Ships & Modules

Cruise missiles are in no way inferior to turrets, they just have different advantages.

Missiles are not often used in PVP, especially fleets only because of their delayed damage. When a missile is fired it takes a few seconds to hit while turrets hit instantly. The further your range the more delay you will have to deal with.This can cause problems due to not knowing if an additional volley will be needed until the previous volley has landed. again this issue gets worse as range increases. this is a big problem in fleet ops as often the target is dead before the last volleys of missiles hit resulting in wasted DPS.

An advantage of missiles is they never miss. They are supposed to be able to be shot down by defender missiles, but these only seem to work when used by NPC's. However a fast target can take less damage even though the missile will hit. This can be an issue for cruise missiles when firing at small ships such as frigates and destroyers, as the target is sometimes fast enough to get out of the blast radius before the explosion hits them, resulting in zero damage. This is where explosion velocity comes in. Larger missiles have slower explosion velocity. The second issue is due to explosion radius. If the explosion radius is larger than the signature radius of the target the target will take less damage. if the explosion radius is 4 times the size of the targets signature radius the target will only take 25% of the damage. Due to the way volume increases in a 3D sphere this has a larger effect then some would expect. For example a explosion radius of 100 meters is not double a signature radius of 50 meters is is closer to 6 times the size. you are gaining that extra volume all the way around, on all sides as well as the top and bottom. Hence the volume of a sphere is approximately 6 times the volume of a smaller sphere with half the radius.

With turrets both the speed you are traveling and the speed your target is traveling can both cause you to miss. With missiles, as long as you are using the right size missile for the size of your target they will not miss. No matter how fast you are traveling it will not afect your hit chance. this makes speed taking with missile DPS very appealling if you have the right set up. Another advantage is skills and rigs can reduce the explosion radius and increase the explosion velocity, As well as affect the amount those statistics influence the damage. For example a unmodified Fury cruise missile will 9 times out of 10 do no damage to a fast frigate. But a precision cruise missile with max support skills and rigor rigs will hit that frigate every time, and hit it hard. While a target painted cruiser can often be hit for full damage will this same set up.

Turrets often look better on paper due to there higher DPS, while things like rigor rigs do not affect paper DPS. But when actually used in combat the fact that missiles do not miss and can hit for full damage at maximum range really starts to level the battle field.

For example say you are flying a Mach that has a paper DPS of say 1200, and you compare that to a CNR with a paper DPS of only 600. Now you are running a mission, the Mach misses the targets 25% Of the time, and when it hit it is only averaging about 75% of its damage due to falloff. While the CNR hits with every volley but due to explosion velocity only does about 80% damage. The Mach still comes out on top but is only doing about 600 DPS of actual applied damage while the CNR is doing about 480 applied DPS. Not as good as the Mach, but the Mach is not even close to double the DPS, as it appears on paper.

Cruise missiles could use some love however, as I have found that using fury heavy missiles will often complete missions faster than using cruise missiles switching back and fourth between fury and precision. the higher rate of fire combined with smaller explosion radius allows them to hit much harder on smaller targets and still hit for max damage on larger targets. this problem is far more pronounced in citadel missiles as they are so poorly balanced they can barely hit capital ships for full damage. When a dread can speed tank your missiles the missiles quickly become useless. A little buff to the explosion radius on cruise missiles and torps, and a major buff on the same for citadel missiles and they would be on par, at least for me.

i gave him till missiles never miss... apparently he stopped playing in 04...

see ex radius and ex velocity...

You should read more too, as I've already stated here once and game states too, that bombers have NO explosion velocity bonus. Only missile speed and royal raw damage bonus.

mmm Torp phoon with double heavy neuts and full tackle... give me more buffs!! and fear the almighty typhoon!!!

Fix the raven?... 5% resist bonus and 10% missile velocity bonus... 8 hi's

Fozzie doesn't really like resist bonuses; I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for him to add it to any more ships. The Raven doesn't need to all that tanky, but if it's not going to get tankier, it needs to get gankier.

A moderate mass reduction, a couple of thousand PG and maybe moving a high to a mid would fix everything that's wrong with the Raven.

A straight up 20% increase in base missile velocity and explosion velocity would do wonders for Torps (Trim Stealth Bomber bonuses accordingly). I don't want to hear any bullshit about "no tracking" when a BS with no prop mods can speed tank torps.

Taking base range out to 24Km (22km really) compares pretty reasonably with 800mms, Megapulse, or Neutrons.

I think people underestimate the value of pure damage types and doing 800+ DPS out to lock range (As opposed to the Mach which does rather less and has a shorter locking range too), but on the whole I'd have to agree.

It's a little unfair to compare a 2-bonus navy faction BS directly with a 3-bonus pirate faction BS; the pirate BS is supposed to be better, and the price reflects that. But having acquired your Mach (or your Nightmare, come to that), it's pretty cheap to fit; the CNR needs some expensive bling, and that negates the supposed price and skill requirement advantages.

I thoroughly agree that there ought to be at least one missile-focused Pirate battleship. I'd love to be able to fly a Guristas Usurper!

Granted the Mael can have a better shield tank, though not with 1400mm arties, as it then need ACR rig.

As for the rest, as I said, not a single argument. As I said, the Raven lack utility for solo stuff, but that's a problem of shield tank, nothing else.

And about the flight time, this argument is bad, because of Tengu and Drake : cruise missiles have the same speed than Tengu's bonused heavy missiles. Flight time is obviously not a problem for the Tengu, so why should it be a problem for the Raven ?

Compare a Raven to any fleet BS actually used in the game, and you'll see : stats wise, the Raven is better or at least competitive. It's only drawback are the Tengu, resist bonus, shield tank (per se, not tank in itself), and being tier2.

Compared to Typhoon (like the only competition), it's PG is really small-ish. You can up to quad plate your Typhoon and still be useful, 1 plate on Raven and even without neuts, you can't fit full rack of torp launchers + MWD.

And what fix does large missiles need ? Dps is already on par with other weapons. Only problem of large missiles are damage application, but if torp suddenly wreck cruisers, that would be a problem too. And torp range is largely enough for the damage they put. Torp have blasters damage, don't forget it.

The Raven, and large missiles, are certainly not OP, but be careful with what you ask.

Why not (let's put the general consensus aside)? Say you have only armor logis available and you need BS size gang to do whatever is your intent... So you ditch few BCS but gain slots for TPs, webs, MJD even. Oh wait, you don't as Raven doesn't have enough powergrid. Or go with XL shield boosters while rest of the crew is armor.
Not like you have any other torp choice apart from Typhoon which 1) is ugly (but somewhat likeable, I admit) 2) you waste projectiles bonus.

On topic, I like the idea of buffing the missiles themselves, rather than making up for their weaknesses with hull bonuses (I stand corrected on the bomber hull bonuses, stupid me /shame) and toning the bonuses down.
Cruises could use a bit of extra oomph, because to truly use their range you need to slot sebos + have tackle on the far end - so it better would be worth while when the volley finally hits.