Ships & Modules

What. The. Hell.

Cruise missiles are not a machariel? Do you understand how stupid that sounds?

"But Arronicus, even though that's EXACTLY what I said, I meant Cruise missiles on a Raven are not a machariel"

Ok, now you're comparing a tech 1 ship, to a pirate faction ship. Still stupid.

"But Arronicus, I -really- meant Caldari Navy Ravens, when I said Raven"

Now you're comparing a missile boat with long range weaponry, to a projectile boat with short range weaponry.


However, should you actually make a worthwhile comparison, like say, a cruise missile NAVY raven, to an artillery Machariel, for pve, you'll find the navy raven vastly outperforms the machariel. Similarly, if you compared a torpedo navy raven, to an autocannon Machariel (BOTH short range weapons), you'd find that on large targets, the navy raven has higher effective dps. The main problem with torpedos in pvp on ships like the raven, and typhoon, is their inability to even SCRATCH smaller hulls, where something like blasters, lasers, or even gimp-tracking autocannons can tear them up.

As for your comment that the machariel is an aberration compared to every other hull;
The Vindicator is a far superior pvp hull, with the constraint of being more skillpoint intensive (a little), and more expensive to fly. For PvE purposes, The nightmare, paladin, vargur, vindicator, and one or two others I might be forgetting, offer a much better blend of true projected damage, higher max dps, and a better active tank.

It's uninformed people like you, that have no idea about the weak or strong points of a particular ship, or what ships that are actually better than it, that get ships nerfed (or buffed) when they don't need it, or when other ships need it more than they do.

Correct

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I'm not sure how Arronicus thought I had issue with cruises...but there we go, such is the Internet I suppose.

Let me put it in terms perhaps clearer - buffs to cruises seriously risk overpowering the raven family in PvE terms. Fitted correctly they have fantastic *applied* DPS - something one only learns from experience of actually flying them.

But don't let that get in the way of a rant

Congrat ! You just reinvent precison missiles !

Torpedo without any bonus to thier explosion velocity can probably be partially speed tanked by a battleship with an afterburner...

Any mwd will work, or flying a typhoon, or a halo set, or a ragnarok, and any nano/overdrive module. And loki links.

I DONT LIKE YOUR "ANY" SIR

Duel ! O_/

Well, any may be a tiny bit excessive, although GMP skill now counter a fair amount of speed for BS. A triple trimark double 1600mm Megathron for example will take full damage, even with a MWD.

And the Typhoon is a BC... :p

Signature counter speed, and navy torpedoes with GMP5 have 337m explosion radius. A target painter will counter almost any speed module a BS could fit.

The problem is that missiles doing consistant damage should be balanced by a lower damage output, though that's obviously not the case with torpedoes, so the drawback is a very selective set of target or need for support (TP/web) to apply these damage fully.

dbl.

I'm not making a case against anything hre ! I'm trying to understand what make large missiles supposedly bad. People here clame that large missiles need a buff. Do you think it's the case too ?

I was NOT advocating for a large missiles nerf, and the TD example I gave was limited to torpedoes damage.

I assume what we have currently on TD.

And infact, *you* just opened the discussion to this thread.

One question though : how do you counter a TP in torpedo range ? LR large fleet is not everything. I can assume ECM and damp will be fixed to be able to counter TP if you want, but I hardly see how ECM won't counter everything then, and damp will never counter TP at closer range (unless it counter everything too).

You should really developpe your idea about EW IMO.

Though I completely agree with you for the general idea applyed to fleet fights. ECM and damp counter long point, long web and TD as well as logi, but ECM still don't work on unbonused hull, and damp don't only have a very limited use at short range. Maybe that's what you are saying ?

Anyway, counter or not, you cannot design torp to hit a BS for full damage even when with an AB... And this apply for all missiles : they need a counter and AB is one, so it's fine. That's what I'm saying. HML weren't in this state, because even the fastest frigates with signature bonus weren't able to avoid their damages, and they did almost as many raw damage than a upper class weapon.

PS : about the Typhoon, it was a joke about the fact that the Typhoon have the signature of a BC and is faster than some BC (just compare it to the Drake or the Myrmidon for example). Whatever its name, if something move like a BC and is not larger than a BC, why couldn't I call it a BC ? Maybe you prefer I call these BC BS ?
PS2 : lol about all this wind. :D

What i did was argue against your common use of examples that involves target painters:
It's about as ludicrous as comparing two turrets and saying the one with worse base tracking actually does more damage because it had tracking mods or painters applied while the other one didn't (or didn't need to).

I've spent a couple of threads now trying to tell you that basicly every missile in the game is balanced around not doing 100% of it's paper damage. That's how they are balanced. It's an oversimplification but in essence, that's how it is and getting into details with you seem to leave you missing the larger picture.


You are prone to use examples with painters as some sort of crude counter-argument to propmods:
For all intents and purposes the 'natural speed' of a ship, is it's speed with a propmod running and the ship moving, and as such the 'natural accuracy' of any weapon system is a ship going full speed.

There is no "what if a ship had a propmod?". Every ship has a propmod (and mobility is not a projected effect like EW).

That is the natural environment of any ship in EVE. Ships are not meant to sit still: the weapon systems and accuracy mechanics are balanced around ships moving, not sitting still.

The fact that ships are sitting still (either by choice, or by the imbalance between two-tackling EW and sensor EW) is what leads to this profileration of oversized weapons and missiles.

Yet you've come into any missile thread lately wielding "what if you apply painters?" examples and claiming HML had no credible drawbacks. The drawbacks of missiles is what is visible when you take all the EW out of the equation.

How is that so hard to get?

"Delayed damage is no drawback" - it's a hell of a drawback when what you're shooting is not pointed.
"Missiles do more damage than X" - their applied damage is below 100% if you don't web or paint the target.

I'm sorry if my tone is getting harsh, but it's frustrating having to repeat even the most basic aspects of the mechanics over and over when there are so many details that can complicate it further.


What's there to develop that hasn't been said already?

Reverse the 45+90 paradigm to 90+45 for the sensor-based systems so they can compete with 100km webs and points.

As it stands, it's a counter-intuitive situation where you would bring damps or ECM to deal with long range points, webs, painters and projected damage from oversized weapons; but in order to deal with it the countering ships would need to operate within the point, web, painted and projected damage themselves.

This was always the true problem with HML that enabled large gangs to either sit still and lob missiles, or randomly follow an orbiting anchor without having to pay attention to accuracy effects. That whole common strategy is utter crap if there is a way to counter the few lynchpins webbing and painting. The inability to credibly do that is the real "OP" of HML.

Reversing damps to 90+45 would simply mean they catch diminishing returns slower. In a 45+90 system they are operating in falloff and will have trouble eating a 150km sensor down to a contained range at half effect. In fact, almost any sensible use of damps today assumes using them in falloff, which is simply odd as it's a range-dependent system. The same goes for ECM, it was always designed around Caldari range-combat ideals; that's how it was envisioned and originally balanced as a sniping system meant to be countered by snipers and sniping-counters like damps.

On top of that ECM should be changed to a scripted, stacking-limited mechanic where you are only allowed to run one attempt per ship at a time while the racial modules are changed into racial scripts to enable more balanced setups. Not only will that help lone ships battling ECM outnumbered but also improve the value of ECCM.

That is wrong ! As I said, a double 1600mm plate + triple armor rig Megathron will take full damage from navy torpedoes, MWD or not. Indeed, an AB will reduce these damage, but when was the last time you saw an AB BS ? AB are used specifically to counter large weapons, and that would work against large missiles, but these large missiles are not used in the first place, so using AB is a bit useless in this purpose.

As for HML, that's indeed not wrong anymore because of the speed buff cruisers received and the nerf HM received. Explosion radius of HM was largely bellow cruiser signature radius which compensated the cruiser speed vs explosion velocity even with MWD. The only counter to HML was AB. And As I said, even an Ares, one of the fastest ship with a bonus to MWD signature (basically, you cannot better tank heavy missiles), was NOT able to mitigate Tengu damage to the point a light missiles ship wouldn't have killed it a lot faster !

HML weren't OP only because of their large fleet use, but also because of their small scale use and their overversatility.

And if I used TP example, it was only because the AB is more of a counter to missiles than a regular prop mod you consider every ship using. So using TP to counter a counter seemed relevant to me. My TP example would be misplaced and relevant to your EWAR crusade if only missiles didn't hit their itended target for full damage. But missiles do hit their target for full damage, so TP is only a counter to a counter to missiles.

A MWD do NOT counter missiles most of the time, because with GMP skill, explosion radius of missiles is lower than their average target's signature radius, and the difference between these radius, exarcebated by MWD sig penalty, compensate the relitavely higher speed to signature of the MWD. Shield tanking signature penalty remove any advantage of speed you could get, and armor tanking would allow you to speed tank missiles only if you didn't trimarked it or if you used low slot speed modules. That is NOT the regular cases.

As for EWAR, I already said I completely agree with you, but that does almost nothing for short range job. That almost only focus on large gang long range stuff, except maybe for ECM. These are fine ideas though.

@Mike Whiite : my apologies, I may have been a bit harsh. Though, there is no difference in the idea level between your suggestion and precision missiles : both ideas looked at reducing damages/range and improving explosion velocity/radius. Precision missiles just do that : allowing you to better hit smaller target at the expense of lower damage output. As you said, you can't make them too good, or they wouldn't be a point for smaller missiles, and IMO a smaller target should still retain an advantage, because there is plenty of deadly things for them (neutralizers, drones, web, TP). Maybe precision missiles need adjustments, but that wouldn't be different from what you are suggesting. And the case with short missiles not having precision ammo is because of their damage output in one hand, and because of the reverse paradigm between turrets and missiles regarding damage application (though only T2 ammo now support this paradigm).

PS : and I forgot about the damage delay drawback. It is, indeed, a drawback, but how many people warped out to not be volleyed by Drakes or Tengu before them being nerfed ? Drake's HM were not even slower than cruise missiles. I never heard of any problem of damage delay when facing Drake or Tengu fleet, which make me suppose damage delay is not a significant problem in large missiles use.