Ships & Modules

Being as missiles are meant to counter uber-high transversal/angular ships - I'd say we have an issue there.

Ships shouldnt be immune to all weapon systems assuming reasonable sizes i.e. titan vs tristan is stupid, inty vs tricked out RLML machine of death designed to kill them.....a bit more fair a debate.

Getting under guns is as old as the hills; missiles are meant to be a danger zone to counter balance this.

I know you know your missile stuff - but have you tested it?

Do the missiles "cut corners" and take the shortest route, or settle into a chase pattern that results in them not quite making it in space? Especially at a wide orbit range.

Don't want to sound like I'm suggesting you're not being truthful, I just dont know what path the missiles will take in space - being at work it's hard to test


Edit: And will those missiles actually do any damage? It's extremely irksome that precision's - the missiles designed to shoot little, fast things - aren't long enough reaching.

Edit2: Napkin math suggests in the region of 9 damage per missile, if it was right math.

I'm not sure about the exact path that the missiles take. I've never really worried about it too much because my experience indicates that, in general, with full skills and a velocity bonus, LMs will hit an orbiting interceptor, while if you don't have the velocity bonus, they won't. The middle ground of velocity bonus and intermediate skills is the uncertain area, but it's a long time since I've had intermediate skills! The 1v1, perfect orbit situation is also slightly artificial and unrepresentative of a typical small-gang skirmish, although it's a useful starting point for understanding mechanics.

AFAIK, the missiles use a straight approach mechanic - they don't attempt to predict where the target will be. So they will cut the corner when homing in on an orbiting target and follow a curved flight path towards it, with the last few km of the intercept being almost a straight chase up the tailpipe. It would be pretty easy to test by simply finding the orbit range at which the missiles don't hit an inty orbiting at x speed.

Regarding damage, well, again it depends on skills and ofc links... The efficiency at which a Cerberus whacks interceptors suggests that there isn't much of a problem in general, but having Interceptors V and links makes a huge difference. Just EFTing it with a 206 DPS Caracal:

Level V Ares (78.8 m, 4238 m/s): 72 DPS, 34.9%.
Linked Ares (51.6 m, 5342 m/s): 48 DPS, 23.3% (33% less).
OL linked Ares (51.6 m, 7722 m/s): 39 DPS, 18.9%.

So the links and overload almost half the damage received. Well, we knew they were powerful!

OTOH, a 325 DPS Cerb with Crash and a painter would be doing 148 DPS, 100 DPS and 80 DPS applied in the three cases above - and a Cerb definitely has the missile range to hit an orbiting inty.

I think in the other missile thread Chessur has been commenting that the sig radius link leads to a divergence in game mechanics between missiles and guns because of the different damage formula and the sig-related hard cap to missile damage, which can cause problems with missiles suddenly being unable to deal full damage to a webbed target without painter support. To me, however, this is a problem with the sig radius link being overpowered, rather than a major problem with the missile formula.

Talking about this now makes me wonder if throwing in a small webber drone or two might change the outcome. I know they are generally terrible - but this might be a situation where one or two might help...

Why do you think missiles are meant to do that? They are surely NOT. In all eve history they have always been the least effective against fast moving fast movers.


Missiles thing is... they ignore any range issue when they are inside their max range ( well almost max range)


Missiles are there to ignore tracking, at the expense of being weak against pure base speed (Taht measn you cannot use your own ship speed to neuter enemy speed)

The OP range...

I suspect not, and not just because they're too slow to actually catch the inty. I think the reason for poor damage application is excessive transversal when the drone is in range, which is a function of insufficient tracking and excessive speed difference between drone and target. If slowing the target slightly via a webber drone increases that speed difference, then it increases the transversal as the drone MWDs past it, and reduces its chance to hit.

If that's true, then it suggests that a painter drone would be better. Of course, the painter drone is also too slow, and a 4% sig bloom is almost certainly inconsequential anyway.

Really? you want me to teach you?

1- Neuts
2- Faction overheated webs
3- Friends...
4- Asteroids too close to let them orbit you...


Also final hint.. interceptors are pathetic agaisnt neut drones (They never miss)

Neut drones ignroe trackign so when the orbitign ships orvertun them and pass close they hit. You can eep callign them back and send them, or change targets when they are better positionined to go agaisnt the incomming ceptors.

Since ceptors usually fly very on cap limit, usually is enough to scare them.

Interesting.



@To mare: You have any idea how fast an inty can get on grid after the xpack......best be in one agile ass ship the MINUTE SECOND local changes