Ships & Modules

As an amarr turret whore I was first inclined to say no, but on further tought I do support lowslot that would boost the damage potential versus smaller targets.

Why? Well as I fly laser setups I have the ability to engage all sized targets both in pvp and pve should they fail to keep tranversal up, missiles ofcourse do not have this and they cant lose anything in tranversal but neither can they gain if tranversal is 0. Something should allow them to engage smaller than similiar class targets, and if that something is an mod that REDUCES their overall damage (For example, replaces BCU) then I do believe it would be a fair tradeoff. Maybe it would be op but doing it with script could also work. Would surelly give them more of an edge than having to go back to station to switch mods but... Would it make PvE missile fits more op? I dont know. Never flown one (Ok, I give. I've flown a drake in lvl 3's when I worked a new faction up) properly so maybe some feedback from their point of view if someone's able to stay neutral about it?

And yeah, this is just what I tought while reading. Its not an actual presentation of my mindset, just something I came to think.

There are plenty of Caldari boats with more than 4 lows. There's more to Caldari than the drake. Incidentally, the fact that those boats are jokes in pvp is partially due to their extra lows going to waste. One thing that no shield tanked pvp fits ever suffer from is lack of lows. TPs stack with percentage based sig bloom from other sources, such as mwd and extender rigs. There's a reason why few ppl bother to use them in pvp. This, coupled with having to sacrifice valuable mids to tp at the expense of tank and tackle/ewar.

4 factors affect Gunnery & chance to hit

Optimal Range - Tracking computers & Tracking Enhancer modules boost this
Falloff Range - Tracking Enhancers boost this
Tracking speed - Tracking computers & Tracking Enhancer modules boost this
Signature size - boosted by Target Painters


Missiles also have 4 attirbutes, although these differ from gunnery.
Flight Duration - No Modules
Flight Speed - No Modules
Target Speed - No Modules
Signature Size - boosted by Target Painters.

Sig size also seems to play a much more important factor for missiles than it does Gunnery (shooting capital guns at a stationary/heavily webbed cruiser anyone?)

All weapon systems have T2 ammo, All weapon systems have rigs, all weapon systems have ships which give them bonuses...

What the missile weapon system is clearly missing is modules to enhance its attributes in 3 of the 4 fundemental areas.

That's like saying TC/TE shouldn't exist either because there's the tp and web.

You don't seem to realize that missiles have serious problem dealing with smaller ships, at any range, which is the whole issue in this thread. Long range missiles usually have no problems with range, but ham/torps do. The same can be said of rails and blasters. You must be new to Eve to think missiles can "nuke tacklers," that only applies to guns, and only if you fly straight in.

Flight time is pretty damn small on close range missiles. And that's not really a big price to pay for variable damage, no cap usage, insane DPS AND great range.

That said, I'm not exactly against the idea of a mod to up missile flight time/explosion velocity, provided that there's also a mod that lowers them (a TD for missiles, if you will). But it's not needed. Missiles already have great range, and some things to consider when asking for a missile TE:

~Flight speed would be a no right away. CCP explicitly said that making missiles faster was not an option because it made the game act funny.
~This means that the only range increase you could get would be from flight time.
~See cruise missiles (which, btw, have the best damage projection in the game) to see why simply upping flight time isn't going to make missiles useful at long ranges.
~This leaves explosion velocity, and a mod that reduces it (which would have to be less effective than a TP, for the sake of balance) You're basically asking for a fairly large buff, that does very little to actually help missiles.

IMO the only thing missiles could use now is a tweak to the magic numbers they use to figure out how much of an effect sig radius and velocity play in damage reduction.

Wrong. Doing 1 dmg is de-facto miss. Against small targets, one lucky volley is all it takes to pull far ahead of missiles in dps, it's also far more useful. There's a reason nobody brings Cruises to pvp.

It's worse than chance based miss. For missiles, it's guaranteed miss, at any distance and any transversal.

if you want to create a specialized turret ship to nuke tacklers outside of web range, it is possible to load up on tracking enhancers and computers. sure the ship will be gimped in other aspects, but whatever, min/maxing is part of EVE.

a little bit of eft warrioring shows me that 220 autocannons can get 0.22 tracking without too much effort and gimping of fit and hit a fair bit outside of web range.

on top of this, turret ships have the short window to nuke tacklers while they are incoming and transversal is still low.
NB - large turrets with excellent range have this opportunity to outright nuke many frigs. large missiles have no such window of opportunity.

for missiles, a specialized frig killer probably comes in the form of an assault launcher fit caracal or cerb if you want to be fancy. even with dual flare rigs your explosion velocity barely reaches 350m/s.

while the explosion radius of standard missiles will give you a 'full hit' on a frig, the velocity mitigation is extreme. for simplicity, a tackler flying at 3500m/s (VERY slow by most tackle standards) divided by 350 gives a measly 10% hit no matter what way the tackler is flying at you (read: tracking).

now let's talk about inside web range...

yes, once a frig is webbed, our assault launcher fit caracal/cerb will nuke a frigate. but then again, so can a large turret battleship which isn't even fit for killing frigs. a cruise/torp fit battleship cannot EVER apply proper dps to a frigate. there is no 'nuking' of tacklers happening here.

cruise missile base explosion radius is 225m at all 5 (being generous!) and it has a much lower explosion velocity 100m/s. say our tackler is webbed into the ground and now moving less than 100m/s and so the speed mitigation is null. a 50m sig radius frigate will still only receive ~ 22% of a hit, as opposed to an almost full hit from a large turret.

don't say "but painters" because to get a full hit you'd need (possible hyperbole? I'm not bothering with math) about 5 or 6 painters to even come close to blowing up a frigs sig radius to 225m. now don't even bother thinking about torps since their explosion radius is unaffected by skills and a whopping base 450m.

I believe my point of this is that fewer webs are required to get a full turret hit than BOTH webs and TPs required to get a similar missile hit.

the equivalent of a flare/rigor low module would not mean the end of the world for frigates. and even then the rigor module will not apply to rockets/hams/torps given missile 'science.'

i'm now waiting for my caldari/minmatar pirate ship with missiles and painter bonus'

there is a fair lineup of web bonused ships available to turret pilots, however the golem is the only missile ship with a tp bonus. (yes minmatar ewar, but their ewar ships don't use missiles! aside from the split huginn)

and aside from stealth bombers, the nighthawk is the only missile ship which has a bonus to explosion velocity while there is a also a fair lineup of turret ships with tracking bonus'

...

/turkey coma

yes, what I was actually getting at was that there are a number of turret ships with innate web bonus' and yet very few ships with innate TP bonus' and those that do have the TP bonus do not use missiles (aside from Huginn). all the minny ships that you listed do not have a bonus to painters.

ships with web bonus' range/velocity modifier both are helpful imo

serp line-up
paladin
kronos
bhaalgorn

to name a few

golem (marauder) is the only missile ship to have a TP bonus.

as for ships with innate tracking bonus'

sansha line-up
megathron
vargur
muninn

to name a few

nighthawk is the only missile ship to have an explosion velocity bonus