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Do you have any idea how awesome this would be? Can you begin to imagine the styles of gameplay that would be introduced because of this? We're playing battleships online. It's all about bringing more DPS to the table. Do you know how many frigates or cruisers I recall engaging that weren't faction, T2, or flown by rookies while I was in roaming gangs in LoSec and Nullsec? NONE! Do you know how many frigates or cruisers that weren't faction, T2, or flown by rookies that were allowed to participate in said roaming gangs? NONE! Face it. This kind of change is what the game needs.

Besides, missiles have a signature based damage reduction, and I don't think people avoided using larger missile boats (for that reason, anyway).




** CAUTION: WOT INCOMING! **

OK, that's it. I just have to say it.

When I learned that turrets would have the same damage reduction scale that missiles have, I thought to myself, "it's about god damn time that another lack of a parallel was finally addressed." But then I found out it was only XL turrets. I facepalmed. After that, I find out it is done identically to the way missiles get their damage reduction. I facepalmed again. Yes. Missiles and turrets are different. They are designed to be equivalent, but they execute themselves in different ways. There are many parallels that are not present, but in this post, I am going to address only one: Scalar damage output.


Missiles and turrets both act on the fundamental principle that a small fast target isn't as easy to hit as a giant sluggish target. Turrets do the best they can to keep up with a target. The inability to achieve the most potent strike based on turret tracking systems is referred to as Hit Quality. It is a relative form of damage output. Missiles have a parallel element to this. The inability to achieve the most potent strike based on Damage Reduction. This is an absolute form of damage output. There are times when one is superior to the other, and vice versa, but overall, the fundamental mechanics follow the same parallel.

However, there is an element present in missiles that has no parallel in turrets - Static damage reduction based on signature size. A stationary pod can receive a maximum of 62.5% damage from a light missile with maxed skills. However, that same pod will have no problem at all receiving a wrecking hit from a pre-escalation dread in siege mode. This mechanic was a by-product of the **** poor design concept of missiles, way back in the day of Cruise Kessies.

When Speed Rebalanced came around, missiles were redesigned. CCP took the signature relationship to transversal velocity, adapted it to use absolute velocity (with some hidden modifiers to reinforce this), and applied it to missiles. The execution of it was quite different, but the RMS relationship between the two are nearly identical. The pitiful excuse for a damage calculation was replaced with one that actually made sense, so there was no longer a need or a justification for the static damage reduction. But it was kept in anyway. So while we are left with a missile tracking system that is far less broken than the one before it, far less broken isn't the same thing as working properly.

One solution to this would be to remove the static damage reduction from missiles. I wanted this at first, but having it be applied to XL turrets hinted at something much more interesting. If the falloff hit quality modifier was adapted to use signature comparison, we would have that element to parallel missiles. It would look like this:
HitQuality = Min(1, TrackingMultiplier, FalloffPenalty, SigRadius / SigResolution)
Yeah, I know that's woefully put together, and probably doesn't illustrate everything there is to illustrate, but it fixes the aforementioned problem quite well, and doesn't interfere with falloff or tracking for like-sized vessels.

** WOT ALL CLEAR **

So, what needs to be done about the signature radius issue? Changing the static damage reduction on XL turrets to signature based hit quality modifiers would be a good start. Applying said modifiers to all turrets would be better. Kill two birds with one stone.