Player Features and Ideas Discussion

The missiles that are working fine are Lights and cruise missiles.

The dps on lights is too low to justify swapping a bcu for a ballistic enhancer, can you honestly imagine a situation where a condor or kestrel would benefit from using a low to fit one of these modules? Lights already have good damage application, and rockets are in scram range anyway where a web scram combo would be more effective.

It would be a no brainer to swap the fourth bcu on a cruise missile battleship for a ballistic enhancer, but a 7.5% bonus to expl velocity and radius will not make much difference, and the extra range would be of no consequence. Even with this module drones and long range turrets will continue to be better for long range pvp engagements in most situations.

HAM's can only be used effectively in conjunction with web, scram, rigs and target painter which means you have to be in scram range and sacrifice tank... scram range is no place for a missile ship, drone boats and short range turrets are dominant in that range its unfair to expect a HAM user to sit there trading blows with a blaster ship when it will only ever be second best by a long margin.

Dropping a BCU for a ballistic enhancer would help missile ships operate outside web range and retain their flavor. However thinking about it now the big issue I have is that it disproportionately effects the missiles with already good stats, and makes little difference to HML's and especially Torps when these are the sick men of missiles. I still think this module is part of the answer to the missile problem, perhaps as part of a package of changes including scripted target painters and better base stats for certain missiles, and effective anti missile ewar and counter measures. They need to be careful not to take it too far in one direction or the other, but I think everyone wants to see more variety, and heavy missiles will not be widely utilized for pvp in their current state.

Because of bombs. Come on now.

This has been true of almost every game balance issue ever. That said pretty much everyone agrees heavy missiles and both citadel missiles are trash atm.

It's true there isn't any real consensus in the debate, but a lot of that has been created by the anti-missile lobby muddying the waters they seems to think missiles and by extension half of all Caldari ships should be the only ones without a role in pvp, because when drones or turrets are good at something that's fine, but if missiles are good at anything it automatically means they are OP and must be nerfed immediately or the game will break.

As for HAM's here's a graph comparing the dps application of faction HAM's on a Caracal with 2 target painters against a Thorax with 2 tracking enhancers. Target is a MWD Talwar, which is not unusual in low sec, for all the whining of turret users about how hard it is to hit for full dps against moving targets you can see they do substantially more dps as long as they are being used in the correct range and your making some kind of effort to mitigate angular velocity.

http://i.imgur.com/H9IkFZY.png

Looking at it I think it's clear that HAM's with target painters are lagging well behind, and there is plenty of room for improvement before anyone can start complaining about missiles being OP. Turrets are in a good place; too good atm. Short range turrets and drones are far better in web range, long range turrets and drones are far better outside web range. So not only do turrets have the advantages of high alpha instant dps which means they will always be better in fleets, and better for small gangs camping stations and gates, but they also have better applied dps against nearly all targets at nearly every range outside web range. HAM's might not be far off btw, they could go a long way towards filling the gaping hole left by the RLML nerf, but they need better damage application and the slight buff they would get from a tracking enhancer at the cost of lower potential dps will help provide that. It might actually allow them to be flexible enough to have a viable role in pvp, but they will still be a LONG way off being OP, and will still lag behind other cruiser weapons in so many roles.

The problem with rapid lights won't be solved by increasing their application, so that's a pretty mute point, but the other missiles along with the rapid heavy launcher are in need of improvements to their application. I believe that issues that don't go across all weapons under a certain category should be handled in such a way. The bottom line is I think that the gimped launchers should get improved, a ballistics enhancer should be added, and tracking disruptors should gain scripts for decreasing missile application and range.

true.

though im not unhappy with heavies, compared to turrets of a comparable size and range, they have ok dps and range, but i can see how a ship moving at speed and at range is harder to hit with HML's than with turrets. same with cruises.

perhaps altering the missile damage app forumlae to make it slightly more dependant on sig than speed will help with this.

About a year ago CCP tested out a modified TD on sisi. It was supposed to disrupt missiles as well as turrets. It didn't work. At all. No explanation why. But I get the feeling it may be tied up in legacy code. Otherwise, how hard can it be to add a new property or method to the object that is a tracking disruptor?

Personally I would love to see a ballistic enhancer and/or computer that boosts the accuracy and/or range of missiles. Torpedo and citadel torpedo ships might actually become viable in pvp. But that needs to happen in conjunction with the weapon disruptor that was attempted, and another round of missile rebalances. Specifically, Heavy Missiles are complete crap compared to all LR medium turrets now.

Remember that there are 2 turret accuracy modules, the midslot Tracking Computer, and the low slot Tracking Enhancer. Missiles have neither. This is a clear disadvantage to missiles compared to turrets.

People talk about painters and webs as if they are "missile" enhancers, when they are actually weapon enhancers. They have the same effect for both turrets and missiles; they increase applied damage indirectly by affecting the target in a negative way.

The difference between weapon enhancers and a tracking computer is that the TC cares not about the range of the enemy. It always applies its bonus. TPs and especially webs are range dependent. Furthermore, neither module will increase missile range.

TC increases optimal and/or tracking depending on which or even if it has a script loaded. So a proposed midslot item for missiles should do the same.

Range is fairly straight forward to modify; choose velocity or flight time and give it a kick in the butt. Personally, I would prefer velocity since that would make missiles arrive faster thus reducing the time to target and giving a further small stealth buff.

Turrets also have signature resolution, which is the missile equivalent of explosion radius. Since nothing in the game modifies signature resolution, neither should the missile computer modify explosion radius. What we do have is a target painter that accomplishes that task indirectly by increasing the signature radius of the target. So in that aspect we look well-balanced.

What is not balanced is the lack of a missile explosion velocity upgrade. Furthermore, many of the problems associated with missile damage application are due to explosion velocity vs target velocity. See Citadel Torpedoes with base explosion velocity of 20 m/s. They don't apply damage for crap to anything that is moving.

Also, webs have such a short range on anything that is not a bonused ship that by the time you can apply one, long range missiles are at a complete disadvantage vs short-range missiles. Coincidentally, short range missiles typically have much worse damage application stats than long range missiles, heavies not withstanding. Only by virtue of their much higher raw damage and launcher cycle time do they do more damage than their long range counter-parts.

So imo a missile computer would need to be able to modify explosion velocity. This would result in a boost to applied damage across the entire engagement range of the missile, exactly as a tracking computer increases the accuracy of turrets across their entire engagement range.

To summarize: we need this for balance. 1 each Missile Guidance Enhancer, lo slot module, passive, gives modest boosts to missile maximum velocity and explosion velocity, and 1 each Missile Guidance Computer, mid-slot active module, scriptable, that gives slightly better boosts to the same stats.

The stats OP gave look reasonable. Exact balancing I leave in CCP's hands.

I was only using that graph to illustrate that there is plenty of room for improvement with HAM's while still leaving long range turrets supreme in their respective roles. Long range turrets will always have a role in pvp for sniping regardless of the dps or damage application of Heavy missiles, and short range turrets have a huge dps advantage in web range.

he says in his support for the guy displaying graphs

i dnt use heavies much no. but then again ive used medium rails, arties and beams even less. is that supposed to mean anything other than i dnt use long ranged weapons of that calibre much? by the looks of things, u dnt use heavy missiles or any long ranged medium turret either and zvaarion doesnt appear to PvP at all. is that supposed to mean anything?

These two things are not even remotely analogous.