Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Torps and cruise missiles are the most problematic in their damage application. This is true. In a golem fitted with torps or cruise missiles, the golem still needs 3 target painters to apply full possible dps on it's target. A Golem shouldn't require more than two in order to do so considering is has a bonus towards them.
Now, that in mind, target painters are also an issue for missile pilots in themselves. They, like turrets, have an optimal range, so inside or outside of that range they become less effective while still having the same drawbacks on the pilot themselves.
There are rigs that reduce exp radius and increase exp velocity, so it is obvious that CCP has intended the ship to have some actual control on the effect of the missile, so I would suggest replacing target painters with a non-cap using, non-range limited module that would still be a mid slot item, thus requiring the pilot to choose between more effective dps, or more tank.

Now, as far as the effectiveness of missiles themselves.
Missiles really don't fit into mixed fleets at all. If you ever watch the alliance tournaments, the only missile boat that is ever fitted into a mixed fleet is a stealth bomber, however, once its bomb had been launched, these ships have essentially worn out their welcome and any applied dps from these ships is simply a bonus, but not a neccessity in order for the fleet to stay alive.
Apart from those bombers, you rarely see a fleet with a missile boat mixed in.
Now, when it comes to small scale pvp in server, you will often see tengus and drakes mixed in with other ships, but often times these fleets are not serving a purpose other than random pvp and these fleets are often very weak and poorly organized.
However, in the consideration of pvp affectiveness, the tengu and drake are the exception. This however is not because they use missiles, it's because the tengu has multi-functional capability, and the drake is only capable because of it's tanking capability as a passive tank ship and basically falls under that catagory of being a ship for risk averse pilots.

Now, to the missiles themselves. Missiles do suffer, even at close range (assuming the range is greater than 1km). This is because turrets are ALWAYS instant, where as missiles take longer and longer to initialize their dps the greater the range becomes.
We'll do a quick comparison, but the ships I'll be using are imaginary in order to show balanced numbers.
So you have a missile boat and a turret boat. Both with equal dps, equal cycle time, equal tank, equal damage type, basically everything is equal about these two ships other than one is using missiles and one is using turrets.
Now, they are sitting exactly 1km away and they are stationary. The damage from each ship is applied equal to the other at the same cycle time. So every time a turret hits for 1k damage, the missile will also hit for 1k damage.
Now, both of these ships initialize combat at the exact same time.(remember again, this is an imaginary situation and is headed to a point.)
Now, may people would assume that both of these ships being equally pitted against each other with everything about them being exactly the same other than weapon type, so these two ships would destroy each other at the exact same time. HOWEVER, this is not the case. Even at 1km the missile pilot would still have a slight disadvantage because his missiles would not hit instantly, even though it would only take a fraction of a second. You would figure that this still wouldn't be a problem, but if you think this, then you are incorrect. The reason is because the missile boat will be destroyed instantly by the final blow from the turret boat leaving that missile pilots final volley null and void allowing the turret boat to survive by a single volley.
Now, if you increase that outcome to 100km, then with t2 heavy missiles, the turret pilot would survive by at least 5 volleys.

Now, I have 3 suggestions related to missiles to make them more effective in both mixed fleets and pvp.

1) Is one that should be obvious from my story. Make missiles apply dps even after their controlling ship has been destroyed. (This should have been happening anyway.

2) Increase the velocity of missiles so that at their max range with range effecting modules and skills and using the size related launcher with the highest rate of fire, a volley will always hit before the end of the launcher's cycle. Thus missiles will have waisted volleys, but still have a delay, and still have the same effective dps.

3) Missiles being treated as an object in space is CCPs mistake. Instead, they should have treated missiles as if they are on a string between the target and the point of origin. This way, missiles would be much simpler to factor, and be easier on the server because all the computation would be in the point of origin and the target the same way turrets are. Instead of the missile tracking the target, the target is already tracking itself, so the string is naturally adjusting itself and leading the missiles. This equals less server lag.

My suggestion was actually that you consider at all skills lvl 5 with the fastest launcher rate of fire, max implants, and t2 range rigs.
Now, anyone with a slower rate of fire module, lower level implants, lesser or no rigs, and lower skills will have their missiles hit before the next volley. While this does increase missile alpha, it's still not the alpha of turrets (being instant), and the turret pilot still would have the upper hand because of that instant damage, but the advantage would be much smaller. This would leave more room for skills and player experience/capability to determine that outcome of the fight, which (tbh) is the way it should be.
However, the ultimate goal of this change would be to stop the annoyance of missile pilots waisting volleys. Counting volleys in pvp is redundant. You might think that last volley is enough to take out the target, but suddenly he overheats his tank and Oops, wasn't enough. Now that volley you thought was going to be the last one seems to turn out that it would have been better had you followed up with another volley. Now, you're behind and it's going to take even more volleys to down the target.
Basically what I'm saying is that counting volleys doesn't work in pvp because their are way too many possibilities to risk shutting off your launchers before the target is destroyed.



Actually, delayed damage of missiles is actually becoming a much bigger problem with the introduction of more ships. Wonder why their wasn't a tier 3 bs introduced with missiles? Well, it probably had a lot to do with the delayed damage meaning it didn't stand a chance against any ship with enough dps to down it before the volleys could reach the target. (Though there are probably other reasons as well)



Agreed on the explosion velocity. My assumption would be that smaller missiles would have a faster exp velocity because
1) They're designed to take out smaller ships, but appear to be less effective at it than larger missiles.
2) I would assume a smaller missile would have a thinner housing, thus meaning there would be less resistance on the explosion meaning, it can expand faster, thus faster exp velocity.


I would think standard missiles need some tweaks as well, seeing as how aml's and sml's use the same ammo.
As far as hams go, I feel the could use a relatively decent range buff. Maybe 50% greater range, which still isn't that much.



I too feel that torps could also use a range buff, but not by much. I base it off maximum orbit range of npcs in lvl 4 missions.(It's a good relative number) being 52km. However, you also have to factor accel time, so at max skills on specific ships (golem for example) you would have a range of 56-58km, thus allowing you to hit npcs at max orbit range and leaving your rig slots open for other options, unless you just want the extra range. Currently a golem needs both rig slots to be t2 range rigs, as well as have max missile range skills in order to get javelins to hit npcs at max orbit range. Bit unfair if you ask me when you see other equally ranged ships able to fit damage rigs, tank rigs, or some else to give them an upper hand in pvp.

However, I also feel that torps and hams could use quite a large velocity boost (in exchange for flight time) because they are designed for close range assault and rely on fast actions.
Where as hml's and cruise missiles are more for range, yet they travel faster than hams and torps....bit weird.



Yup... To be honest though, I'm seeing even the focus of pve leaning more towards turrets.(also drones)
Used to be that ravens, golems, and drake were the must have pve ships.
Now, the raven isn't really that effective considering you have to exchange a good amount of dps for tank, as well as effective dps for tank. If you try to add more dps and 2 or 3 target painters, then you better damn well have a billion isk tank on that ship, cause if you don't it'll go down fairly quickly in a lvl 4 mission.
The Golem, while having great dps, is limited in range, very weak to e-war which can't be countered before it's in range, but is almost impossible to fit with effective dps (meaning target painters) without having at least 1 ded space module.

To be honest, the only 2 missile boats that even really stand out that well in lvl 4 missions anymore are the scorpion navy issue, and the tengu because they're able to put out EFFECTIVE dps with relative ease and without losing much tank. The Tengu because it uses heavies, and the sni because it has 8 mid slots.

One of missiles greatest advantages is that they're not limited to an optimal range, so anything from 0 to max is fair game. However, the fact that the damage application time becomes greater and greater the further away the target is, it seems their seemingly limitless range is also a disadvantage.

Now, to those who say missiles having the choice of damage type being an advantage.
Perhaps in pve being able to select which missile type does the best dps against your target is a tremendous advantage over turrets, HOWEVER, Eve shouldn't be balanced around pve, or at least it shouldn't be. The key factor to being able to choose damage types is knowing which damage type will best effect the target. In pve this is simple to determine just by knowing the target, or you can simply look at a mission reports web site. However, in pvp the story is much different.
In pvp you never know how your target is going to be tanked. They may be in a vessel typically weak against thermal, but when you fire thermal, you find out the target is stacked on thermal resistance.
Now, you'll have those players that will say,"well, just switch damage types."
I have a question to a player who would suggest this. Do you seriously think that it is good strategy to waist 40 seconds loading different damage types into your ship so that you can figure out which does max effective damage??? If you are a person who seems to think the answer to that question is "yes", then I have another question. Does you mom make you wear a helmet to bed??? Cause she really should.
When a fight is initialized, whatever ammo you have in the tube is what you're stuck firing cause changing ammo unless related to range would be a huge mistake, even if your damage type isn't very effective.

Sure, being limited to 2 damage types isn't an advantage in pvp, but when both of those damage types are wrapped into one shot, I would say that it's a major advantage.

Missile boats pay for their non-navigation-dependent application of DPS in terms of lower DPS versus turret-ships...NOT in terms of sluggish application of DPS. In the case of short-range unguided missiles, they are much more sensitive to target velocity than guided missiles, and really begin to enter the blaster realm, where full DPS is very difficult to attain.

Missiles should not require more than a few seconds to reach their destination. Yes, this means cruise missiles should STREAK towards their targets in a damn impressive manner.

I'd also advocate continuous missile acceleration during flight time - the longer it flies for, the faster it goes. This would help even out the DPS application time a bit, between a cruise missile target at 30 km and one at 120 km.