Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Scripting is good. Overheating could be more complicated compared to turret tracking is, due to delayed damage from travel. Are only the missiles that hit while overheat is on affected or are the bonuses applying when the missile fires? Would you need/want to get your missiles in the air before overheating MGC so that you are not wasting heat damage?

Possibly. The flavor argument is that it is not an active module, cannot be scripted, and thus gives a generic improvement to all applicable stats. With the midslot module being active, scriptable, and more powerful, but taking up a significantly more valuable slot. Lets be honest here, even on armor tank ships, mids are more valuable than lows, there are lists upon lists of things that would be desirable in a mid. PVP fits rarely see TE's, because armor ships can run rigs for application or just pilot better. Missile ships do not have this advantage.

I think a larger big picture question here is "how does CCP want missiles to perform?"

Consider a theoretical turret with "x"km optimal, 0 falloff, and tracking such that it applies full dps at 50% of its total range. And a missile with "x"km total range. The target that these two weapons are shooting at is applying maximum angular velocity. The application slope of the turret goes from 0% application to 100% at half its range, with the remaining half its range gaining an application buffer, such that if its application or the speed of the opponent turns counter to its favor, it would still apply full damage.

Should the missile apply damage based on the equivalent turrets application at half its range or even more? Then the missile would do full damage across the entire range regardless of piloting skill. Everyone agrees that this would be OP. Then what? 25%? And how much is the application buffer 'worth' to the balancing considerations? Missile explosion radius cannot be made to shrink as the missile travels to give missiles an equivalent to this... or can it?

How about calculating a generic average damage that the turret can do across its entire engagement range and basing the missile damage off that? Conceptually "on grid" if this ship was slowly spiraling inwards towards the turret ship, the total damage applied to the target from "x" range down to 0 should be the same for both the turret and the missile. This provides a balance between the piloting and variability in turret application and the consistent but lower dps of missiles.

How then does eve weapon systems stack up? Do missiles apply a net average of turret dps across their entire engagement range? Its almost impossible to tell, piloting, webs, TP's, fitting, piloting, falloff, piloting, and player actions commonly referred to as piloting make balancing skill based combat systems against build based RTS like systems nearly impossible.

As CCP bros in the past have said, balancing missile systems is knife edge work, they're either OP or useless. Its very hard for them to be anything in the middle.

By introducing the MGC's and MGE's they have made that job harder for themselves.

Surely it would have been easier to apply small tweaks to the missile base stats in every six week patch window so they could monitor things over a year or so until missiles got to a good place.

Yes and no. The issue is two fold. Current missile application could use base stat increases. Missile velocity too but with flight time trade off since range is not the real issue. Tweaking base application stats should be done even with the new modules. The new modules then allow choices for low/med/rig slots to be used for improving the stats you need for your setup.

If you want more range or application right now, you can fit some rigs. That is your only choice. Now you have more more options. If you go with a mid over a rig, you might fit a damage rig or fitting rig instead.

The modules are a good thing regardless. But they are not the full solution in my mind.

Edit: Especially with disruption coming in the future. But if they buff application when they release missile disruption, that might make more sense timing wise.

So instead of it having slightly higher stats than turrets (because, you know missiles have delay damage, can be firewalled, can be speed tanked, have kinetic lock on most of the ships), it gets worse stats than the equivalent turret computer. Having a drake/nighthawk fleet was fun for one day I guess.

I've never heard of modules that stack-penalize with each other, but do not stack-penalize with rigs that have the same effect, so I can't imagine that Flares and Rigors won't be screwed over.

CCP thinks it's fine to nerf something as long as there are modules/rigs that will get you back up to where you were before the nerf. Ignore the part where you have to sacrifice something else in your fit to obtain what you had.

No they are not.

CCP Rise,
I am very disappointed by those new values and you know how passionate I am about missiles, which has something to do with me being present when missile damage was a boolean value - yes or no (in range or not).

I still stand by my post that missiles should always apply 100% - reistance of shield or armor or hull resistance damage at missile speed x flight time.
Turrets have more range, more damage and wrecking shots.

As soon as missile speed x flight time is reached a missiles disappears into the void of space - the end.

If a turret reaches optimal + 2x falloff it can still vaporize a ship and turret range is ALWAYS optimal + 2x falloff, regardless of speed of hunter-hunted.

Missile range is an average of speed x flight time and in 99.99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% of all cases all parties are moving.

It escapes me why a long range weapon NEEDS a short range application mod to work (stasis web anyone?).

Since you are from the US you may want to take CCP Fozzie and CCP Tuxford to a trip to the home of the brave and let the US Navy show of some missiles and show you how they work.
You can ask a Colonel what will happen to a motorcycle rider if you accidently drop a Tomahawk tatical missiles on him.

Here's a hint, the medicial examiner will only have carbon ash to work with and no the motorcycle cannot outrun anything.


And here are acceptable values for explosion velocity for all missiles: 299.792.458 m/s and 0.000000000000001m explosion radius.
With those values most of the missiles problem will be solved.

That will help kiting with missiles and everyone will be pleased.

Well +1 on the old Stats. I was testing the new Modules on Sisis and its fun to fly Missile Ships again. I hope you will look on the Range of Torp Missiles so they get buffed in Range to match the other Turret close Combat Weapons.

To the New stats: I think that Range should stay as it was because i think the more OP stat is the Missile Explosiv Radius. That Missiles can apply their damage better and also always hit might kill Frigates to fast. The Range itself doesn´t matters that much but that it was easy for my to kill frigates in a mission and even whit one shot, might be the grater Danger to this Modules. Keep the Range and nerv only the Explosiv Radius Bonuses.

Massive blunt nerf before they even got near TQ and they look weaker than missile rigs already. I mean why would i want to waste a mid slot and 35 CPU on a module that gives me +11% flight time, and +11% missile velocity when I can use a far less valuable rig slot and no fitting cost for a straight +20% missile velocity? Missile speed is more important than overall range in nearly every scenario so I'm going to stick with rigs if I want range. The damage application is more complicated but I understand the rule of thumb here is that there's no point buffing explosion velocity past a certain point so it's almost always best to fit rigors rather than flares, which makes me wonder is '-20% explosion radius' better or '-15% explosion radius +15% explosion velocity'? It's moot anyway because I'm certain rigs + target painters will be better than any number of these modules for damage application especially in gangs, and the low slot modules I mean come on whats the point of these even existing now? I'd rather fit a nano.

Either way we're back to square one: rigs and pwnage, so this achieves little or nothing and missiles remain bad apart from stealth bombers and light missiles. Some said in the reveal thread this would be 1 step forward 2 steps back type of deal and I'm sorry now that I disagreed because they are right, you're going to give missiles this and then introduce missile ewar as if missiles need more problems. I'm disappointed, this won't drag missiles out of the wilderness and if they bring in ewar now it will be the final nail in the coffin.

If you must reign in the power just remove the weird double bonuses and do it like this:

Missile Guidance Computer II
35 CPU, 1 PG, 15% bonus to explosion radius and 12.5% bonus to missile velocity

much cleaner and only slightly more effective than the current rig options, anyone saying missiles will somehow jump from practically unused to OP with a slight buff like that at the cost of tank/ewar/tackle is off their meds and should be ignored until they get a run on TQ. Frankly even if they were right and missiles suddenly became OP most people would be glad to see a change for a while and it would be easy to correct unlike some of the other cancers in the game.

I would comment, but it would just further illustrate what has been several years of disappointing implementations regarding missiles.