Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Crash booster? Thats like 600 less Er right there

Hey guys, we made some tweaks to the Phoenix, and during this process we resized our changes would mean the Phoenix can't hit a structure sitting in space for full damage, so we made the effective size of structures bigger. - CCP

CCP are unmatched in their ability to troll their user base, damn

Good thing I have no phoenix chars.

Uhm, slave set works on capitals? Yes!

Crystal set works on capitals? No!

What say you?

This represents a laughable failing in critical thinking. The mere fact that they had to up the sig radius for structures to compensate means that it's the weapon's fault is sucks at hitting structures, not the structures themselves. I have no idea what the discussion that led to making that decision sounded like, and I'm not sure I want to...

Gotta agree with this. It might not be something you can get done for this expansion Foz, but either make slaves NOT work with caps, or make Crystals work with caps. Choose, sir!

If they want to make the Phoenix only really hit capitals and not subcapitals that's fine by me, but I think it's completely silly to gimp the explosion radius on the missiles to avoid "turning it into some kind of subcap blapping monster" when the other dreads already are that.

I mean you could remove the explosion radius nerf entirely and it STILL wouldn't be as good at blapping subcapitals as the other dreads are (ie. it'd require support ships that web and paint the subcaps, and even with webs and paints it wouldn't hit anything smaller than a battlecruiser for good damage).

If anything, leave the explosion radius and velocity on the missiles completely alone, or buff the velocity a little but leave the radius alone. That way the Phoenix could fit the 3x Rigors it needs to apply its damage, and the shield resist bonus would mean that it doesn't lose a crippling amount of tank in the absence of Core Defense Field Extender rigs. Alternatively, add a mid slot module for missiles that's like a tracking computer.

Other dreads sacrifice some midslots for tracking computers to be able to blap subcaps, Phoenix has to sacrifice all of its rig slots and suffer a rather awful launcher CPU penalty with that (people generally seem to agree that Phoenix is quite CPU starved) to be able to blap subcaps and it's still not as good at it as gun dreads.

Also, something quite important that I forgot to mention here, whereas on moving targets very low Explosion Radius will "make up for" lacking Explosion Velocity, the inverse isn't always true. On stationary targets it doesn't matter how high your Explosion Velocity is, it will not matter at all in the equation.

This comes into play when shooting other caps. A triage Archon with links will have 1956m sig radius, and move at 0ms. Thus, the Explosion Velocity the missiles are going to gain will not help here at all, while the Explosion Radius they're going to lose (from 1500 with GMP V up to 2250 with GMP V) will matter quite a bit. After these changes, a Phoenix with no rigors will never deal full damage to a triaged Archon with links without using drugs. So while in the past you could speed tank some of its damage by moving in a carrier, after these changes you can mitigate 13% of its damage by not doing anything, and your top speed in the Archon will still be higher than the Explosion Velocity of the missiles.

SUPER IMPORTANT EDIT: I realised that I've made a horrible mistake. Extra Explosion Velocity will never make up for missing Explosion Radius, whereas the inverse is true (I originally claimed that it would sometimes make up for it). This is because of how the damage formula picks the lowest value between 1, the value gained from only considering Explosion Radius, and the value gained from considering both Explosion Radius and Explosion Velocity.

So imagine for instance that you're shooting a missile with an Explosion Radius of 100 and an Explosion Velocity of 200 at a target with a signature radius of 50 and velocity of 100. Here's what the damage formula does essentially:
1) Calculates 50/100 = 0.5
2) Calculates (50/100)*(200/100) = 1
3) picks the lowest of these values, 0.5

Thus, you'll do half damage to this target even though you have extra Explosion Velocity.

On the other hand, let's imagine you're shooting the same missile at a target with a Signature of 200 and a velocity of 400, here's what the formula does now:
1) Calculates 200/100 = 2
2) Calculates (200/100)*(200/400) = 1
3) Picks the lowest of these two values, 1

Thus, you'll do full damage even though he's moving at twice your explosion velocity, because your explosion radius is so small (makes perfect sense, right? He's outrunning your explosion but can't because it's too small)

Long story short, Explosion Radius is universally a much more important stat than Explosion Velocity, and trading it as Fozzie suggests in the OP is a horrible, horrible tradeoff as far as damage application is concerned.

That's sort of the point of missiles. Dank, reliable application at the cost of your damage being delayed, and for better or worse, transversal not helping or ruining you.

Salient points to remember are yes that missiles choose the worst of the two evaluations

also that Ev where considered is more greatly modified by reducing the target velocity.

Let's look at that above example with some more realistic figures: A cerberus with HAM vs a hawk
cerb hams are 93.8er/152ev vs the hawks 41sr/336tv

the cerb only applies about 140 dps to this hawk (before resist), without a prop mod. Turn on the hawks AB and it does a pitiful 62 dps to our hawk before resists.

HAMs in this scenario suffer multiple problems first being Sr/Tr is 94/41 ie about 0.48, and Ev/Tv being 152/336 (or 152/824) giving us again about 0.45 (or about 0.18). Then you 0.48*0.45 or 0.48*0.18 and you get 0.22 or 0.08. A mere 22% or 8% of the HAM cerbs 600+ dps is being applied to the hawk.

Now throw a web on the hawk. Then apply a TP in a vacuum. Now apply them both. Look at what happens to the numbers. Now apply an improved crash booster. Now switch to RLML. Now switch to HML. All sorts of exciting things start popping up