Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Just to be sure. Painters don't "kinda work" in falloff as turrets do, they either work or they don't and in falloff the chance to apply simply lowers. So increasing their optimal is actually very useful.

Well yes and no. Turrets have lows, mids and rigs to affect damage application and while painters surely help it's not the "preferred" method. Missiles only have rigs and painters, so buffing painters to reach out enough to accommodate for missiles ranges at least gives missile ships choices and could create a meta in and of itself.

there is a reason for that, missiles almost never fail to apply damage within their range, whereas turret damage can be fully mitigated.

as long as missiles fail proof, they should just be flat out bad.

Try shooting at a fleeing cynabal with non-speed bonused HML - you'll find the range is quite unbelievable, from memory under 20km, maybe 25km.

Only if you forget to bring different ammo types

Jam antimatter in that ferox or MF in the harby and ... daaaamn.

I have had enough of reading your incompetent blather. Target Painters are stacking penalized. 1000 of them is no more effective than 500, or 100, or 20, all the way down to about 5. They also have perfectly fine optimal. They don't need a boost in range.

If HML range is moronic, then what do you consider 250mm Spike range, which is about 50% greater than that?

Missiles do not have damage application modules, unlike turrets. Only dps modules, which are themselves subject to the damage application formula. This puts them at a disadvantage. Some dps at long range is better than no dps.

Turrets benefit from TP and webs just as much as missiles. The dps graph in EFT shows turrets and sentry drone dps as an average applied dps based on an RNG that considers range and transversal, whereas missiles have a linear graph that represents only applied dps. So increasing optimal and thus range on turrets increases average dps up until the target is inside optimal range. Increasing tracking speed increases average dps so long as the target already has some sort of transversal to the firing ship. Any semi-skilled pilot know to keep up his transversal vs a turret or sentry drone ship.

Missiles do always apply dps. But that dps is often so low as to be effectively zero. In addition, missile dps is capped at 100% of maximum paper dps. Turrets are not hard-capped in this way. They can hit for more than paper volley damage based on the above mentioned hit quality formula. Turret Damage linkage.

Long Range medium turrets often have significantly better maximum range than heavy missiles on a comparable hull. In addition, turret range is never reduced based on whether or not you are chasing or being chased by a target. Missile range is.

Turrets can apply maximum theoretical dps simply by dictating range and transversal (piloting skill). Missiles cannot. They require additional EWAR and/or rigs to achieve maximum paper dps, which is on average lower than that of turrets. This is a huge advantage for turrets.

By the same token, turrets can also be placed into bad situations compared to missiles. But unlike missiles, they have means to compensate via piloting, whereas again the missile ship has to use modules or rigs. Whether or not these modules (webs/painters) are on the firing ship is irrelevant. They will benefit from it. So will turrets.

Turrets can swap ammo to whichever range-category works best. Heavy missile ammo is limited to crappy T1, slightly better faction (longest range), utter shite Fury, and still shite Precision. Proof below.

Evidence:
Both the Ferox and the Drake get a bonus from Caldari BC. But different bonuses. So I went into EFT and set all 5s modified with Caldari BC at 0. So no bonuses to range or dps other than the 3x damage modules in the lows.

Ferox using Spike gets 313 dps at 65+15km. Drake using Caldari Navy Scourge gets 256dps at 62.9km. Advantage Ferox in both categories.

At this point I have to point out the the Drake's damage bonus (not currently being used) is only to kinetic Heavies and HAMs. So even with the bonus, it is limited to only one kind of ammo. In 3/4s of situations, it will be gimped due to shooting right into the most heavily resisted damage type in the game. So unless you're shooting at Minmatar T2 ships or have Caldari BC 5, anything else will usually be better.

Now lets look at a more realistic combat situation. That rabbit Caracal? It will be spiraling out as fast as it can because it doesn't want to get close to a CBC. So a more appropriate situation would be MWD overheated and on, with a 45 degree outward spiral from the shooter. This reduces the Drake's effective HM range to 43km, and gets it out of range of the Ferox while maintaining significant transversal.

The result is that the Ferox will do more dps than the Drake at all ranges >30km using Spike, and it will continue to do so all the way out to its locking range.

If the Caracal were to fly straight away from them, it would receive 306 dps from the Ferox and reduce the Drake range to about 37km.

At <30km the Ferox can swap to CN Antimatter and do a ****-tonne more damage (468dps at 19km), completely obliterating the Caracal. And probably the Drake for that matter.

But hey! Remember my comments about heavy missile ammos above? Lets swap to Scourge Fury Heavies on the Drake. Oh, boy. I went fropm 369 to 433 paper dps in exchange for a loss of 15km in range and much poorer application stats. Now looking at the graph, the Drake's applied dps went from 153dps to 83dps. That's right, a reduction of 46% of applied dps to an MWDing shield cruiser. WTF, CCP?!

For ***** and giggles, I checked with Precision ammo. 169dps out to 31.4km. So the Drake does more dps to an MWDing Caracal using Precision ammo than Fury or faction.

So, no, Heavy Missiles are not well balanced. They are completely pants-on-head-********. I'm ok with Fury heavies having poorer application stats. But they need to actually do something. Not reduce damage to a bloated target like an MWDing cruiser. Faction heavies need to apply more dps than frickin Precision heavies to a like-sized MWDing target.

Not empty quoting so will add that a scythe fleet issue can get more (applied and paper) DPS out using unbonused rails than bonused HML.

Again. You can not buff Drakes and HML Tengus to a point where they become relevant, it's just wrong. I'm perfectly happy with missiles getting better damage application (and perhaps a slight base dps increase, but that would have to come at a cost) but not if they don't balance out Drakes and Tengus because of it.

"if a target is webbed and painted it's fine" but for some reason we have to use the "if we apply HML damage to an AB Caracal it sucks"

You can't keep changing the scenario to suit your agenda. If the whole argument is "against AB Cruisers missiles suck more at applying damage than turrets, LOOK!" then you can't then turn that around the second it suits you and start implementing webs and whatnot because in that case missile apply damage just fine and we can all come to the conclusion they don't need a buff.

Have you paid attention to the posts? I don't believe anyone has complained about the use of an AB to counter missiles, the point is that even without an AB you lose over 30% of your paper HML DPS unless the target is webbed. Also, no one has said that speed shouldn't mitigate damage either, rather the amount of "dps bleed" is out of line and, frankly, ridiculous.
The only difference between this thread and threads about your sentry drone strawman is that one is asking for a weapon to be brought into line. Wait... That's both of them. I honestly think that there are people who oppose balancing missiles because missiles...

Also, how is it silly to ask for a ship, which has already been curb-nerfbat'd, to be able to perform the way Fitting says it should?