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Heya guys,

To start off, this is my first topic on Assembly Hall and one of only a few times posting on the forums. But there comes a time where every person feels the need to speak up, and this is mine. I'm going to do my best to bring up factual and concrete points about missiles and propose solutions. I'm sure people will disagree with me over some of my points: that's fine. Let's try to keep things civil, and work through this issue for the good of the game.

The general point:

I feel that missiles have become under-represented and much less effective than other weapons platforms in their current incarnation (with a focus mainly on medium to large weapons systems).

First, let's take a look at what kind of representation we get from missile boats in different categories. I'm sure I'll miss a few, if I do please remind me of them and I'll add them.

Missions/WH's - On the whole, missile boats suffer the least in missions. The Corax and Caracal are both great at lower level missions. The Drake (had) bridged the gap in the middle, but with the recent Heavy Missile nerfs and the upcoming changes in 1.1 (go read them if you haven't, I'll wait) it's taking another significant loss in every aspect except base dps (loss of 1 hardpoint is [somewhat] made up for by gain in kinetic damage bonus, although it does continue the painful trend of being locked into 1 damage type). While the Drake's missioning days certainly aren't over, it's much less effective than it was. The Tengu is a very SP-intensive boat, but it's another good one. Then we have the Raven (and it's variants) and the Scorpion (and it's variants). The Golem is arguably the best mission boat in the game, so we can say that overall missile boats are *decent* in missions (although at the higher end, killing smaller boats is painful and requires multitudes of target painters to pull off, especially after the recent NPC AI changes causing drones to get popped consistently).

Sounds good so far, right? Well, this is where it goes downhill.

PvP - Previously the Drake was one of the biggest go-to ships in PvP. Unfortunately after the Heavy Missile nerf and the upcoming massive round-the-board nerf coming in 1.1 it will likely no longer be. The gained mass and lost agility will see PODLA Drakes being much less effective, and they're losing shield (and... well... everything else) on top of that. So the Drake is out. That leaves essentially JUST the Caracal. The Caracal is a fine PvP boat, but it's not *that* great. And that essentially makes 1 viable PvP boat for missiles.

Incursions - Well, 'nuff said here. Okay fine: Missile boats get laughed out of Incursions. The Tengu is somewhat viable in Incursions but basically there's boats that can do anything the Tengu can in Incursions, but better. Raven and Scorpion variants are just bad, unfortunately. The flight time means sniping is out (even if you're timing really well or just plain dps'ing the tertiary targets). And for close range (Torpedoes) missiles are on the low end of being competitive with the added bonus that we're vastly less effective against smaller ships than other platforms even if we have Target Painters crammed into every orifice of the ship.

At the end of the day, where does this leave us? We have a few ships that are somewhat viable in each category, but we don't excel at anything. In many cases we're last choice.

Let's have a look at why, going through each of the missile types:

Heavy Assault Missiles - HAM's are fairly decent right now at the low end. The range is bad, the ability to hit small targets is bad, but the damage is alright and because of the low-ish range the volley time isn't too much of an issue.

Heavy Missiles - While Heavy Missile dps may appear to compare with other weapons platforms on the surface, it doesn't. Between very slow missile travel time (meaning we lag on initial dps, and often fire extra volleys before ships are destroyed even with careful timing) and the recent range AND damage nerfs there's no real reason to use Heavy Missiles anymore. Take into account that one of our 3-ish viable Medium missile platforms is shoehorned into always using Kinetic and you have a fairly losing combination.

Cruise Missiles - Cruise Missiles are where everything starts to fall apart. Cruise dps is low, on all of our ships. We can almost get competitive enough to do the same paper dps as other snipers, but we all know it can't compare. In any given fleet op our dps is slow to come to bear, and we almost always lose a volley with our last shots. This means that on any given target, if we aren't going ahead of the normal kill order, we're losing 2 volleys. This is not only an expensive waste of resources, it's also 2 useless volleys closer to having to reload and a massive chunk of our paper dps gone. Add to that our inability to hit small targets (even painted ones) effectively and Cruise Missiles are 6 feet under. At least a skilled pilot can maneuver his or her ship to hit small targets with other weapon types- we can't. I've seen it said before that "at least you guys always hit" but hitting for damage so slight it can be repped away by a frigate isn't really consolation in my opinion.

Torpedoes - For starters, there's essentially 1 ship that can fit torpedoes: the Golem. It's a great ship... too bad it has to waste 2-3 midslots on Target Painters, huh? It's great damage is perfect for lvl 4 missions and nothing else in the game, which essentially means we have an entire weapon type that's used on 1 ship for 1 niche thing (not including covert ops, of course, on which it's essentially an entirely different weapon).

So what do we do to fix it?

Proposed solutions in the next post:

Supported +1, though I'm not so sure about buffing the dps by the level you are suggesting.

There has always been a trade off between lower dps and flight time, but a guaranteed hit which should be maintained IMV, however the last nerf went a bit too far and should be looked at again.

A mixed bag here, but there are some definite wins I think, especially for long range missile types and the ships (like cruise Ravens and Cerbs) that are built around them.


Actually, it'd be a steady, linear increase as delta-V = a*delta-t. But, the concept behind this idea is sound, and even having velocity linearly increase with flight time would be a major help for controling the flight-time woes missile snipers currently face.


Maybe not "better", but the idea of deleting damage-type-specific bonuses could be workable long-term.


You have the explosion radius mechanic backwards, unfortunately. Increasing explosion radius actually decreases damage to small targets, and this would be such a major change to missile mechanics in any case that I doubt I could support it.


Unfortunately, I think that this last step would make missiles too overpowering, which would be quite aggravating for 0.0 fleet fights (missiles should not be a dominant weapon at that scale).

A painfully bad thread, even by AH standards.

Addressing the guaranteed hit issue:

It is certainly nice that missiles never miss. But at the end of the day guns get the better end of the bargain by far; with skilled piloting and a good fit guns can do full damage to smaller craft. Meanwhile, missiles will always do trivial damage no matter how good the pilot. While I agree that missiles shouldn't do full dps to small craft, they should do a bit more than they do now for sure.

Have you ever flown interceptors?

Against a rack of large guns, what do you do? Move carefully so it doesn't get the low transversal at any given time on approach and oneshot you.

Against a rack of large missiles, what do you do? Oh that's right, you ignore them.

The main issue with missiles being a dominant weapon on the 0.0 fleet scale is the kind of damage it inflicts on server hampsters. If missiles weren't a major lag source, I wouldn't have mentioned this :)

Well, when you get into the 'blob meta' its hard to avoid these sorts of issues. I agree that the Drake ought to be just as viable as any other ship at small scale PvP, its just that its hard to do that without turning it into a dominant piece in blobwarfare, which causes the distinct odor of burnt hampsters to waft over from London to Iceland...

Congratulations on an offensive attitude and a worthless post.

I've been a missile user for years now, but I then switched for hybrids... And now I have more SP in gunnery than I have in missiles.

Well..

They need a buff, that's certain.

The solution offered of things increasing exponentionally with distance fits perfectly with the long-range caldari style, create counters, and solves a lot of issues with missiles.

I entierly agree with OP. Except for the fact that stealth bombers are also using torpedoes with some efficiency, not only the Golem. (But T2 torpedoes are still useless)