Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Hello there.

CCP Rise (Kil2) said on the Caldari BS balancing thread :



As there are no real debate threads about balancing battleship-sized missiles, this is where we debate about them !

First we need to pin down what's wrong with large missiles.

Then, we propose stuff.

So yeah, what's wrong with large missiles ?

1 - Damage application is quite hard to reach.

Why would you pick a Raven over a Megathron for close-range ganking ? The Megathron can hit pretty much everything it can web and does tons of DPS. Why a Raven would be useful ?

A Megathron can web its targets and relentlessly destroy them. A Raven will need webs and targetpaints in order to reach its DPS.

2 - Torpedoes have the same range as HAMs.

When you pick bigger guns, you expect changes such as less tracking, more range, more damage, more cap-consumption, more PWG/CPU needs. Torpedoes have less tracking (And by tracking, I mean ability to hit stuff) and THE EXACT SAME RANGE.

3 - T2 torpedoes are of no use.

Rage torps have an explosion velocity of 61 and an explosion radius of 774 while flying 16.6% closer than T1.
Javelin torps have an explosion velocity of 71 and an explosion radius of 450 while flying 50% farther than T1.

T2 torpedo launchers have very high CPU requirements (88 per launcher).

We have Rage Torps that can't even hit a shield Battleship for full damage unless the battleship is webbed AND painted (fiy, the rebalanced Raven has a 345m signature with 2 shield rigs and an LSE, while flying at 134m/s, which is twice the explosion velocity of even T1 torps).

We have Javelin torps which are actually not all that bad compared to Rages, but no one uses them because Anemic range + 50% is still anemic.

4 - Torps take a massive amount of cargohold space.

A Raven full of torps will hold 6650 missiles. A T2 Torpedo launcher full of torps will hold 20 torps.
A Tempest full of ammo will hold 24000 ammo. A T2 800mm gun will hold 120 ammo.

Right.

I believe we are quite done with torps here, let's move on to Cruise missiles.

Have you ever seen a PVP ship with cruise missiles apart from Logan's Typhoon Fleet issue ? I have not.

Let's check what's wrong.

1 - The Range.

See, missiles have two values for range calculation. Velocity and flight time.

A missile that flies for 10s at 1000m/s will reach 10km, it's simple.

Now all cruise missiles have the same velocity, 3750. Only the flight time differs. 20/15/10 for faction/fury/precision.

20 seconds to reach maximum range, 30 seconds will max skills. Wow. With no skills, maximum range for faction missiles is 75km, 56.3 for fury and 37.5 for precision.

If you compare it with Heavy Missiles, a Faction HM have a flight time of 6.5.

Now let's truly talk about range now. A Raven, with all V and his 50% bonus to velocity, can throw cruise missiles at 253.1km. Yay. Fury will reach 190km, Precision 126.6km.

If we want to make cruise missiles competitive, we need to bump their velocity up, nerf their range and eventually boost the damage.

No one needs missiles that can fly for a full 30 seconds toward a target at 250km. A Titan can warp-out if he sees cruise missiles coming his way !

Now here's how I would fix large missiles. This is by no means what I want CCP to do, this is just a debating thread. If Kil2 thinks "Oh, well, that's good, we should do this", then great, we've helped and missile users will rejoice.

Torps :

30% buff to Torpedo velocity, nerf Bombers' bonuses accordingly :

his will bring No-Skill Torps to 1950m/s, which equals to 11.7km. Rage torps will reach 9.750km. Javelin will reach 17.550km.

On a Raven will full skills (Remember, the Raven is a long-range platform, with a 10% bonus to missile velocity), here are the numbers :

All V Torps will reach 39.487km, Rage torps will reach 32.9km, Javelin will reach 59.225km.

On a Typhoon, that's 26.3km/21.9km/39.48km.

10% nerf to Rage Torpedo explosion radius :

This will bring Rage Torps' explosion radius from 580 to 522 and make it more usable.

50% nerf to Torpedoes volume :

Sounds huge but it's actually the same volume as cruise missiles. This will bring full clips tp 40 torps for T2, 36 for meta 4.

Those 3 buffs should bring Torps in-line and competitive with other short-range weapons. Don't forget that turret-based weapons don't need painters to apply their DPS and aren't as weak as missiles versus smaller targets (Due to missile travel time and explosion velocity/radius).

Cruise :

30% Buff to Cruise missiles velocity

40% Nerf to Cruise missiles flight time

Those two nerfs will bring a Raven's range to 197kms with faction missiles, with missiles travelling for 18 seconds at 10968m/s (Previously, 30 seconds at 8437m/s). Fury will reach 148km, Precision will reach 98km. For a Typhoon, that's 131km/98km/65km.

This should help with the "Okay this carrier will warp-out by the time the missiles get there".

15% Buff to Cruise missiles damage

I'm not entirely sure about this one. Considering cruise missile users have to bring along target painters in order to hit properly, and considering you can't target-paint nor web anything past 90km, I wouldn't be against a damage buff that would make up for the lack of Ewar at those ranges.

So what do you think ? Would that help Torps/Cruise missiles users ?

Personally, I think mods to increase range/exp velo. , decrease explosion radius etc makes no sense. I'd rather see the buffs above implemented.

Hello, SMT008 and thank you for opening this thread.

Even with your proposed speed increase, you didn't really make cruise missiles any more useful in gangs - the alpha strike teams will continue to pop ships long before your missiles will have landed. Then there's the question of Defender Missiles that nobody uses, Citadel missiles that can't hurt anything smaller than the Moon and lastly, the question of missile boat damage.

Here's how I'd do it:

1. Missile design should have an upper limit to the flight time of missiles, 10 seconds at most with maximum skills (more with rigs and implants, of course). If they wanted to add more range to the missile type, it should be through their velocity.

2. Due to their delayed damage, Cruises would be an ideal candidate for the "alpha strike" weapon - huge damage on one hit, but launching sparsely. The flight time is the balancing factor, rather than the instant damage artillery can apply.

3. Contrary to popular belief, Cruise missile dps is perfectly in line with other long range weapons if you compare a single turret with a single launcher. However, most gunboats can field 8 bonused guns, whereas the Raven only sports 6 bonused launchers (for a total of about 8 launchers as opposed to, say, Maelstrom's 10.64). Solution to this can be either increased damage per launcher, increased bonuses to hulls or more launchers per hull.

4. Rather than using a full launcher slot, defender missiles should use a utility slot. Much like TD affects the ship firing guns, so too should defenders intercept a portion of missiles from a targeted ship automatically. Alternatively, Defender missiles would be removed and TD would affect missile explosion velocity and radius as it was planned before, while TC/TE would counter that.

5. Unlike what James above proposes, Torpedoes should get a range increase. An unbonused Torpedo Launcher II with Javelin torpedo has a maximum range of approximately 30.4 km, modifiable only by implants and rigs. An unbonused Neutron Blaster Cannon II with Null has a maximum range of optimal + 2x faloff = 47.6 km, additionally modified by TE and TC as well as rigs and implants. Obviously, since Blasters are the shortest range guns, all other guns have a longer maximum range.

6. Citadel missiles have issues with damage application, both due to flgiht time (see point 1) and the fact that they have a huge explosion radius and small explosion velocity. Both aren't helped by Phoenix being bonused to kinetic damage. Whereas the guns gain the ability to hit smaller targets the further away they are, missiles do not. That should somehow be addressed, though I honestly have no idea how :p

Which is why I didn't ask for any explosion radius reductions for regular torps, only for Rage torps which are a little bit over the top.



Sort of true but still. I don't see Rage torps used much, that's mostly due to their massive explosion radius. Considering you need to fit T2 launchers, the price of both launchers and missiles and the inability to use this ammo on anything but tackled and painted battleships, I feel that a small buff wouldn't hurt.



You mixed things up here. No one ever fits T2 launchers on Bombers except for the ooomph effect (It's not practical at all). And I'd like to see this change by either reducing CPU requirements for T2 Torp launchers, or some other kind of math magics.

But when I talked about nerfing bomber bonuses, I was talking about range bonuses. Bombers can currently throw torps at 60km. If we buff the base torp range, Bombers will throw torps at 120km. Which isn't really what we want. Buff base torp ranges so that Ravens/Typhoons can do their things, but reduce bomber bonuses so that they keep their current ranges.



A nerf to Explosion Radius means a reduction of the "Explosion Radius" value. Might be confusing but that's how CCP does it, if I recall correctly ?



Buffing their damage would yield funny results

I do think all missiles should be based off alpha damage rather than missile spam (ROF).
Switch the role of alpha damage to cruise missile instead of arties it would also help with server lag with less missiles about.

Although i think torp range is fine no need to increase them just improve their effectiveness.

Plenty of people use T2 launchers on bombers, although you're probably right that Arbalests are more common. I agree that we don't want 120 km bombers, I suggested fiddling with BS CPUs instead of torp launcher CPU because bombers are currently basically fine.

Ah semantics... a nerf is generally understood to involve making something worse. Reducing explosion radius would be good for damage application.



First, you too are confusing buffs with nerfs. Rage torp explosion radius was nerfed (made larger) in QR, then buffed by the recent application of GMP despite the simultaneous increase to its base explosion radius. And yes, you should be assuming GMP V.

I don't understand the objection to Rage/Fury being designed around intended targets of a class larger. I have no problems with having to ensure that a typical BS is webbed and painted (MWD-deactivation effect of scrambler is not necessary) before Rage torps can be used more effectively than CN, in fact I think it's good game design, as it offer better results as a reward for appropriate gameplay. It's the same principle with Void etc, just involving different mechanics.

Actually, with GMP affecting torps now, full torp damage is done to almost all T1 BS (only Tempest and Typhoon miss out it seems) even without a web, assuming typical fits and no net result from MWDing (it takes a long time for a BS that isn't a Mach to lumber up to full MWD speed). So be careful that you don't overstate torps' damage application problems against BS.

The problems with torp damage application arise when discussing how effective torps should be against BCs and cruisers, and it's here that the hard damage cap via [target sig]/[explosion radius] can cause problems. Since we're talking about extra range on torps to make the Raven's missile velocity bonus useful, we also need to consider unwebbed BCs and cruisers, and things get a bit complicated...

Extra range on torps has a specific goal : To allow Torp-Ravens to be used in fleet.

Fleets, because they are "large groups of ships", are usually spread apart. Like, it's a 15/20km ball around the FC most of the time (I'm talking about BS fleets and/or big fleets of 100+ ).

When you are stuck with a 20km range outside of which your missiles simply disappear, you can't properly use it in a fleet context. Guns aren't concerned much by this problem because of falloff mechanics. Bullets don't disappear, they just deal less damage.

Which is why I'd like to see Torps with more range. With a 40km range, you have enough range to play around without having to worry about half of your fleet not being able to hit the target.

Also, I don't think extra-range on torps is linked to hitting unwebbed BCs and cruisers.

If you're using a Torp-Raven at range, you're probably in a fleet. If not, then why don't you just close-in and web/paint/whatever the targets yourself ?

If I had to state my goal, I would say that I want a Raven to be able to fight battlecruisers and battleships effectively. If you encounter cruisers/destroyers/smaller ships, then support is needed to web and/or paint targets. But against battlecruisers and battleships, you should be able to reliably damage them alone.



Mhmm, I'm not entirely sure about the fact that plenty of people use T2 launchers on bombers. Actually, it would be a good thing to ask to the Database guy at CCP. How many bombers have T2 launchers fitted, how many bombers have T1 launchers fitted.



Probably can't and certainly won't be done.



As long as there are no DPS loss, then yes.

That probably won't be implemented as it's too complicated/far from what currently exists.

But with just some stats changed they can't really make them viable in pvp without making them op. Which is whined about and soon nerfed and we are back to this current discussion.

Even CCP most likely does't have a good solution to this which could possibly explain why nothing have been done so far.

Yeah you don't need to convince me that torps could do with more range.



Because you can't because they're faster than you and don't want to get 1000 DPS up the arse? Extra range on torps gives you a greater ability to engage small targets outside whatever web range you happen to have. What sort of damage do you think they should be doing to those sort of targets? Figure out that and you can work back to the required explosion radius/velocity figures.