Jita Park Speakers Corner

In addition to this, the ship progression for missile users is very poor, and is about to become worse in Rubicon. Now that the Gallente Roden Shipyards are being switched to a full hybrid line, missile users are losing more ship options that we previously had (Ares, Lachesis, Eris) and these are being replaced with nothing. In races other than Caldari, there is no progression to go from T1 to T2 ships in any meaningful way. I've outlined these concerns in this post around the new Rapid Heavy Missile Launcher changes, because it really doesn't seem like CCP has a solid plan for missiles. There was talk of new modules for missiles coming, but nothing solid yet.

I'm asking for it to be different, not just worse in general. I'm pretty sure that's implicit in the concept of balancing.

The majority of missile ships only get bonuses to one damage type. Caldari ships get bonus to kinetic, and some Minmatar ships like the Talwar get bonuses to Explosive. So its not as big of an advantage as you think. Only a few ships like the Caracal get a bonus to damage/velocity which would allow them to take advantage of the selectable damage type.

And missiles don't do full damage over the entire range of the missiles - it's more complex than that. Guns have a miss chance, missiles may always hit, within range (can be outrun or firewalled) but the damage they do is variable depending on the relative speed and signature radius of the ship, and the explosion radius of the missiles. In order to apply your full damage, you have to target paint or web ships. The damage is also delayed depending on the missile speed.

So I'm not sure what we're arguing here. Missiles are already "different", and CCP is removing some of those differences, which I'm saying is making missiles worse - from an SP investment, and having ships that a new player can fly in a progression.

Well, the unification of treatment of both close and longer range missile systems has already happened a litle bit when skills like Guided Missile Precision and Target Navigation Prediction to affect unguided variants as well. It would not really hurt to make missiles of certain size require one skill, like it is with guns already. I, for example, would like to use torps on my CNR but the sheer thought of having to train Torpedoes V just to gain access to T2 variants makes me uneasy, I have to train other useful skills too.

I say it never was.
It is bullshit to assume like so many people do that a total multiplier of 27x is okay for all tiers of a gun-type+support skills vs a multiplier of 26x for just cruise missiles and missile support.
Mind you a maxed 8x multiplier equals 2 mill SP or month under absolute perfect attribute+implants training conditions, or 2x is a week.
And in the real world if you start with missiles you don't cherry-pick, you go through the weapon tiers.
It's light missiles, HAM's nowadays, and cruises, not to mention target painting being a crucial factor for missile users at a total multiplier of 12x of intel/mem.
It is just a lot higher investment inside and outside of missile skills.
I posted a nice wall of text about it here. I dedicated a wall of text to this topic too.

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=292493&find=unread

Good post Ransu.
I intended to address hull progression further in my post I did with not so little words since the little ones were busting my family jewels.

That isn't true by far Aivo.
Missiles do much worse when it comes to tracking then guns do if you take the effort to find the math on all this it is easily found.
Missiles take severe reductions in damage as soon as a propulsion mod is activated, they don't do full damage on their intended hull class with unmodified speeds.
I am not a math guru on that particular topic so don't hear me saying missiles should apply full damage against their intended hull size but it "probably" should in most cases.
All in all damage application is horrid, and a tech2 cruiser (cerberus) ripping through frigates does not represent "missiles".
I know a good bit of pirates that never bothered with missiles for years, and I can't blame them.

The universal damage application story is mostly a myth in practice.
If you fly most Caldari ships with anything other then kinetic missiles, there is no point you might as well fit tractor beams and salvagers.
Lets look at Amarr the other decent line up with missiles and actual universal damage, they are all pigeonholed into the shortest ranged missile variants.
The closest thing in EvE to universal damage application are: Drones, projectile weapons, missiles.
Clinging to kinetic bonus hulls being universal damage applicants is like claiming minmatar are hybrid platforms.
Just because you can doesn't mean there is a point to it at all, yes in PvP you can be forced into it but PvP is more about opportunity and assessment.
So if you should load up Mjolnir's it is because someone (not you) picked a hopeless fight and not because you stomp noobs for breakfast in your EM damage "insert" caldari ship.


Edit:
Aliventi I disagree extremely with what you say.
If you trained HM like I did before its nerf, and effectively end up with something completely broken then its just SP lost.
The double unlock you get from gunnery skills makes for an extreme unlikeliness that flavors of the month will collapse SP invested like mortgage stock.
Just like Torpedoes actually meant something before the cruise buff, broken but not yet obsolete.
Missiles have not been "just another weapon-system" for a very very long time.
I jumped into EvE years ago and it was "good for PvE, except for HML" to quote everyone I knew engaged in PvP as a primary activity.
Mind you that "HML" was what was carrying missile skills at the time and me along with others embraced its nerf until it was pushed through at the last moment as the NERF to rule all nerfs (and bind them all ofc).
Yes Lights and rockets got a buff, but at that point missiles were in a shidhole unimaginable only to be helped a little later on with the ship bonus changes which also brought Caldari hybrid platforms back from the grave.
I came back a year or 2 later and it hasn't changed, missiles in general are still as consistent as swiss cheese.
And has never been "Just another weapon-system" since I played EvE.

I like the way missiles are and I like the way gunnery are. I don't see a reason to give them the same structure, just for the sake of making it the same. They both have different advantages and disadvantages. I like the variety.

I'm just trying to understand where this desperate need to make everything the same comes from. I'd be almost tempted to think its impatience and jealousy. "Player XXX had to train 400k SP less for his turrets than I had to train for my missiles. It's not fair."

You know at some point most people will train both anyway, so what difference does it make?

EDIT: Also Marcus Walkuris, I do think I specifically said, 'aside for a few hypothetical situations or a 1 in 100 fight'. You fire a rocket at a frigate, 99.999 % of the times it'll do it's full damage.

Sorry if I sounded harsh its my mothers side I guess I'm kind of a Spanish or Italian stereo-type although I'm not from the area.

My point is that I don't see at all how SP equality changes gameplay.
The personal experience you inquire me to share with you I will tell you gladly.
I invested into missiles for PvE to fund PvP, I want a healthy backbone for any future ISK consuming behavior.
I am not saying that I bleed ISK out of every orifice, merely that I have little spare time for gaming and I need to optimize.
Personally I don't consider myself newb nor veteran by far, but I do suffer from newb choices.
Missiles really are a thorn in my eye, and I am in a hurry to optimize.
Im well past my rush into a BS (actually I took it slow), it is more about being a compulsive min/maxer.
I enjoy this though don't judge, and please don't tell me how easy it is to make ISK in EvE I am well aware.

Edit: Not to be confusing. I am on no hurry to rush into gunnery I am quite committed to maxing out missiles at this point and have just about for the relevant launcher sizes.
I have an alt training on dual training to be a cruiser and frig blasta masta, obviously not missile based.

Missiles are more properly compared to Drones.

The original conception was that the core weapon system was turrets, and that missiles and drones were support weapon systems. Both support weapon types had ships that specialised in them, but far fewer than turrets. This was reflected in the way that the skills were organised (missile skills look more like drone skills than gunnery skills).

I don't want to make a "what is is what must be" type argument, just wanted to shed a little light on the reason for the way things are.

With respect to the OP, players get very attached to their favorite ships, and converting a much loved gunboat into a missile platform will make a lot of people unhappy. I'm certainly happy to support a proposal that we could do with a few more missile platforms, especially pirate ships.

However it's not true at all to say that missile users don't have an excellent range of ships available to them, nor is it true that CCP have ignored missile users. Each of the tiercide phases has added an excellent option for missile users, either by making a previously horrible missile ship excellent (eg: Kestrel, Cerb, Navy Scorp, to name but a few) or converting what was previously a gunboat into a missile platform (Eg: Claymore, Cyclone). Missile specialists have done extremely well over the past few months, and they will continue to do so.