Missions & Complexes

Hi folks,

Returning player (carebear) here, looking for advice.

I’m currently running l4 missions with turret battle ships to get into the game again. While I like the advantages they have, I found myself thinking that for some long range missions missiles might be a good choice.

I have a CNR I never used in one of my hangars and playing around with EFT found, that the selective pure damage types actually make for some good damage numbers. Since my intended use is long range missions, I’m looking at a cruise setup.

Questions that I now have are:
1. Will defenders eat a considerable amount of my paper dmg?
2. What do you guys propose is the best weapon grouping approach? As I remember defender missile numbers were depending on the number of weapon groups. Is there a sweet spot for optimizing weapon overkill and defender spawns?
3. Apart from the CNR what missile boats are you running and why?

Thanks for your help!

there is nothing wrong with the navy raven, in fact i would prefer it over the other options except the golem. in contrast to many other cruise ships, it can reliably oneshot anything smaller than a battleship or elite cruiser, even if you are too lazy to juggle target painters.

there is some data out there on how NPC defenders work, but tbh i don't think it is too conclusive. ungrouping and juggling your launchers may or may not bring a tiny increase in applied dps, but frankly i can't be bothered to waste attention on it.

The CNR is a fine mission boat. NPC defenders will hurt your DPS a bit but not so much that it will cause a problem. The fact that the CNR uses a full 8 launchers actually makes NPC defenders a bit less effective against it as opposed to the Golem which has fewer actual launchers but a large bonus to them.

Just group all your launchers in one group, it makes things easier. The only time it's worth bothering with multiple weapons groups is on artillery boats to avoid overkill against small targets.

The other popular PVE missile boats are the Tengu, Golem, and Typhoon. The MWD/HAM Tengu is arguably comparable to a CNR depending on the mission and the exact fit. The HML Tengu still works but it is not the pwnmobile it once was due to HMLs being nerfed into the ground a while back. The Golem is generally considered to be a straight upgrade from the CNR and the Typhoon is somewhere between a CNR and a standard Raven, but it has a very different training path and probably isn't worth going for unless you already have a lot of SP in Minmatar BS and armor tanking. The Navy Scorp is just a tankier Raven and the CNR will outperform it in the end. The RS is a drone boat that happens to also use missiles, but it can be a beast in the hands of a good pilot.

For better or worse the only truly missile based pirate BS is crap for PVE so you are basically looking at a CNR or a Golem if you want a good missile BS for missions.

I did some testing way back when. The speed of cruise missiles and HMLs reduced the effectiveness of NPC defenders dramatically.

I wouldn't worry about them. NPC defenders only fire once per group so keep your missiles grouped, except against that one named NPC in that one mission whose defenders will kill 3 cruise missiles at a time.