Player Features and Ideas Discussion

You're shooting "precision" weapons at the same size class should be a clue.

As should the fact that if you were using guns then your target would die nearly twice as fast compared to precision HM which do so little damage on a caracal with 3x BCU I can get 93% of it's damage out of a freakin' merlin never mind with another cruiser.

Next to their peer group, heavy missiles are nothing short of absolutely god awful outside of super niche roles (which can trivially be replicated by other hulls which are, in general, far less of a liability).

maybe some kind of rigs that allow heavy missiles to use a new class of tech II missiles with sub-munition warheads would help. Give HAM users more choice at the cost but you still have to mke the right choice due to missile reload times if you make a mistake. The sacrifice for using the sub-munitions is in your rig choices, you lose buffer tank/active tank or whatever in place of better and more flexible damage application. The rigs would be adding in extra target acquisition and missile control functions to be able to handle the much larger number of warheads in play.

This would be splendid, but in the short term I would settle for Fozziebear to tell us what he has against missiles. Then maybe he could go to a couple Missile Haters Anonymous meetings and start working his steps...
On a serious note though, how long ago where HMLs broken? Because I foresee somethig similar in store for LMLs after the way their "OP" apllication was fixed with a flat damage nerf.

The issue i have with HML from a solo perspective is application. HML does absolutely nothing to frigs. With an uber application fit bellicose, out of the 250ish dps it does with HML and 3 BCUs its only applying 90ish dps. Thats with 2 bonused TP, double rigor and a standard crash booster. This leaves room for 1 LSE for tank. I think that was also with precisions.

Now, i know that HML arent for anti-frig, and im not asking for 100% application to a frig, but it would be nice to have a chance to kill tackle before im scrammed, with HML. I can use 1400s or 800 acs to kill frigs using battleship sized turrets but cant kill a frig using a cruiser sized missile launcher without 4 application mods and drugs?

I simply do not use HML for this reason. Every fit ive tried or theorycrafted for a solo fit is just not viable. This is why i generally fly with turrets or LM or RLML if i use a missile ship.

Maybe its intended to have support for HML, its just odd that no other weapon system requires a dedicated belli/huginn/rapier pilot for your weapon system to apply half way decently.

Very mature.

Do you have anything of substance to add?

[Caracal Navy Issue, Caracal Navy Issue fit]

Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Shield Power Relay II
Shield Power Relay II

EM Ward Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Large Shield Extender II
10MN Afterburner II
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I

Heavy Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Heavy Missile

Medium Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer II
Medium Warhead Flare Catalyst II
Medium Warhead Flare Catalyst II

335 dps with fury, 285 with navy, 248 with precision.

This is a ship with -25% explosive radius and with 2x explosion velocity rigs. Let's look at application.

Fury: 136/144
Navy: 78/171
Precision: 70/205

Now let's look at range.

Fury: 44km
Navy: 58.7km
Precision: 29.3km

YMMV I ran these figures with my personal API data, obviously the missiles have a bit better range at all V but this is fine for comparison purposes. It's worth noting I have the relevant missile application skills to 5.

Now compared to say.. railguns, off the top of my head now medium railguns have a sig radius of 125? base. Target velocity isn't really important at this stage but it is interesting to see that at least missiles have generally a lower radius than railguns and that no ship reduces the signature resolution of guns. There's no modules or rigs for it either. Otherwise I guess a railgun ship with even just 1x T2 sig reduction for guns would be tracking easily over 15% better just from that alone, dependent on target they could track up to 50% better. It would be totally broken. And so in this complex web of interdependent modules we get the TP and the web.

Are missiles borked in application? From a velocity perspective yes. From a sig perspective no.

So to compare with 2x t2 rigors instead of flare:

Fury: 86/102
Navy: 50/122
Precision: 45/146

according to the missile formula as described graphically here: http://eveuni.org/missiles101 we desire to push our sig radius factor as far in to our favour as possible. Sounds good?

One caveat remains: my corax does more volley damage than this CNI. In fact you need a drake to beat the volley damage of a LML corax with similar numbers of BCS. There is a problem here. Heavy missiles don't get significantly more range than lights, apply damage much worse and do roughly the same amount of damage. Maybe 15% more give or take.

So really I still think HML just need a damage buff, they suffer quite a staggering amount of damage mitigation naturally and it takes a niche fit in order to really push their damage down field. At the moment I would recommend any person considering HML to think of RLML instead as that 15% volley decrease is compensated for through significantly higher levels of application.

Interesting idea. 2% per level is the standard already set. I'd have really hoped for CCP to change the specialisation skills for missiles from ROF to raw damage and let ROF be purely determined by mods and rigs. This will homogenise the system with guns and add more value to the ammo you carry and make overheating your missile mods tangentially more valuable too.

Secondly RHML doesn't really hold a candle to cruise missiles. As far as PVE goes, nothing can beat 900+ dps to 250km from cruises. At around 250 sig and 100m/s Ve too. Cruises just **** all over heavy missiles. A rack of 8 does and with fury does nearly 8000 volley. By comparison heavies do about 2100. No ship gets bonuses to RHML flight time or velocity (except barghest I think?). As for shooting UP a catagory.... you're *supposed* to do more damage than normal, that's the point. It's a larger target. Right now an AB battleship can speed tank heavy missiles - this shouldn't be possible and it sure as hell isn't when comparing light missiles to cruisers, at least not to the same degree.

Maybe this is the wrong path, maybe medium weapons just need pulled back.

A Deimos with 200mm rails is doing 93% of the DPS of a blaster Deimos...at far longer ranges.

Maybe I should run for CSM next year, heh.

and then people will complain about HMLs again.
"
HML Tengu. Kite. Such wow. many de pe es
Drake OP nerf missiles
Look at Cerberus. Much missiles. very range. DPS DPS DPS
"

...something like this

back n forth back n forth.

I like how they are and a drake with HML is still a legit and cheap weapon system.

They are still overshadowed by hams and rapid lights in most PVP cases but yet they have their niche.

Damage and application so far is fine. I would just like to see increased range again to have a legit reason to choose them over rapid lights for certain pvp situations.

You feel that changing missile specialisation skills to increase damage and not ROF would be bad? A net decrease in dps would actually occur. This benefits the sniper role of long range missiles more and provides more room for movement with modules and rigs. Each shot you do is worth more and missiles fire slower.