Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Yea!
And since missiles use rocket engines, there is no reason they should have a max velocity, so they should continuously accelerate.
Even if they did though, light speed artillery would still be the better sniper choice.

Every missile-based ship I fly gets a bonus to either damage or rate-of-fire. It takes ten seconds to switch damage types. That's a huge bonus. You also usually have better range, for engagements with the same class of ship; ~20km HAMs as opposed to the ~3km of neutron blasters (or ~10km with null).

Also, your missiles don't have reduced "tracking" based on your own movement, either. If an enemy ship is tracking you better, you can cut your afterburner on, for example, and you're still hitting him the same. As opposed to a blaster ship, where increasing your transversal velocity can penalize you, too.

My only complaint is that the current missile ships can't have very much utility. You can't fit much EWar on a shield-tanked ship. Need more armor-tanked missile boats, to compensate.

The problem with missiles lies in the reload rate. Maybe its the same for other weapon systems, too.

See, missiles have a supposed buff in the ability to switch damage types, but this takes up to 10 seconds regardless of the size of the ship. 10 seconds for a battleship to switch to ammo to take advantage of a discovered resistance weakness is much easier than 10 seconds of a frigate switching ammo to do the same in a real no holds barred pvp environment.

Couple that with the damage being done after a delay from when the missile turret fires, the fact that missile damage will not apply if you warp off before they hit, and so on, and you have a system that's lackluster.

Reloads could be 3-5-10 seconds long for frig to cruiser to battleship sizes respectively, and they might actually become good weapon platforms in intense PvP because you can switch for best damage before you die.

Other than that, I think missiles are actually quite good. You will note that as long as they cant outrun your missile and you're within "optimal" the missile ALWAYS hits and ALWAYS does the exact damage it's supposed to do. No glancing blows, no wreckings, smooth and reliable like a good cig.

Suicide stealth bombers.. I think I just came.

Your assessment isn't completely wrong, but it isn't completely wrong either. I was on Teamspeak with my buds and one of them was wondering why heavies are so bad, so we worked through the missile formula using the example of 2 drakes, unfitted save for launchers, and at my skill level for EV, ER, SigRad, and speed. We discovered that T1 heavies, from a Drake, shot at a similar Drake flying at it's top speed, without prop mod, will lose approximately 25-30% of it's damage to speed tank. Yes, a Drake can speed tank another Drake. This was before factoring in invulns or extenders so, before someone ignores the rest of my post and jumps on that, those numbers can change but the point remains that a Drake can speed tank a Drake.
We crunched the numbers for the same case and with an AB the numbers were abysmal. We also learned that, to apply a worthwhile amount of damage to a Drake, you need to shoot Navy Heavies from your Drake. Does that sound right to anyone? That the slowest BC (I could be wrong on that, but not by much) can negate significant same-size missile damage just by turning on its engines? What does that imply for Heavies against a Myrmidon, or something else that moves faster than a one-legged sloth?

I am always very happy to please..

This is true - but the problem is also genuinely manifest.

For the sakes of showing the point, but it is a fight I've had.

Typhoon shooting RHML at a fleeing cynabal.

Paper range: 62km made up from a 9.75s flight time and 6450 m/s velocity.

Cynabal was doing say....3000 m/s (not exactly a stretch).

Actual range: 9.75* (6450-3000) == ~33km



Of course, the opposite happens if it is boring down on you - but as I posted earlier - be a lot nicer to have it more consistent.

If we double speed and half time, the same scenario plays out as shown:

62km range made up from 4.875s flight time and 12900 m/s velocity

Shooting fleeing cynabal: 4.875*(12900-3000) == ~48km

Not perfect, but better and more consistent.

Frankly they could apply this globally and STILL keep the bonus on the mordus (I'm aware this would basically make them guns but..../pirate).

And here we go again. "Missiles aren't as good as guns because sentry drones."

You didn't list actually any problems those ships have compared to the gun boats. Also, the Prophecy or Armageddon can't really be considered missile boats (They can fit them, but they don't get any bonuses at all), and I wasn't aware anybody fit weapons on the Damnation at all.

Really? 'Cause damage application is what you're complaining about, and they get close to perfect application at longer range than pulse lasers.

I did not mention null-sec, wormhole space or markets. Your hyperbole has no purpose but to be insulting for no reason.

Anyway, removing missile tracking, a torpedo Raven with have a 5,500 damage volley (navy ammo, not even rage ammo) within 30km (more, if you include rigs), and it will be applying all of that damage. No cruiser could even get close enough to point you, because you WILL kill it in a few volleys. Frigates and destroyers will be immediately blapped. A close-range brawling fit battleship can probably take you on, but it will really hurt in the time it takes to get close enough to brawl you. That's just a standard Raven. A Barghest will have a 7,800 damage volley with perfect application to anything close enough to put a long-point on you. A Phoenix will have a 110,000 damage volley.

The only counter-play to something like this would be defender missiles (which are unreliable at best). Assuming defender missiles would work at all as a counter, a decent chunk of a small-gang fleet would need to be geared towards shutting down the missiles of a larger ship. Now a main issues with defender missiles; they only block missiles heading towards you and each defender missile only takes out a single incoming missile (about 900 damage per volley from said Raven). Name a cruiser that has 6 launcher slots, 'cause nothing else will prevent enough damage to make it worth trying to tackle a torpedo Raven (let alone Barghest). Throw some X-large ancillary shield boosters on it, and I guarantee you will outlast whatever small gang goes after you. Firewalling is another possible counter, but it is horribly impractical in any fight except large fleets with firing-line setups.

"It's okay, they can turn around and run away from your torpedoes." Yeah, sure. But nothing will ever get close enough to put a scram or disrupt on you. Then imagine you have friends in smaller ships with scrams and webs. They don't even need to do any DPS, they just tackle and wait for the missile battleship to arrive. I'm pretty sure this is the exact situation you're thinking of every time you post "missile tracking needs to be removed" in a thread that has nothing to do with missiles. Heck, if for some reason this actually gets through, this will be exactly what my corp will be doing. I'm sure a lot of people will do the same, and this is the reason CCP won't remove missile tracking.

More hyperbole rather than actually addressing the concerns I bring up.

Which is outside of point range, by the way. Also, Javelin gives you even further range. You could outrun them, but that's further out of point range.

Sensor damp does nothing for the ships tackling you, like in my example.

Easy, tank it on a T2 Caldari resist profile. (Yeah, we have a Vindi on-field in that screenshot, but he didn't show up 'til after the other guy burnt out his guns. Otherwise he would've died before burning out his guns).

Really? Because the aforementioned 70km point range and 8800 m/s can only be a Garmur (with a Republic Fleet point and fleet boosts, no less). Which is also hilariously vulnerable to interceptors when you're coming through a gate, so isn't amazingly realistic most of the time. As opposed to my example of a dual-ancil Torp Raven as the hammer in a tackle fleet, which is pretty damn realistic.

Resist profile. Are you saying that resist profile somehow applies more to missiles than it does for any other weapon (when more than half of the missile-based ships can easily switch damage types)?