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Drake Heavy Missiles vs Cruisers

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Dante Solthesis
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#1 - 2012-06-12 07:19:05 UTC
Howdy, I'm piloting a Drake running L3 missions. I've noticed my missiles do about half damage on cruiser sized ships resulting in a long time to kill them. My question is which skill effects cruisers more (note I only care about cruisers, my drones handle frigates) Target Navigation Prediction or Guided Missile Precision. I don't believe cruisers move fast enough for them to be taking reduced damage from the explosion so it leads me to believe signature radius is the main cause.
Hoshi
Incredible.
Brave Collective
#2 - 2012-06-12 07:30:44 UTC
What do you mean with half damage? Half of what is listed as the base damage of the missile?
In that case it is most likely because NPCs have shield and armor resists just a you do, you can test different damage types to see which missiles will do more damage but it will vary depending on what type of npc you are fighting.
There are also variations with groups where "Elite" cruisers have much higher resists than normal ones.

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ISD Etetia
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#3 - 2012-06-12 09:01:40 UTC
Hello Dante Solthesis

There's 3 factors that causes damage reduction when hitting a target with a missile

  • Signature Radius
  • Velocity
  • Resistance

Signature Radius and Velocity you can do something about, with items such as using target painters and webifiers on the target. These factors are usually only a problem when you are fighting ships that are smaller than what you weapon type is meant for. When using a Drakes heavy (assault) missile launcher on cruiser sized ships, this should not be the case.

A more likely scenario is, as Hoshi already mentioned, that you are up against Elite cruisers, which has vastly increased resistance compared to their non-elite counterparts. There is no way to decrease the resistances of your target directly, expecially not NPCs, where you can't even turn off their active hardeners by draining their capacitor.

The only way to deal more damage is therefor to simply increase the rate of fire and damage of your missiles. This can be done with skills, modules, rigs, implants and so on.

Elite cruisers can normally be identified on their name, as they have a special prefix (such as "arch" for angels, and "dire" for Guristas). Alternatively, you can look at their bounty prize. Elite cruisers will generally yield +200.000 ISK, while normal cruises will give you less.

ISD Etetia

Commander

ISD STAR / CCL Affiliate
malaire
#4 - 2012-06-12 09:07:45 UTC
ISD Etetia wrote:
The only way to deal more damage is therefor to simply increase the rate of fire and damage of your missiles. This can be done with skills, modules, rigs, implants and so on.

Don't forget changing missile type. http://www.ogrank.com/content/view/698/59/ lists what damage you should be generally doing against different enemies.

So e.g. against Angel Cartel ships you probably want to do Explosive damage even through Drake gets bonus to Kinetic.

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J'Poll
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#5 - 2012-06-12 09:08:05 UTC
ISD Etetia wrote:
Hello Dante Solthesis

There's 3 factors that causes damage reduction when hitting a target with a missile

  • Signature Radius
  • Velocity
  • Resistance

Signature Radius and Velocity you can do something about, with items such as using target painters and webifiers on the target. These factors are usually only a problem when you are fighting ships that are smaller than what you weapon type is meant for. When using a Drakes heavy (assault) missile launcher on cruiser sized ships, this should not be the case.

A more likely scenario is, as Hoshi already mentioned, that you are up against Elite cruisers, which has vastly increased resistance compared to their non-elite counterparts. There is no way to decrease the resistances of your target directly, expecially not NPCs, where you can't even turn off their active hardeners by draining their capacitor.

The only way to deal more damage is therefor to simply increase the rate of fire and damage of your missiles. This can be done with skills, modules, rigs, implants and so on.

Elite cruisers can normally be identified on their name, as they have a special prefix (such as "arch" for angels, and "dire" for Guristas). Alternatively, you can look at their bounty prize. Elite cruisers will generally yield +200.000 ISK, while normal cruises will give you less.


I would like to add, missiles come in 4 types, so each missile does a different type of damage (Thermal, EM, Kinetic, Explosive).

So you might want to switch missiles to find where the Rat has a resistance hole.

Also: http://www.ogrank.com/content/view/698/59/

Mal, you ninja'd my post

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Louis deGuerre
The Dark Tribe
Minmatar Fleet Alliance
#6 - 2012-06-12 09:15:54 UTC  |  Edited by: Louis deGuerre
Op's question is valid but answer would be 'it depends'

A typical cruiser signature is 125 m and Explosion Radius of normal heavy missiles is 125 m so you will generally not lose much damage due to signature penalty
The Explosion Velocity of normal heavy missiles is 81 m/sec and a cruiser will generally fly much faster than this.

So if you want to kill frigates with typical signature of 40 m I would say train Guided Missile Precision, but if you want to kill cruiser I would say Target Navigation Prediction will help more.

For training order I would say start with Target Navigation Prediction as it gives 10%/level bonus and Guided Missile Precision 5%/level bonus.
Liam Mirren
#7 - 2012-06-12 09:23:28 UTC
Dante Solthesis wrote:
Howdy, I'm piloting a Drake running L3 missions. I've noticed my missiles do about half damage on cruiser sized ships resulting in a long time to kill them. My question is which skill effects cruisers more (note I only care about cruisers, my drones handle frigates) Target Navigation Prediction or Guided Missile Precision. I don't believe cruisers move fast enough for them to be taking reduced damage from the explosion so it leads me to believe signature radius is the main cause.


- use this site to find the NPC of choice you're having issues with, check it's sig radius
- find out the explosion radius on your missiles (rclick your fitted ship, modules tab, find your ammo and click info, that way you get the bonused stats or just use EFT with your api)

If sig radius of the target cruiser is smaller than the explosion radius of the missile then that will be your main problem, note that the chance of this being the case if fairly low due to base cruiser sig and HML stats. Speed DOES affect missile damage quite a bit albeit it in different ways than sig radius, generally sig radius weighs more heavily in the calculation than explosion velocity but it's still very much a factor.

Easiest way to test this is to fit a painter and shoot the target with and without it but I predict that in your case it shouldn't make a huge difference. The other explanations are speed and resists and to me those make the most sense.

Excellence is not a skill, it's an attitude.
Luis Graca
#8 - 2012-06-12 09:59:10 UTC
Dante to start think like this the bigger the gunner the harder to hit small target but do more damage the problem is you can't hit them has well without proper skills

And another thing there are NPC cruiser much harder then other like dire pithi guristas (or something similar) and i'm not talking about the officers
Tau Cabalander
Retirement Retreat
Working Stiffs
#9 - 2012-06-12 18:01:43 UTC
When using a ship bonused for Kinetic, use kinetic missiles on everything except EM weak NPC (Sansha, Blood, Drones).
Totalrx
NA No Assholes
#10 - 2012-06-12 20:32:53 UTC
You didn't mention what skills you currently have trained and to what level.

Heavy Missiles - each level increases damage by 5%
Battlecruiser - each level gives the Drake's missiles & a shield resistance bonus
Heavy Missile Specialization - increases velocity
Missile Bombardment - 10% flight time increase per level (aka hit em before they can hit you)
Warhead Upgrades - 2% upgrade to missile damage per level

Also train up:

Target Navigation Prediction
Rapid Launch
Lost Greybeard
Drunken Yordles
#11 - 2012-06-12 21:01:55 UTC
Quote:
I would like to add, missiles come in 4 types, so each missile does a different type of damage (Thermal, EM, Kinetic, Explosive).

So you might want to switch missiles to find where the Rat has a resistance hole.


While this is worth trying, a caveat to this would be that, with full ship skills, your Drake has a 25% damage bonus to kinetic missiles specifically. So you may potentially lose more from losing the bonus than you gain from a lower resist.

Another way to compensate for enemy resist is to flat-out do more damage. You'll gain 5% damage per level of your core missile skill, 2% per level from warhead upgrades, reduce your time between missiles by 2% per level of launcher operation, shoot 10-15% faster and get a damage boost from equipping a BCU, gain some oomph from damage/firing rate rigging, and so on.

As others have mentioned, it's almost vanishingly unlikely that you're having signature radius issues using medium missiles on medium targets. If you're going to compensate on a single factor re: mitigation, I'd pick speed.