Player Features and Ideas Discussion

so from these numbers we can conclude that HMLs are in an ok place?

If applying less than half of their potential damage against a Cruiser (same size hull and all that) with an MWD blown up sig counts as ok, then yea it looks like you're right.

What would be the damage when using a railgun to shoot at the same target travelling across the guns at optimal range? This is an equivalent situation.

I would wager the missiles will do a lot better.

Shall we prove that with some numbers? A ship travelling across the guns is in no way optimal.

There's so much that can influence this... Do we use rigors, flares or target painters for missiles? Tracking enhancers, tracking computers and tracking rigs for rails? I'm not entirely sure where we're going with this... Against a moving target, rails can still apply 100%+ damage. Even with full rigors and a pair of target painters - missiles will barely break the 50% mark.

I think players are more or less happy with guns and drones - although I think there's a bit of overall "drone envy" in terms of damage application. But I digress... Missiles can more or less hit anything (regardless of conditions), just that the damage usually sucks. The reality is that missiles should really receive an explosion velocity bonus if the target is on an intercept angle.

All these numbers against different sized targets don't really contribute to anything (no offense)

Whats important is the relation between the different launchers. Since the Cerberus already has been redesigned and the tengu hasn't, plus it supports all bonuses for all 3 weapon systems, i've chosen the Cerberus as a comparison platform, with T2 High damage (scourge) ammo.

Cerberus, same setup, all lvl 5, only thing that differes are the launchers, Rubicon 1.1 values (thats current build) Ive Underlined where the stats of the missile are the best in the 3 comparissons. I've compared them to stationary targets of cruiser sized and finally to targets cruiser sig radius moveing at 500 m/s (obtainable by most cruisers with an afterburner)

Light Missile

Damage: 251.9 Kin
Velocity: 8437 M/S
Range: 71.2 Km
Explosion Velocity: 214.5 m/s
Explosion Radius: 51.75

DPS: 614
Dps vs Sig 125: 614
Dps vs Sig 125 at 500 m/s: 263.4

DPS (With reloads): 329.3
Dps vs Sig 125 (With Reloads): 329.3
Dps vs Sig 125 at 500 m/s (With Reloads): 141,2

Heavy Missile

Damage: 395.3 Kin
Velocity: 9675 M/S
Range: 106.2 Km
Explosion Velocity: 102 m/s
Explosion Radius: 180.75 m

DPS: 501
DPS vs Sig 125: 346.47
Dps vs Sig 125 at 500 m/s: 70.67

DPS (With reloads): 475.6
Dps vs Sig 125 (With Reloads): 328.9
Dps vs Sig 125 at 500 m/s (With Reloads): 67.09


Heavy Assault Missile

Damage: 293.2 Kin
Velocity: 4218 M/S
Range: 38.0 Km
Explosion Velocity: 130.5 m/s
Explosion Radius: 161.25

DPS: 696.3
DPS vs Sig 125: 539.76
Dps vs Sig 125 at 500 m/s: 140.87

DPS (With reloads): 656.9
Dps vs Sig 125 (With Reloads): 509.22
Dps vs Sig 125 at 500 m/s (With Reloads): 132.90

So what do I conclude from this.

While the heavy missile clearly has the most damage, range and velocity, its uses are only to alpha large slow moveing targets at range. If you need a steady stream of dps against such targets, Heavy Assault Missiles are a better choice. Infact even against smaller slow moveing targets these are better.

However if you expect to fight cruisers or smaller targets that are capable of moveing faster then 161 m/s (At the top of my head i can't even think of a T1 cruiser that can't move faster then that even without a propulsion mod) The best choice was, and still is Rapid Light Missile launchers.

What does this mean in reality: Unless your going to fight another blob of ships, or are certain your only going to fight Battlecruiser or bigger ships the best choice is without thinking the Rapid Light Missile Launcher.

You can apply as much bandages as you want to the Rapid Light Missile launcher, but as long as the current missile mechanics state that a medium sized missile can never on its own damage a cruiser sized target for 100% of intended damage, you will never see anyone chose a different missile platform then Rapid Lights, unless he totally doesn't understand missile mechanics.

The thing about missiles is they always hit, but depending on what they are shooting they may not be able to kill anything. Guns on the other hand require you to manually pilot but can still hit targets. Missiles tend to make up for always hitting by not being able to apply their damage without truly excessive amounts of support. Guns on the other hand don't require nearly as much, since you can rely mostly on manual piloting and be far more effective against everything solo.

The previous iteration of rlm gave pilots the ability to project just enough damage while having just enough tank to be viable against both cruisers and frigates solo. Triple lse and lse/xlasb fits were broken however making what would be a very close fight (caracal vs thorax or caracal vs omen) into joke fights where you could just ram them and win anyways. Triple lse also allowed you to fight cynabals and vagabonds without really trying since you had such massive buffer they couldn't break you before they died.

Dual lse fit such as dual lse/cap booster or dual lse/web we actualy very balanced against other ships. Cap booster gave you an advantage against cruisers, allowing you to force them to cap out chasing you and then turn around and assure the kill against ships like ac cynas and vegas, yet if they realized what was happening they could still turn around and break point range or just warp off since you had to keep them at about 40km to leverage your projection/tank against theirs until they had about half shields before attempting to turn and finish them.

Dual lse web fits were superior vs frigates and things like blaster thorax since you could hold them off for just a bit longers that when combined with nearly burning out your mwd you could have a fair chance of killing them, they would still catch you (a thorax will almost always catch a caracal even when starting from 30k) but you had a decent chance of killing them thanks to the second lse. Ham caracals couldn't really deal with frigates and hml caracals couldn't really deal with anything well. Rlm allowed you to deal with both, and was on par with many medium turret ships.

The reason metrics were so skewed was that the game has turned heavily into a frigate and cruiser meta, and the easiest (note how I say easiest and not most effective) weapon system to get into to be competitive against the widest array of ships was rlms. The most efficient system was actually still turrets, yet they require far more sp and piloting ability in order to make them shine. So in the interest of training time and newbie friendliness we had our newbies train for rlm caracals since it only took like 2 weeks to get into something workable from scratch.

Rlm use increased due to these reasons and once the cerb got buffed you had the newbies go from caracal straight to cerb, having no reason to go gunneries. The problem was actual fitting and the comparatively speedy training time, the solution was to reduce rlm use by turning them into something that was very subpar for solo and small gang, because that was the only context they were being used in. There was and still is a lot of backlash because instead of just fixing the fitting issue you effectively remove any reason to use them, or more precisely you introduced a reason to not use them with the absurd reload time.

CCP Rise would probably say the community is complaining too much but I haven't seen a single vocal member of the solo/small gang community actually enjoy and/or endorse the current iteration of rlm and even Rise hasn't shown how a 40 second reload is fun. Theres even a video on the my eve section with rlm and the only thing it does is make me not want to use rlm.

Actually thats not the case. If your able to kill the cruiser within one load of the RLML the RLML is a better choice in cruiser vs cruiser. Untill it has to reload it still does over 100 dps more, requires fewer webs to apply max dps, has nearly twice the range, and can fit a lot more tank.

Hams in my opionion are less broken then Heavy missiles, a slight decrease in explosion radius and a significant reduce in powergrid use for the launchers fixes them. However current comparison keeping difference in range and tank in mind id still choice the RLML every time.



I'm not argueing that those fits are in line with the intended, yes they are to powerfull even. However That is an issue regarding the individual ships and or LSE / (X)LASB problems, NOT the rapid light missile launcher



I have to disagree. While i agree that the shift to frigate and cruiser meta had some impact to favoring RLML, mainly because of the phased rebalanceing, i believe the major contributor to favoring RLML almost excluseively is to the fact that HAM and HEAVY missiles are in such disfavorable state, that its not advisable to use those systems in most situations.

I believe that if Heavy and ham missiles were balanced to a degree that they were a better choice against cruiser and above, and rlml only better to ships SMALLER then a cruiser, RLML would never been this popular.



While i agree to your data, that the Caracal Navy is horrible with that weapon system, and that some of the other data is surpriseing, your still compareing ships. This threat however is not about wich missile system is best on what ship and the pro and cons of that ship / missile system / fit but about the Rapid missile launcher itself.

Your data on the ships and weapons certainly does warrent a discussion, However that is better done in a topic created for those issues, not this topic regarding the launchers.

Too bad there are no cruisers in the game that can be killed before having to reload.