EVE General Discussion

I like this advertisement. It is beautifully crafted and amazing.

Except.

Missiles are one of the most underpowered weapons in the game. This wasn't always true. In the good ole days I remember missiles being able to actually compete with guns for combat that didn't involve either being in a blob or flying a 100mn tengu.

The problem with missiles is the damage calculation system. Let me explain here.

I am in the downtown of a major city, and Russia goes off the handle and nukes the world. In the real world, I'm dead. In EVE, something magical happens.

In EVE, the nuclear explosion would be SO BIG compared to LITTLE ME that I would only get a mild burn at ground zero. If I was walking briskly, I would probably only have a slight scratch. However, the gigantic skyscrapers around me would be completely vaporized because they are SO BIG compared to the explosion.

Conversely, if a firecracker were sitting in the palm of my hand in the real world I would get a nasty burn, but in EVE I would probably lose an entire arm because I was so big compared to the explosion.

This means that the firecracker, if EVE was real, would do more damage to my body than being at ground zero of a nuclear detonation.

It makes no sense CCP. It is counter intuitive and has no basis in reality at all. I know WHY missiles were nerfed, because of nano. But the fact you can get a ship going 10km/s has nothing to do with missiles. You shouldn't have nerfed missiles, you made them quite crappy.

But hey, please do advertise how awesome missiles are. The new players will figure all this out for themselves.

I must be getting old because I used to pvp when missiles were "overpowered".

Sure, you had the occasional torp raven that was doing 4800 damage a volley (back in the day ravens were actually competitive with things like the megathron, not true anymore), but you could outrun the missile if you were in something small and fast.

Missiles were the innocent bystander who got arrested by the cops because he was standing too close to the nanoships when they were overpowered. Nanoships were getting 5, 15, 25km/s depending on the hull, and missiles were popular there because they didn't care about range or tracking so much.

Missiles never needed a nerf, only nano did.

Sure, nukes aren't the weapon of choice in space. But in EVE we have a much wider variety of missiles than nukes. Besides, my example was earthbound, where nukes are quite effective.

I don't know what CCP claims they do, I am explaining what they actually do.

In EVE, missiles have an explosion radius. If this radius is smaller than the target's sig radius, it does less than max damage. If it is equal or larger, it does full damage. Speed is also factored in. The end result is missiles that can only apply full dps to large, stationary, targets.

That is why your full rack of heavy missiles can only do 16 damage to that merlin orbiting you at 1000m/s.

Except we're in space. We get hit by a percentage of the energy, and the rest is radiated into the void, whereas in atmo, the explosion compresses the air and blasts everything equally. So a cruise missile is blowing up, but hey, cruise missiles aren't very accurate, so it blows up some distance away, and it only hits you on one part of the damage sphere. Not gonna do a whole lot of damage. If you were in a battleship instead of a frigate though, your ship is large enough that it would take more of the brunt of the explosion, and therefore more damage. Explosion speed is self explanatory, though if it were up to the OCD in me, if you were going a certain amount faster than the explosion radius, say 5 times as fast, you shouldn't get hit at all.

OK so let's have tracking disruptors work vs missiles, and tracking enhancers and computers work for them.

I believe there is a skill that increases enemy sig radius for missiles or somethin like that. I saw it in the market window and I was thinking "Hey, maybe I should buy that!". Although, missiles seem to be a bit more powerful now, although I should still be able to annihalate an NPC Cruiser with a full volley of T1 Heavies from my Drake.

Large guns hitting a frigate would also instantly destroy the frigate. Of course, this is not overpowered, this makes sense.



No, it's less, since the target would be in the next system by the time it hits.

Except that only helps with the "guided" (whatever that actually means in EVE missiles). This means that it doesn't improve rockets, HAMs, or torps.

yup, sadly that is what got them nerfed in the first place and so CCP made up some troll physics about how objects travelling faster than the explosion would take less damage despite coming from a missile that happens to be at equal speed of its target in the vacuum of space..