Skill Discussions

For those of you interested in Gunnery supports, I have previously made a thread here for your perusal. I am going to assume that you have read the first post in that thread and continue with the missile supports. There will be comparisons made, but please try to keep the Missiles vs Gunnery comparisons civil.

OK, so like the gunnery tree, some of these skills and their ranks make sense, and others not so much.

Missile Launcher Operation .......(Rank 1)
Missile Bombardment ................(Rank 2)
Rapid Launch .............................(Rank 2)
Target Navigation Prediction ......(Rank 2) (Henceforth TNP)
Missile Projection .......................(Rank 4)
Guided Missile Precision ............(Rank 5) (henceforth GMP)
Warhead Upgrades ....................(Rank 5)

These mostly look fine, although I would probably increase the rank of Rapid Launch and decrease Warhead Upgrades due to the fact that 25% faster rate of fire will result in a MUCH larger increase in damage than 10% more damage.


Missile Launcher operation is identical to Gunnery in all respects, as is Rapid Launch vs Rapid Firing. I will ignore these skills. There are some other issues however. The main one is that it takes 99 days to train all the missile supports to V, yet only 85 days to train all the gunnery skills. The gunnery supports are flat out better as well due to all of them applying to 3 different weapon systems (6 if you want to call them Auto Cannons and Artillery instead of just Projectiles). I certainly think that the training time on things is out of whack.

1. Warhead Upgrades is a 2% bonus to damage and is rank 5, compared to the 3% bonus damage and rank 4 of Surgical Strike.
2. GMP and TNP are both effectively tracking for missiles. It is more complicated than that, and I'm not going to go into the maths. If someone feels like running the numbers, please do and post below. I will just note here that these two skills have 7 ranks of skills between them (2+5) as opposed to the rank 2 Motion Prediction.
3. Missile Bombardment and Missile Projection are basically +50% range each, and when combined they give a total of 125% more range when both skills are trained to V. The 25% optimal and 25% falloff bonuses of Sharpshooter and Trajectory Analysis translates to a maximum range increase of 25%, but because missiles don't have falloff to drastically cut the damage, these cannot reasonably be compared, although I think the missile skills are clearly better here.

What would I like to see happen? In addition to the changes I proposed in the Gunnery thread, I would make the following changes:

Missile Launcher Operation...............Rank 1
Missile Projection...............................Rank 2
Missile Bombardment........................Rank 2
GMP...................................................Rank 2
TNP....................................................Rank 3
Warhead Upgrades............................Rank 3
Rapid Launch.....................................Rank 5

I would also increase the bonus on Warhead Upgrades to 3% per level.

These changes would give the missile supports a total of 18 ranks of skills to train (currently 21, gunnery has 18) as well as bringing them more in line with the gunnery skills in terms of damage gained for time trained. I really think that missile users are getting a raw deal here, although I would like to see guns able to skip training the smaller versions to T2 before being able to train the larger guns. Making missiles require the smaller weapons before they could train the larger ones would be counter-productive for bomber pilots who otherwise don't use missiles at all.

And before someone goes there, these changes would not impact me at all, as I already have all this trained and am finishing my last gunnery support to V in 16 days.

Déjà vu.

You're incorrect about the range thing, dude. Very incorrect.

Missile Bombartment and Projection each gives a +10% bonus per level. Training both to level 5 gives you a 125% range bonus.



Also, while I agree with you that Rapid Launch should maybe have its Rank upped a bit, and Warhead Upgrades lowered a bit, Rapid Launch makes you spend ammo faster, which costs ISK, while Warhead Upgrades doesn't. So yeah, maybe increase Rapid Launch to Rank 3, and lower Warhead Upgrades to Rank 4.

This just in. It's faster to train into T2 BS sized missiles than T2 BS sized guns but missile support skills take longer than gunnery support skills. Also we are getting unconfirmed reports that guns and missiles are in fact different. News at 11.

Dude, you fail math.

Its not an 87.5% increase, its a simple 25% increase.

Imagine a gun with 100km optimal, 50km falloff. Optimal+falloff = 150km
Sharpshooter only: 100 -> 125km, 25% optimal boost, optimal + falloff= 175km = 16.67% increase
Traj analysis only: 50-> 62.5, 25% trajectory boost, optimal + falloff = 162.5 = 8.33% increase
Both: optimal +25%, trajectory + 25%, so optimal+ trajectory = 25% increase (125+62.5)/(100+50) = 1.25

Optimal and falloff boosts don't multiply with each other - but for missiles the speed and flight time boosts multiply each other.

5% per level vs 10% per level
additive vs multiplicative

1.25x range multiplier vs 2.25x multiplier

You get 5x the range bonus from the missile skills vs the gunnery skill - so yes, the rank should be much higher

TNP basically = motion prediction : they affect the attribute affected by targets speed (complicated a bit by the geometry to determine traversal, but 5x the target speed means 5x target traversal)

Guided missile precision -> has no equal - it affects the weapon attribute that is compared to target sig radius -> I've previously proposed a "precision gunnery" skill to do just this

So, in summary, when comparing training time, you should give the missile range skills a 0.2x weighting, as their bonus is 5x greater than the gunnery skills. - if not an even smaller weighting. Training just *ONE* of the missile skills to lvl *Three* gives you a larger bonus than training *TWO* of the gunnery skills to lvl *Five*
You should not include the skill guided missile precision, as gunnery support has nothing comparable to it.
And as you know, you also have the advantage of skipping the weapon classes you don't intend to use when training for T2.


So, form Missil Proj and Bombardment, you could skil bombardment altogether, and train proj to only lvl 3 to get a larger bonus than 4 ranks to lvl 5 of the gunnery skills, as each additional level is roughly 5x the training time we take the rank of 2, divide it by 5, and divide it by 5 again, to get an effective rank of 0.08.
Missile skill rank thus goes from 21 to 17.08
Then we take out GMP, as that bonus has no equal in gunnery. So that brings it down to 15.08 ranks vs 18.
For the 2% vs 3% benefit of warhead upgrades/surgical strike, I'll give you 1 ranks worth of credit (rank 3 ->rank 2 ), gunnery comes down to 17

So for the same benefits, you train 17 ranks of gunnery, but only 15.08 ranks of missiles

So.... stop complaining

I understand the explosion velocity vs. target velocity mechanic. If a ship can out run the explosion, it takes less/no damage. Fair enough. That makes sense.

Maybe direction should matter though. It makes sense that a ship can outrun an explosion if it's velocity is greater than the explosion velocity and the ship is going in the same direction as the missile, i.e. the ship is running away from the missile (or the missile is chasing the ship, same thing, point of view.)

What if the target is flying full speed INTO the missile ship? The target might have a higher velocity than the missiles explosion velocity, but the target is flying INTO the subsequent explosion. What if there was some mechanic to account for that? Just at first glance, I don't see how it would effect anything except for cases where a ship is flying into a missile.

Optimal + falloff or +2x falloff makes no difference, its still a flat 25% range increase from two skills to lvl 5,
Also, for practical purposes, it is Optimal + falloff, at optimal +2x falloff, you are only doing like 2% of your paper DPS - insignificant


Yes, this is a fundamental difference, as I already acknowledged, it is a bit more complex, Traversal is a double edged sword... Under some circumstances, the targets speed doesn't matter (heading straight at you, or you are on parallel courses at similar speed), but on the other hand, when they get in close, the guns are screwed.

What *is* the same, is that the skills reduce the effect of the targets speed - as I already noted.
If you double your targets speed, you double your targets traversal (actually, its worse than that if you are moving too, trying to mitigate traversal.

So, I stand by my statement that they are equivalent.


Another gameplay fail, signature radius matters no matter the target speed. Also, compare a cruise missile to any large gun, the sig radius advantage is firmly in the missile's favor, its only torps that had a problem... and now that GMP affects those too, as well, on top of that you have rigs that can reduce this - while again, guns have no such rigs and adding more tracking to compensate runs into stacking penalties

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Its not arbitrary, its a measure of training time to get the equivalent benefit... which addresses your questions about whether the ranks need to be there.
Missile bombardment and projection give way better bonuses than the gunnery skills, for the same training time...

The biggest problem that missiles have is travel time, making them ill suited for long range fleet engagements.

No amount of playing with the ranks of the missile skills is going to change that.

Now correct me if i am wrong here, but you are talking about the chance of hit, whereas he is talking about the applied damage. Now with 0 transversal and range, all hits will land as u say but the damage taken still depends on sig rad.

The problem is, missiles land a hit for some damage no matter what the transversal is. Turrets don't do that. so when it comes to applied damage, turrets are better if they can catch targets at 0 trans.

No it really is that simple. How many frigates have been one-shot by hitting approach and getting alpha'd by large guns that wouldn't normally be able to hit them?

You are correct. I mis-read that. OK, so wrecking hits are only 1% of all shots, but they are 1% of all shots, so if you only have 1% chance to hit something, all your hits will be wrecking (but you'll miss a lot). So a wrecking shot hit multiplier is 3x, and for everything else, it is X+0.5, where X is a random number between 0.01 and 1. If we average this out, we get

Avg Hit Modifier = X + 0.5
X = (0.01+1)/2 = 0.505
Avg Hit Multplier = 0.505 + 0.5 = 1.05

So now we have a 1% chance to get a hit modifier of 3.0x and a 99% chance to get an average hit modifier of 1.05x. Which gives us a weighted damage multiplier of: 1.0695 or 6.95% more than your gun's damage.



That is not what I said at all, and is factually incorrect.

Your target can be moving at a million times light speed and you will still have 100% hit chance with guns if he is moving directly at you (and assuming you time the shot right and he's in range). Actual speed is irrelevant for the hit formula for guns.

For missiles, they can be outrun, they can be blown up, or you can just go fast enough or have a sig radius small enough that the damage is small enough to not matter. Sure, you're going to hit most times, but when your missiles are hitting for 3 damage each, who cares?