Ships & Modules

It's probably because the HML have been batnerfed numerous times, this and the drake himself. He got a range bonus recently but that's it, it's still not a great ship, you can try for PVE with HAM, the range bonus could help projecting against a room of npcs.

with my 6.3M skill points in missile, with heavy to tech 2, with the same fit as you with tech 1 kinetic missiles I have 249 dps, and that's without the projection issue on small target (including cruiser).

Note that with tech 2 launchers and tech 2 missiles (fury scourge) I have around 360 dps.

Well, as you're only a couple of weeks old, don't expect your Drake to put out any real DPS. If you're getting that DPS with HMLs, maybe you better wait, and train up your skills.

For your fit: (to repeat some of what has already been said)

drop the MWD, go with an AB
drop the shield recharger, and use a TP
drop one of the SPRs and add in an extra BCU II

Other than that the rest of the fit is not too bad.

Keep training the missile skills, and the skills supporting missiles. Train up your shield skills, and then your drone skills. You also have to make sure your electronics, mechanical, capacitor, etc, skills are also up.

It's a process. A little here a little there.

-Kirst

PvP or PvE?

For PvE missiles have several advantages when compared to they counterparts:
- longer range
- ability to select the damage type that you want;
- always hit (damage can be reduced, but if you are in range, you hit).

So you should consider if your theoretical DPS is even close to the DPS you deliver on target.
How many misses with your blaster/rails?
At what range you can apply them?
What is the effect of the target resists?

For PvP they have a serious drawback: damage is not instantaneous.
it isn't the only one, bout one of the most important.

The difference in damage with two very different weapon system is what put people off of some choices.

Railguns got a nice buff not too long ago and your experience with blasters has taught you that they deal a lot of damage - at close range.

Now the real difference between missiles and turrets is that turret damage applies or not whenever you press fire and every turret cycle that follows.

Missiles are different in that way that they need to be launched first, accelerate and go on their way to either hit or not the target.

During that time the missiles are "in the air", they do zero damage until they hit or not.

If you look of fitting tools like EFT or Pfya, missile dps always seems so much lower than turret damage and that is because you can launch several volleys of them and only when they hit they do damage.

For my favorite missiles, the heavy missiles, you will fire a volley that may do a combined damage of let's say 2000hp but never actually reach 2000hp unless you shoot a structure with zero resistance.

The damage displayed to you will always be lower than it shows on your grouped launchers, except you hit the structure layer of battleship rats.

As an example, let's assume you shoot scourge heavy missiles a Pith Conquistador (Gurista, looks like a Raven) and your Drake's grouped launchers say they do 2000hp kinetic damage up to 63km (used to be 80).

Let's also assume that the heavy missile launchers have a cycle time of 5 seconds (it's 6.7 but for better math I need a better value) and have a speed of 2000m/s (it's a little more but it is just an example)

That Pith Conquistador is 62km away and you shoot your first salvo of 6 missiles away and your launchers cycle and you still haven't gotten an impact message.
Your launchers fire salvo number 2 and by then you have now 2 salvos "in the air" where still no damage is done.

In this example you will have 6 salvos "in the air" before any damage will be done and then you see the beloved blue-ish impact message displayed.
753 damage, 753 damage, 764 damage and so on. You can see on your display that the Conquistator is going down.

When you shoot a turret it more like 330 damage, 456 damage, 700 (wrecking), 345 damage and so on every time your turrets complete one cycle.

The fitting tools account for that "downtime" of damage.

One last thing, turret range is always the same (unless ewar is in play) whether you fly or stand still. Missiles range varies by movement and can be decreased by flying away and increased by getting closer.

I might need to seriously poke someone to get my heavy missiles fixed.

Fitting tools assume you sit at 0km from your target too or approach it at full speed at 0 transversal.

I think hybrids are supposed, by design, to be the highest DPS guns compared to equivalents from the other races. That certainly is true for blasters.

Edit:

Also the 'downtime' has no actual impact on dps. It basically tells you how much it will take for your first volley to reach it's target and is pretty meaningless after that.