Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I agree with the above post. The disparity between webs and target painters (ie the relative strengths of their debuffs) is one of the reasons that missiles suffer as a whole.

I authored a thread a few months ago where CCPRise mentions the possibility of new mods to interact with missiles.

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=3545236#post3545236

From what I understood when i first started playing EVE 6+ years ago is that a turret sig radius is the are the turret will shoot at random, so a turret with a sig of 200 shooting at a target with a sig of 35 has a 17.5% chance of hitting. But in actual game play it just affects the tracking of a moving target. if turrets of larger size say dread size had this method applied there would be a closer relation to what citadel torps experience now. So if missiles are going to continue being sig and velocity based there should be a similar effect added to turrets.

just an idea.

This is a good example of how turret tracking in Eve is bad. If your ship is orbiting a stationary target, your turrets do not have to slew to keep it tracked. But the formula says otherwise. If you ever want to see it in action, just enable the "Angular Velocity" column on your overview and go orbit something.

I'm curious now to grab a pair of identical ships with identical noob pilots and orbit the same object at the same distance and velocity to see how the client calculates angular velocity relative to the two orbiting ships.

Angular velocity is calculated as:
Δtransversal speed / distance
Units in m/s and m, and Δtransversal speed is the differance between the two ships transversal speeds.
Each ships plane of orbit, orbit direction and starting position will be important to determine the min and max values that will be observed from the formula. The extreme values will be from zero up towards infinity.

That formula can be blamed for why guns need to track while orbiting a stationary target. Because it is absolut and not relative, meaning that it neglects that the orbiteer is turning around its own axis, which normally would compensate for the guns need to turn.
One way to make sense of the situation is to imagine that the guns are not actually attached to the hull, but to a zero friction sphere that doesn't turn just because the ship do (and this is done because... of something). That way, the guns have to turn on their own regardless of what the ship is doing.

If the gun equation was changed to compensate for a ships own turn rate. It would lead to such situations where two ships with similar speeds that orbit each other would drop the need for tracking down towards zero (same as flying parallell), at which point tracking becomes an irrelevant attribute and only damage and range matters. Since weapons are grouped as "short range high tracking" and "long range low tracking" based on what range they are supposed to be used at, it could lead to several side problems when sniper guns become viable at close range. The current formula may not be a good reflection of reality, but it leads to situations that still feels natural (like: sniper guns not so good up close).

While were on this subject there are a few things i want to add.

Tracking computers on a gun based ship not only benefit the range or damage application, but also improve the ships flexibility in situations. For different sized targets, and ranges you can switch out scripts and ammo to optimize your gun quality, regardless if your shooting with short or long range guns.

Not only do Missiles lack the modules to alter their damage application, at the same time because of this they are deprived of their flexibility as well.

Also note for those people that want to point out to the target painter as the missile version of the damage application, a target painter increases the sig radius of a ship. This means that the Tracking of any gun (inclueding drones) improves. Where a target painter can't increase a missile damage above maximum of 100% applied damage (eg think about a light missile shooting a capital ship) that same target painter does increase the damage potential of a small gun against a capital ship, since because its tracking formula not only alters the chance to hit, but also the chance of a good hit. In effect a theoretical superpainted ship, with infinate signature radius raises the damage from missiles to a max of 100% while increasing the damage of a gun or drone to 150%

Missile users arent asking for an allpowerfull module, we are asking for modules that make missiles more inline with the flexibility that gun, and drone users already have.

To be fair though, FoF missiles are far from a wonderful solution and more of a last ditch effort to still be able to do something.

And as far as missiles applying damage, that application can vary quite hugely based on some outdated formulas...

Another downside to missiles that I don't think gets a lot of attention is the long range missiles vs flight time. i.e. 150km with cruise missiles means that your target can see you launch missiles and warp out before you can even apply your damage. Not a huge deal, but a limiting factor in the use of long range missiles.

Just like Kesthely said, we don't want an all powerful module, we just want to close the gap in certain areas. The same areas that you yourself agree with, and for the most part we agree that the counters need some love also. i.e. Defender missiles could use some TLC.

To counter that statement, drones can also still apply dps to a target that you haven't locked, and are independant of your own speed. Switching to FoF missiles takes a 10 second reload time, the same as a cycle time of an ECM module. If you only get jammed once, you are left with a missile that not only does less damage, but also is less reliable of applying that damage to the correct target.




I disagree, with all the problems missiles have, they are still verry attractive to use. Problem is that as said, they are currently not balanced. The heavy missile has been mutilated (nerfed is a to kind word for it) to a degree that nobody wants to use them anymore. And because of the appalling state of the Heavy Missile this had the direct result that Rapid Light Missile launchers now also received the same mutilation.

Atm Missile users only have a few working systems The Light Missile with Light missile launcher, Rockets with Rocket launcher, and Cruise with Cruise launchers. Torpedo's have limited use still on Bombers, and Bombs itself work.