Player Features and Ideas Discussion

That was my mistake, I used the wrong verb there. What I meant to say was that Rage torp explosion radius been INCREASED a couple of times (I'm aware that this is a nerf in itself).
I will concede that the introduction of GMP affecting torpedoes does balance the recent increase in Rage explosion radius from 650 m to 774 m.


Because it isn't fair. For example, T2 close range ammo such as Void or Conflagration on battleships aren't being constrained as anti-capital ship ammo and can be reliably used against battleship targets with only one support module.

The differences in stats that affect damage projection between Rage torpedoes and T1/faction torpedoes is much bigger than than the differences with Void and T1/faction ammo or Conflag and T1/faction crystals.

When the nano-nerf/QR came, Rage torpedoes suffered a huge combined nerf as missile mechanics were revised to make differences in explosion velocity vs ship velocity have a much greater impact on damage and their explosion radius was increased from 540m to 650m for a pitiful 6.67% damage increase.
Fury missiles were also changed to deal 40% more damage than T1 at the cost of 72% larger explosion radius than T1.

The problem is that CCP was increasing Rage/Fury maximum theoretical damage but the corresponding increase in difficulty to project that damage was scaled much higher.


It is nowhere near as rewarding to train for Rage torpedoes than it is to train for Void since using the latter effectively against ships of your own size doesn't necessitate a webber AND a target painter, but Rage torpedoes do.

The difficulty in damage application for Rage torpedoes (and I guess Fury too) needs to be reduced.

I understand the need for missile systems to have some travel time in order to balance the fact that they always hit if they're in range.

But seriously, we're talking about a 30 seconds flight time. 15 seconds to reach 125km. That's just too high.

If you buff damages, buff missile velocity and nerf flight time, then you get missiles with more alpha, that can reach the target faster.

That makes them good enough to be used in fleets.

Totally on the same page there, glad to see this very worthwhile topic on the forums.
I don't understand why it is perfectly acceptable that missile boats, do about half the damage with worse tracking/explosion velocity/radius then gunboats.
Note we are talking BS and up size hulls (in general).

Another thing that has been mentioned in this thread really needs to be stressed that we are lacking the equivalent of tracking enhancers, it really is needed paired with better base tracking for large missile turrets.
I have suggested fixing "missile travel time" with alpha damage as well, but I don't want to state this as a "pretty please" thing.
It is riddiculous that something that has delayed damage application gets nothing back for it besides "trololol why you use missiles, missiles for nub, you nub".
The gun tracking vs missile tracking is not balanced by missiles disappear when flying too long.
Its balance comes from: meaningless damage when targets fly too fast ,and being unable to do critical damage.
I believe flight speed should be revamped drastically to the point that when something is fired at within range it can't out speed your missile.
Missile speed should only indicate how fast your damage will land and factor into deciding your maximum range.
That would be decent balance v.s. if something flies straight at you with gun turrets, it blows up into a gazzillion pieces.


Torpedoes need a range buff period, whatever the problem would be with bombers should be fixed by modifying bombers not letting an entire weapon-system suffer.
I dont think it would be too outrageous for a frigate size hull to have penalties for firing large sized weapons .

Add some launcher slots to the Raven hulls, improve tracking and flight speed, add tracking modules, remove the missile "flight speed" bonus and turn it into a "flight time" if need be.
No more on paper half the "dps" and flight time bonuses where others have tracking or what have you, on top of worst damage application due to tracking issues.
Fix this till everyone flies Raven's only...
But yes that is the general idea i.m.h.o..

I took some of the idea's in this thread and made a spreadsheet, tweaking the numbers until they seemed comfortable to me .

First, I want to adress a few facts:
I wonder why Torpedos and Cruise missiles don't fit the same role as the light and heavy variants do.

• Rockets do lower alpha, but higher rate of fire and more dps than light missiles. About 19% more dps for T1 rockets. Light missiles have 150% greater initial damage.
• Heavy assault missiles follow the same rule compared to heavy missiles. T1 HAMs do about 38% more dps than T1 HMs and Heavy missiles hit 35% harder.
• Torpedos and Cruise missiles don't however. T1 Torpedos hit 50% harder than cruise missiles and do 83% more dps.
• Rockets and HAMs both have the explosion radius to hit the Target ships nicely, torpedos have a huge explosion radius. (450m compared to Battleships signatures ranging from 330m-500m)
• Dps increase from rockets to HAMs to Torpedos is about 100% each time. Dps increase from light missiles to heavy missiles is 100%, from heavy missiles to cruise missiles is only 50% more.

As mentioned before, Torpedos hava a rediculously low range, and cruise missiles take ages to hit their targets, if they are far away.


It seemes to me, that torpedos and cruise missiles have had their roles swapped. The numbers I came up with will put these in line with their smaller equivalents.
Torpedo dps stay the same, but they hit softer, faster, farther and with a smaller explosion radius.
Cruise missiles get more dps, bigger alpha, higher explosion radius, reduced range and more velocity.
I also played with the explosion velocity, but can't come up with anything reasonable.

Now for the numbers, I'm talking about "eft-dps" here, and i'm starting without skills and other bonuses. They add up later to get what we need ;) My calculations might be off a bit due to "rounding errors".

Torpedos
now:
450 raw damage - 18s ROF - 71m/s explosion velocity - 450m radius - 1500m/s velocity and 6s flight time.
9000m range and 25 dps.

changed to:
300 raw damage - 12s ROF - 74m/s explosion velocity - 370m radius - 1750m/s velocity and 8s flight time.
14000m range and 25 dps.

adding all skills to V and T2 bonuses:
T1 Torpedo:
412 raw damage - 9,18s ROF - 111m/s exp vel. - 277,5m radius - 2625m/s velocity and 12 s flight time.
31500, range and 44,93 dps.

Rage Torpedo:
556 raw damage - 6,61s ROF - 95m/s exp vel. - 477,3m radius - 2187m/s velocity and 12s flight time.
26250m range and 84,25 dps.

Javelin Torpedo:
371 raw damage - 6,61s ROF - 111m/s exp vel. - 277,5m radius - 3937m/s velocity and 12 flight time.
47250m range and 56,17 dps

A Raven would have a range of 47250m (T1) and if the missile velocity weren't changed it would still be 40500m.
A 3x BCU II fit with Rage would deal about 1112 dps with an alpha of 5513 at 39375m.
The big deal is the flight time and the explosion radius. Even Battlecruisers can be hit smoothly with this.
The explosion radius might be too a tad to low, I can't judge this.
If the High alpha of Torpedos should be kept, the damage and ROF would stay the same, and the explosion radius might be put to 410m.

Bombers: I only checked the manticore. It would be able to push out 2 volleys before the timer to cloak again runs out after 15 seconds. The bonus of 20% increased missile velocity could then be decreased to 10% for range buff of 17% or to 5% per level for a range nerf of 3%

Further, a Torpedo, due to it's decreased warhead size would only have a size of 0.05m³. The increased rate of fire would make it even more important to fit more charges into a "clip".

Cruise missiles
now:
300 raw damage - 22s ROF - 69m/s expl vel - 300m radius - 3750m/s velocity and 20s flight time.
75000m range and 13,64 dps

changed to:
400 raw damage - 22s ROF - 69m/s expl vel. - 410m radius - 4945m/s velocity and 9s flight time.
44505m range and 18,18 dps

adding all skills to V and T2 bonuses:
T1 Cruise missile
550 raw damage - 16,83s ROF - 103m/s expl vel. - 307m radius - 7417m/s velocity and 13,5s flight time.
100136m range and 32,68 dps

Fury Cruise missile
770 raw damage - 12,12s ROF - 86m/s expl vel. - 528m radius - 7417 m/s velocity and 10,13s flight time.
75102m range and 63,54 dps

Precision Cruise missile
550 raw damage - 12,12s ROF - 124m/s expl vel. - 276m radius - 7417 m/s velocity and 6,75s flight time.
50068m range and 45,39 dps

Our Raven from above will have a range of 150204 With T1 cruise missiles.
The 3x BCU II fit with Fury would deal about 838 dps with an alpha of 7623 at 112653m
(The same fit would, in current Eve, do 630 dps at 190000m.)
I think the range decrease justifies the dps increase.
These damage numbers are now "in line" with the Cruiser sized missiles (HAM vs HM). with torpedos dealing about 38% more dps than cruise missiles and the dps increase from HM -> CM is about 100%.
I increased explosion Radius a lot on these. Only precision missiles will hit battlecruisers smoothly, and the Furies won't do full damage to any battleship, so Target painting, Rigor Rigs and webbing are still needed for best efficiency.


So, even if my numbers are way overpowered or whatever gets imbalanced, i hope this might deepen the thoughts and give a deeper impression on what could be changed to balance things out.

Feel free to rip them apart, we need YOUR expierience to discuss this :)
(Mine? no, i'm just another drake pilot :P)

I disagree with trying to homogenise torpedoes' damage and rate of fire to scale them in line with heavy/HAMs and light/rockets.
While the dps remains the same, it has the added effect of increasing heat generation when overloading and reloading will happen more often.
Torpedoes already suffer from having to reload more often, than any other weapon system, due to low ammo capacity of the launchers to such an extent that realistic figures (for ROF bonused ships like raven and phoon) require that reload time be calculated into DPS.

With level V skills on a Raven or Typhoon, what you are proposing would decrease the time before the next reload (on a T2 torpedo launcher) from about 148 seconds to 100 seconds. Add in two T2 BCUs and this drops down to 80 seconds.

You would probably argue that the increase in explosion velocity, smaller explosion radius and increased flight time that you proposed would balance this but this ends up being a 'trade-off'/compromise rather than an overall buff which is what cruise missiles and torpedoes need.

With respect to torpedoes and reloads, a skill that increases torpedo launcher capacity by 5% or 10% per level might be a start.

let's work together and make things possible ;)



I have that in there, right below Bombers. I added an empty line to make it more visible.



This would double the capacity. Time till reload is roughly 264s, Raven 198s and two T2 BCU is 158s



I've been thinking about this and i dislike the dmg change more and more.
This change would have to make Torpedos cheaper and Cruise missiles more expensive.
And, weren't torpedoes the ones with that huge graphical effect explosion?

I tweaked the numbers more, leave the charge capacity as it is.
dps is almost and range/velocity are the same as in my post above.

for high alpha and same dps torpedo maybe:
550 raw damage - 22s ROF - 74m/s explosion velocity - 410m radius - 1750m/s velocity and 8s flight time.
14000m range and 25 dps.

All skills to V thats 756/1020/680 dmg with an explosion radius of 307/528/307 on T1/Rage/Javelin.
Time till reload is roughly 242, Raven 181s and two T2 BCU is 154s
The stealth bomber would get 1 very high volley... (22% higher)

for smooth dps cruise missiles:
325 raw damage - 18s ROF - 69m/s expl vel. - 370m radius - 4945m/s velocity and 9s flight time.
44505m range and 18,06 dps

All skills to V thats 446/625/446 dmg with an explosion radius of 277/477/249 on T1/Rage/Javelin.
Time till reload is roughly 267, Raven 200s and two T2 BCU is 160s


Thats a bit less time till reload than 425mm TII Rails get.

The Torpedoes will be short range, hard hitting, low rateof fire monsters with a slightly decreased explosion velocity.
The cruise missiles have an increased rate of fire, good range and still apply dps better, although their explosion velocity are nerfed.

There would still be missiles wasted on already dead wrecks, but this would only occur on the far edge of the possible range.

Explosion velocity and radius should be looked at and tested, to make good values. It somehow exceeds my capabilities ;)

btw, the avarage T1 Battleship sig radius is 431m, ranging from 330m to 500m. (those are the Odyssey values)

I'm calling it now - it will not take much in the way of buffs to turn the already rather good CNR into a hideously overpowered PvE monster.

The missile boats have lower paper DPS, sure, but they actually get a lot more of that applied than other platforms.

You can shoot at everything with a Naga. You can shoot at everything with a Rokh, Megathron, Tempest or any other battleship for that matter.

For a Raven to shoot and decently damage an armor cruiser, you would need at the very least 2 Huginns and multiple painters.

Sure, NavyRavens would become very good PVE boats. I only know about nullsec farming so can't comment on lvl4s. In nullsec, I've yet to see someone who farms with a Raven. I mean, some dudes like to farm in Ravens/NavyRavens/Golems, but I mostly see Vindicators, Machariels, Taloses/Nagas, Ishtars, Tengus and Carriers.

The uselessness of battleship missiles in PVP far outweight the potential "PVE imbalance".

I'm aware of the current status quo and stand by my statement that it wont take much to tip them OTT.

There's nothing wrong with a buff, but it should be balanced, if possible.


Not sure about the epic overkill of huggins with many painters, I've spent more time in level 4s than can possibly be healthy and if it's not an elite cruiser, it will die in two shots...my raven is showing 245 radius with fury at non-max skills. Add the two painters it sports and ... well ... stuff dies.


Edit: Of course it is possible I'm 100% wrong and completely skewed opinion, I didnt think a half an hour for the likes of WC (gate rats>room>heron room) was particularly terribad.

Some of the ideas in this thread are ridiculous. Nerfing Cruise missiles down to 100km range without the option to further increase range is epic bullcrap. Cruise missiles should be able to hit stuff beyond 150km range. After all, it's a freaking LONG-RANGE weapon system.

Although they wont be used frequently as a heavy sniper-plattform, just because turrets perform way better at those ranges. They suffer from falloff, yeah, but turrets are far more versatile to use @ long ranges (due to the ability to hit even the smallest frig @ 0 transversal).

Ofcourse some of the ideas are pretty good, like a hard-cap on missile flight-time, while balancing the range via missile speed (there is no reason to not let them reach 10k m/s).
This would solve the major issue with cruise missiles ( long time till damage gets applied, volley-counting etc ). In addition, they could need a slight buff for explosion velocity. As it is, speed of the target do penalize cruise missiles too much.

TP-Range needs to be increased aswell if you want to make Cruise sniper-boats viable.