Turret Falloff

ChanceToHit = 0.5 ^ ((((Transversal speed/(Range to target * Turret Tracking))*(Turret Signature Resolution / Target Signature Radius))^2) + ((max(0, Range to target - Turret Optimal Range))/Turret Falloff)^2)

Average DPS = Base DPS × [min(hit_chance, 0.01)×3 + max(0.0, hit_chance - 0.01) × (0.99 + hit_chance) / 2]

Tell that to my Dramiel.

Medium sized missiles are just underwhelming when taking out frigate hulls. I'd really like to see CCP introduce signature/velocity modules

Always hitting means nothing when you are only hitting 50 damage per launch on a frig, while you can score big crits with turrets

Basically missiles and rockets have the benefit that they always hit, which is a huge benefit over guns, since you don't need to take care about tracking. However, there is a hidden modifier which makes large missiles / torpedos hitting very bad small/fast ships. So basically with small rockets and missiles you can hit small stuff very well and make it die fast. With medium missiles and rockets you can usually make small stuff run away after short time but if it is well tanked then you are in trouble. With large missiles and rockets... yeah its not worth to use them on small stuff if you don't have target painters and web on it.

Furthermore, missiles have usually lower damage but higher range and hit better small/fast targets than rockets/torpedos. If you fit rockets or torpedos then a web is must have.

Guns have the advantage that they can hit small stuff from large distance very well (if in optimal + falloff) but they have the disadvantage that they stop hitting at all if the small stuff is in close and fast orbit around you.

So as you see... its balanced in the way that while guns have a higher damage on paper they can easily doing no damage in practice if wrongly applied. So if you know how to use guns and can avoid the enemy orbiting you in a fast manner than guns have an adventage in capable hands... however missiles are much easier to use since you don't need to take care about this whole tracking thingy and you can fully concentrate on the field.

A good Sac can tank any of those ships with relative ease.

And drakes being one of the only missile ships used in PvP invalidates "missiles are fine for pvp."

The truth is somewhere between the hyperbole.