Missions & Complexes

When running L1 and L2 Security Missions and trying to kill a large number of weak targets, I often use auto-target missiles to save time on re-targeting, lost targets due to rat or NPC target disruption, etc. I understand that the damage is lower, but my experience has been that the time savings in not having to target each rat makes up for this.

I was wondering if any of the players with experience running Security Missions in missile boats could help me on one point: is it worth it to ungroup your weapons and stagger the launch times (ie. launch one missile, wait a second or two, then launch another) in order to cut down on wasted missiles due to overkill, destruction of target between launch time and arrival time, etc.?

-Shikuan

I'd probably just go grouped but I'm also lazy. My main consideration I guess would be compare the activation time on the launcher to the flight time on the missile. I'm thinking worst case you have 2 volleys in flight with grouped, or 1.5 with ungrouped, pretty much all the missiles will be in flight anyways. I'm not sure it is worth it to nitpick that.

the mordus legion ships have a very nice velocity bonus. If you can afford them they make the best fof boats.

my other suggesting is just fit up a few sensor boosters on a cruiser and blast through lv2s that way. personally I like guns better as they reduce nearly all overkill. pretty much any turret cruiser will blast through lv2s. If you have connections lv3 you should have almost immediate standings reqs for lv2s.

Ginnie,

As would I. I know there is some waste from missiles in flight towards targets that get destroyed after the missiles were launched (just as some gunnery shots are wasted due to tracking issues), but I don't have enough skill at theorycrafting or numbercrunching in Eve to guess the actual numbers.

-Shi

overall it is heavily dependent on the mission, and the ship used. If all the npcs are close you are probably going to use the same number of missiles. if all the npcs are far you could waste a large number. Also depends on the launcher, with heavy missiles you will likely waste far less than with rapid lights. And then there is something like the ham tengu which has a rof of 1.9s or so and a 6.9s flight time with javelins. And yes paying attention will also lower the number of missiles used.

many missile boats have a rate of fire that is high enough that the next missile launches before the last missile hit. When the first volley hits and kills the target, the second volley just flies off into space and disappears, you can reduce this by volley counting, but that requires you to more or less know how many missiles it takes to kill a target, or make a judgement while in combat, that may or may not be right. If you fire 3 volleys at a target and normally that would kill it, but somewhere inbetween the 2nd and 3rd volley, it gets a rep cycle off and you switch targets, you are going to need to go back and fire 1 or 2 volleys at it to finish it off depending on just how much it repped.

increasing missile speed or decreasing range to target are two decent ways to minimize this problem. if we look at two missile boats with rather typical fits, the raven and the barhest hopefully we can see the problem more clearly.

raven: Rate of fire:6.02s Missile velocity:11.2km/s flight time:16.69s
barghest: Rate of fire:8.026s Missile Velocity:24.77km/s Flight time:8.783s

The raven has pretty decent range, Roughly 60km where you don't need to volley count, but the high rate of fire and long flight time means you can have multiple volleys in flight.
now the barghest almost can't fire a second volley while the first is in flight based on the flight time & launcher rate of fire, however the missiles are so fast that you are hitting at likely 150km before the next volley fires. For typical pve engagements that means no volley counting.

further complicating it are target painter falloff and npc defender missiles. The further away you are the less likely your TP will work, and the faster the missile the less likely it is to get hit by a defender.

all of this is why I just use guns. Although the barghest has me interested in missiles again.

So a Zainou 'Deadeye' ZMC100 and a couple of missile range rigs and it never wastes a shot :D

In my experience I've found that when you have T2 weapons fit on your ship, don't bother with T1 ammo. The reduced cost doesn't save ISK due to reduced DPS thus making you use more ammo. Best to use T2 ammo and keep some Faction ammo in reserve for Rat specific resists when needed.

Basically you want to have more DPS and spend less time destroying NPC's. Overall you'll complete the sites quicker which in turn gains you more ISK.


DMC

ammo is cheap I always just use t2/faction ammo. It is pretty much always worth it to me. Might keep it to t1/t2 if I was blitzing low level missions or something, where the extra 15% dps doesn't really do much, and faction then becomes kinda expensive.

Auto-targeting missiles are probably the exception to the rule for running Tech 1 ammunition in Tech 2 or Faction launchers. There is no readily-available Faction equivalent...