Skill Discussions

Welcome back!

As you suspected, trying to use a battleship and cruise missiles in level 2 missions is not a good idea.

You always need to size your ship, or at least your weapons platform, for your intended targets. Level 2 missions contain mostly frigates and destroyers, with a few cruisers in there from time to time. You need to target them with weapons that are meant for shooting frigates and cruisers.

Also, you will eventually run into the problem of your Scorpion not being allowed into most of your missions as well; there are a good number of missions that have standard or special ship restrictions that stop larger or specialty vessels from being allowed into the mission area.

For running level 2 missions with missiles, you want to be using Standard Missiles in an Assault Missile Launcher (not to be confused with Heavy Assault Missile launchers, which are for fighting larger ships). I believe the Caracal with AML II's will chew through just about anything you could possibly run into in a level 2, and should not cost you a fortune.

Your Scorpion and its cruise missiles are for fighting other battleships and similar sized craft. Trying to hit frigates with cruise missiles is like trying to hit a fly with a barn; if you ever hit, it's going to hurt, but most likely, the fly is just going to move out of the way before you can hit it because the barn moves slowly and the fly moves quickly. This is where you want to start learning about missile explosion velocity versus the signature radius of your target. There are a good number of posts around the board that explain the damage formula so you can calculate for yourself what will work best based on what you are going to be firing upon.

Thx for all the help, just bought the ship you recommended, tested it in a fight with the setup and it do deal more damage but I hit frigates for about 80, it the normal it takes a very long time for me to kill 4 of them ( around 300 shots:S ) .

I am wondering what I am doing wrong.

Also using Rigor Rigs so you can hit smaller ships better with larger missiles is pretty helpful. I have a scorpion with a rigor and tp and I one shot non-elite frigs. Destroyers on up don't fare much better then the frigs do.

i used to use a hawk up to lvl 3, then skipped over to the raven once i hit lvl 4. Usually i did them with corpmmates though to get my faction standings way up and blitz through missions. Now that i fly a tengu missions aren't really all that challenging anymore.

I'd go straight to heavy missiles 5, then train all the stuff needed for the tengu and forget cruise missiles all together unlessyou plan on getting a CNR or SNI which do very well for all lvl4s

Before getting into all this use other ships or train this or that I suggest this:

Use persicion missles for missions under L4.
Try to focus missles on larger ships as much as posible.

Keep a couple TP's running (( you shouldn't need much tank for L3 and under ))

Use those drones as best you can on the frigates.

Get to L4's ASAP then move back to harder hitting missles and work on your fit.

forums ate my post! FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11!!!!11!!

C&P ftw.

Welcome back to Eve. Things have indeed changed. Bigger is not always better, as you have already discovered.

There are a number of things you can do to improve your performance in level 2 missions. Personally, I used a Cormorant on level 2s. 8 small turrets eat frigs for lunch. But since you are asking about missiles...

A Caracal is indeed one of the best choices for a missile spamming level 2 mission boat. Assault missile launchers with ballistic control systems in your lows and rigor and/or flare rigs will improve your missile performance. Also, Guided Missiles Precision and Target Navigation Prediction will increase your effectiveness vs smaller and fast targets. I strongly recommend training these to level 5, along with Missile Launcher Operation and Rapid Launch, both of which will increase your Rate of Fire (RoF), and finally warhead upgrades, which will increase your raw damage. Also consider training the relevant missile specialization skills, as those will increase your RoF for their respective tech 2 launchers.

For modules, you may want to consider using target painters and/or webifiers. Both of these will help to increase your missile damage against small or fast targets. However, as they are mid-slot modules, these will reduce your shield tank. Then again, dead ships don't shoot back. So... your choice how to proceed. Painters have a nice long range. Webs do not.

This next part is for more advanced players. So feel free to ignore if you don't want the technical mumbo-jumbo on how missiles work.

Missiles have a couple of attributes that determine how well they work against their intended targets. Those attributes are explosion velocity and explosion radius. If a target's velocity is faster than the missile's explosion velocity, it will take reduced damage. If a target's signature radius is smaller than the missile's explosion radius, it will take reduced damage. Whichever of the two has the greater effect is the one that takes precedence.

So, if a frigate has half the signature radius of the missile's explosion radius and is going at 4 times the explosion velocity, it will only take about 1/4 damage before resists are figured. Slowing the frigate to a complete standstill using webs (not technically possible, but hey, its just an example) would cause it to take only half damage, because of the size/signature ratio. So usually a combination of painters and webs is needed for maximum damage.

I'm not advocated using both webs and painters on the same hull. Just pointing out how the modules work.

As mentioned above, use the correct ammo for the correct rats.

Lastly, below is a list of launchers, their ammo, appropriate targets, intended platforms, and special attributes, if any.

• Launcher | Ammo | target | platform | attribute
• Rocket Launchers | Rockets | frigates/destroyers | Frigate | high RoF, short range
• Assault Launchers | Standard Missiles | frigates/destroyers | Cruiser | high RoF
• Standard Missile Launchers | Standard Missiles | frigates/destroyers | Frigate-Cruiser | none
• Heavy Assault Missile Launchers | Heavy Assault Missiles | battlecruisers | Cruiser-BC | High damage
• Heavy Missile Launchers | Heavy Missiles | cruisers-BC | Cruisers-BC | none
• Cruise Missile Launchers | Cruise Missiles | BC-BS | BS | Long range
• Seige Launchers | Torpedoes | BS | BS | High damage, short range

In general, short-range and high damage ammo is less effective against smaller targets and more effective against larger targets. A prime example are Heavy Assault Missiles (HAMs). They do great damage against battlecruisers. But they have an awfully short range compared to Heavy Missiles. So they are generally useless vs any fast cruiser, though they hit well enough. Against frigates they suck ass if you can even get in range.

Assault Launchers are a favorite for anti-frigate fits primarily because they use standard missiles for ammo. So they suffer no range loss. Higher RoF is just gravy. The only issue is with the fitting requirements. Due to that, they are generally restricted to cruisers. Larger ships like BC and BS stick with their intended weapons in favor of drones for anti-frigate duty so as to not sacrifice their bigger dps and longer range. Plus they simply can't keep up with frigates due to being big and slow.