Skill Discussions

Heyall,
Wall of text incoming, lazy eyes scroll down for summary.

So here we are close to a new expansion and the glorious news of weapon turrets no longer fitting into a tree is brought to us.
Now someone can go straight to medium large or whatever turret size they please (no sarcasm intended).
More flexibility in gunnery, while ship skills were put into more rigid skill-trees opposite to the upcoming gunnery remake.
Little confusing this swap when a desire for more linear progression was expressed by CCP...
Is this odd to anyone but me??

Do you look at missile skills and see one weapon system that has over *-3x the investment vs profit ratio of gunnery, more so now then ever with much less versatility?

Currently missile support skills combined have a total multiplier of 21x vs gunneries 18x. (obviously not adding capital specific support skill; Tactical Weapons Configuration or smart-bombs under missiles).
Before specialization: Missile skills add up to a total of 18x excluding auto targeting and defender which in a sense fall under E-war and are a combined 5x.
Capital missile skills add up to 14x double any gunnery capital turret type, and are still a joke.
One should add the need for target painting as an extra support skill necessary for a complete missile support picture which add up to 12x multiplier with little pressure to MAX out but not to be scuffed at since it is vastly more SP effective then 6 individual weapon specialization at lvl4/5.
Disregarding target painting would be a close equivalent of gunnery without tracking computers.
Your bill at check out may vary: 21+18+14+15=68 or 21+18+15=54 for the most realistic representation of SP spent.
Capital missiles are fubar leaving a most realistic 54x multiplier for sub capital missile skills or -15x for those that can't accept the reality of target painting which would make 39x.

Gunnery support skills add up to 18x multiplier while opening up 3 weapon systems, all its damage/tracking modules are passively gained through universal/basic support skills.
Another point of attention is that gunnery support skills have lower multipliers then missile support meaning maxing out skills does less then maxing missile support and is thus less needed.
(this does not mean "OMG gunnery support skills need buffed" since the final damage numbers aren't magically reduced").
Before specialization's; Sub Capital Turret skills add up to 27x multiplication, which is 3 weapon systems.
Capital turrets add 21x.
Total at check out: 18+27+21=66
Or a more realistic -14 for one capital gunnery skill or -21=45 for sub-capital gunnery.
A functional sub-capital equivalent of missile skills; one gunnery line which comes down to 9+18=27 a 27x multiplier compared to 51x with target painting or 39x without for missiles.

Why mention SP invested before specialization skills?
Simple, because those are very iffy numbers considering they are rarely trained to lvl5 and at lvl4 are still at 1/5th SP cost of lvl5 a beginning player will have specialization at lvl3 which again is 1/5th of lvl4.
Gunnery takes much more SP in this regard small weapons 18x, medium 30x, heavy 48x. 18+30+48=96.
Missiles:Small 6x, medium 10X, heavy 16x. Here you see exact 1/3 ratio akin to one turret type skill tree 6+10+16= 32 perfect sense.
With all these skills at lvl 4 though you end up with 19.2x for gunnery and 6.4x for missiles, or 6.4 for any weapon system.
Why not include capital gunnery or missiles, well they are horribly dominated by the ship skills the turret skills just follow ship choice.
Maybe someone out there collects titans but from a serious SP comparison perspective this can't be factored let alone capital missiles as they are silly bad.

Edit:I overlooked something, target painting is actually a total of 15x multiplier correcting in a dead thread just to be correct.

Long post is long...


I have to say, I agree with you on some points. Especially when they are presented as *individual points*
Some of your maths is confusing to me...but I did just wake up
But in the big picture, I think missiles have nice individual paths.
I never did rockets V until very recently.
I never did Lights to V.
I never did Heavy assaults to V.
I trained the missiles I wanted, and the specs to IV as needed.
Total SP: 10,000,000ish

Gunnery on the other hand...
I trained supports to V, and tiers to IV and along the way I discovered: You can have 10,000,000 SP in gunnery, and still not have ONE T2 GUN. No Smalls, no Mediums, no Large.
Then I started up the spec tiers.
Total SP: 18,000,000ish before Capital Turrets, 21mil+ after Cap guns.
Imo, if you use a gun as a primary weapon system, you're going to get it to V anyway. Skipping a lower tier will save time, but not a lot *in the big picture*.

TLDR; My gunnery SP has doubled my Missile SP. Gunnery is actually my second largest skill sync. Even though this is my *Missile Guy*

http://eveboard.com/pilot/RavenPaine

(My *Gun guy* has almost 4 times more sp in guns vs missiles)

Thank you guys, hope it was a decent read.
So RavenPaine I see some very nice skills.
But yeah what I hear you say is something commonly said by people that started out in gunnery it never felt like that much of a grind.
Which of course has to do with being able to fall back on a reliable weapon-system, 3 tiers of 1 skill for 2 ranges.
Missile skills have suffered from non viable or super focussed skills for a very long time now, and the individual path of "straight to cruise missiles" has distracted from this for a very long time now.
You can just jump into a raven and not look back but taking support skills alone into consideration you are spending the same if not more (due to the missile tracking skills patching a mayor hole in design),
For someone starting in missile skills however this is quite the headache, switching over to gunnery isn't a smart choice at all there is no cherry picking because your main weapon-system is extremely support skill hungry.
The cherry pick concept is literally a gun/drone user phenomena.
I started in missiles and it was depressing so I switched to drones, best choice I ever made to tear off the moldy bandage.
The large launchers/BS race has been a common point of "point and laugh at missile user trolls".
Not even saying that is what you are saying, but the truth has always been that if you skip to large, you jump into tracking issues and target painting.
Even if you do this, support skills are at a 21x multiplier, 8x is 2 mill SP or a month at optimal SP per hour.
Gunnery support is between 16x to 18x which is multiplier 1x more or less then leveling a small and medium turret.
If you don't do this, you have a normal progression akin to gunnery, but vastly slower especially in the beginning phases, wether you start out belt ratting or missioning this progression is unescapable when sticking to missiles from the start.
To make matters worse with gunnery a switch from hybrids to lasers is a joke compared to missiles to gunnery, to illustrate the hurdle of support skills.
You are looking at double the SP in missiles at completion and then start on gunnery, you just did missiles you can't progress anywhere else but gunnery and drones, realistically having ventured into drones at this point.
Drones being the better choice since they still mix even though missile boats use way less drones to the point of being borderline pointless below BS size, which missile skills naturally funnel you towards from an SP efficiency standpoint.
Once a newb starts in missiles it is a bear-ificating process, especially when vets tell you missiles are faster to train...
You end up wearing the clothes given to you since missiles just downright take longer.
I figure the way to deal with this would be to lower missile through uniformity.
Their support skills as well to be about a third of gunnery support, and moving them into a rebranded gunnery with certain gunnery skills performing a dual function for missiles and turrets.

Aliventi, nice post I liked it and will likely post there.
Although I disagree and always have with the quicker specialization of missiles view shared by most.

Ahh another beautiful wall :D.....

P.S. Raven at 18mill SP your sub-cap gunnery is maxed essentially.
Missiles are at over half the SP of gunnery for less then a third of gunnery's usefulness.

OHh absolutely, note I say "essentially" maxed.
It is not the hard cap for sure, but specializing till lvl4 is by and large the unofficial goal for being "essentially" maxed as most would not go further.
Of course in a fair gunnery to missile comparison, one ought to divide by 3.
This post is built entirely on the premise of going for lvl4 in specialization as the last level has some of the lowest returns in EvE.
Missiles have no more specialization skills then one line of gunnery, but double the initial investment and more support skills with higher returns/pressure to max out especially the 2 tracking skills.
It is extremely SP hungry more so for a low SP player then anything, and through the lens of a division by 3 still boggles the mind.
The specialization skill multiplier for missiles is a perfect 1/3 split at 32x.
The skills before specialization for missiles take 39x in skill multiplication (8x standing for 2mill SP)
54x considering the real need for target painting, versus a 22x before specialization skills for gunnery, considering a 1/3 split in shared support skills and the individual turret tiers.
I didn't choose to look at it from a retrospective view like that, because it doesn't fairly reflect the hurdle one faces during progression.

I'm not entirely sure I can see the problem here, possibly it's just that I don't have enough tea in my bloodstream yet.

You're saying that you see this (what ever it is) especially a problem for new characters but here's a little anecdote for you to mull over.

I have a character which is Amarr and lazors all the way, no missile skills at all, zero SP in that category. Until recently. I noticed that there are some nice T2 missile boats for Amarr and decided to train the relevant skills. Them being all support skills and rocket + light missiles. I decided to train them all to level 4. The character has a per+wil remam and +3 implants.

The first missile skill I bought 21.09.2013 18:56 (I checked the wallet) and it's safe to assume that I started training that skill pretty much immediately after buying it.

After 22 days and 21 hours I had all the support skills at level 4, the Missile Launcher Operation skill at 5 because it was a prerequisite for one of the support skills and rockets at level 4. Add a day and a half for light missiles level 4 which I trained a bit later. The character is now happily spewing missiles all over the place and stuff seems to die quite nicely.

So about three weeks until one can use missiles at about 80% of maximum efficiency. Frankly I don't see the problem for new guys. In absolute terms three weeks isn't that long. And in comparison to gunnery skills, why would there be a need to have the training times be similarly long? Or in anyway similar? Again I suppose I'm asking what exactly is the problem you perceive here.

As a new Gallente player you can go pure drones all the way from frig to BS without touching gunnery or missiles.

Hence the interest to see the SP investment required in comparision to guns and missiles.

I cooked a dedicatd bomber alt a few years ago, it was rather painless to get into T2 torps with max support. After all the pre-requisite missile skills were only needed at base level 3. Had it been a tree similar to the current gunnery one it would have taken a few more months.

The reason the missile skill tree looks like it does is because missiles were supposed to be support weapons just like drones in the original design.

I have all the sub cap drone skills maxed with the racial specializations on IV. That puts me just under 10mill SP. Although, there are several rank 5 skills you could leave at 4. Stuff like Durability, Electronic Warfare Drone Interfacing and possible Heavy drones too, since they are a little meeeh and just never use them when you already have Sentries. You could get away with having 6mill Sp in Drones.

Yes exactly I stipulated that earlier.
I will have to be really SP saturated to consider drone durability 5, or even faction specific drone specialization 4 as I believe it has no effect on sentries and is still equal to a 1x multiplier in training time for 2% damage.
I am at 5 mill SP in drones and around 7 mill I will be done with it for the longest time.
Sentry drones need only electronic warfare drone interfacing upped as I personally find that one of the lvl 5 skills.


While I agree with that analogy, it doesn't have to be either.
I mean heavy drones are all but outdated in most cases and only function by the merits of hull bonuses.
So the more realistic skill path that is currently available is actually super fast.
Think about it, in the drone skill tree; Navigation, Sharpshooting, drones, scout drone operations are x1's, combat drone operations is a x2.
Say you wish to go for sentry drones, the only skill in this line up that needs to be lvl 5 is drones, and sharpshooting+drone interfacing at 4.
Then you can do some serious damage with faction sentry drones/modules, and sentry drone interfacing at lvl4 while you max out the relevant support skills for techII modules, all x2 and x1 to lvl5.
This is dead cheap if you consider none of these skills affect application aside from sharpshooting, and damage through sentry drone and drone interfacing.
Drones realistically is the cheapest of all weapon-systems with the widest range of uses, you can max your potential damage with sentries at less then 4 mill SP, or a realistic 13x multiplier, 3.25 mill. (drones 1x, scout drones 1x, sharpshooting 1x, drone interfacing 5x, sentry drone interfacing 5x, with drone durability at 3 not added to the equation but an easy train as well as combat drone operations lvl1 x2 multiplier).
The only disclaimer is that it is highly implausible that you will have the best attributes for drone SP, but it should still be faster under those circumstances.

Which is why I always recommend new players to go drones/gallente first and gunnery after if they still don't know.
I thought about making a newbie skill route for a while I might still do it, but I have no connections to websites or the skills to do it myself.
Doesn't help I have no EFT atm without a windows computer, although I could do it without at this point.

Made it a second post to avoid wall of text...



I think you could say that, I don't know how drones track when they are on their target it seems they track like missiles but with wrecking hits. Speed+sig size which makes sense cause they always orbit, with different speed per faction type.
So they have travel time and track according to the missile model but with wrecking hits like gunnery.
Or in the case of sentries they are like gunnery, so yes a fair assessment I reckon.
They are so very different from both though in the fact they can be destroyed themselves with such more severe consequences.
Which in PvE situations can translate into being able to tank with your drones if you have Remote Rep fitted, especially with faction navy drones.
And the travel time of-course making for brawlers, with sentries being the sniper counterpart.

I'm glad to see the discussion on the skillpoints disparity - it seems many of us feel this way, and the back and forth on the RHML module seems to show there isn't a solid plan behind it. I'd rather see CCP wait and fix missiles properly, rather than introduce new modules only to have to fix them later.

I've started a thread in the Jita Park Speakers Corner about this - maybe we can push this to get some focus around the need for some attention to the missiles weapon system.