Auto-Targeting Heavy Missiles in PVP

PvP Gameplay Center Warfare & Tactics
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Any good use of auto-targeting heavy missiles in PVP? I read a guide which said these were great to use if you were jammed since unlike turreted ships, you don’t need a lock and unlike smartbombs, they don’t kill your allies. 107 damage for a heavy missile isn’t very impressive compared to the tech I 149’s damage or Caldari navy’s 171, but reduced damage is better than none. Therefore, missiles ships aren’t screwed by ECM, just have reduced damage output. The guide then proclaimed Ravens were ECM resistant.

But you can just do full damage with normal or faction missiles on the guy who’s jamming you so… what’s the point? For light rockets, I suppose range might be an issue meaning the only lock you have is on something you can’t hit, but for heavy missiles or cruise missiles, that isn’t a problem.

There is the possibility of being damped to the point that you can’t lock anything beyond a tiny range, but even with 3 damps on you, it seems to me the odds of having the lock range reduced to 12 km or less is really small.

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See CCP this is why you need to get rid of irrelevant crap, it makes people think there might be a viable use for them

3 damps w/o links can get many cruisers sub 12. you’re looking at sub 5 with 3 damps and command links. hell one heated damp gets you sub 12 with links. This is why ECM is just not worth it when damps are an option.

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Well, it wouldn’t be irrelevant for light missiles since there is a rig that can extend ECM range, possibly making a scrambled and jammed Corax unable to engage the one thing it can keep a lock on. So auto-targeting light missiles would have a niche here and it would be a strange thing to give an auto-target option to light missiles but not heavy ones.

And if you are right that 3 damps can actually get cruisers and battleships below 12 (when stacking penalties apply), then auto-targeting heavy missiles actually would have a use. If a victim was damped below that range and the enemy was coordinated enough no one wandered in range, then auto-targeting missiles would have a use here.

I’m not sure what the odds of being ganged up on by 3 Celestis (meaning you’re damped) but at the same time not being shot by the main DPS of the enemy fleet (meaning you live long enough you could shoot something) is, but hey if that ever happens auto-targeting missiles works for you!

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yes, this is after stacking penalties using T2.

1 maulus is enough, they can fit 3 damps all on their own each one is 58% cold and 69.6% with heat before links. This brings a scorpion down to 18km without heat. add links and you’re under 8km. A moa is sub 10 before links and after is at 4km.

But no, there is still no place for these missiles even in this sense. not only do they do very little damage but you can’t actually choose who you’re shooting. odds are they will hit the small fast ship who has you tackled and he will shrug it off.

These were added as a neat concept years ago and promptly forgotten about. They now live on only as a sub optimal AFK pve weapon and something to laugh at when you see them in a newbros loss mail.

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Auto targeting missiles (light, heavy and cruise) can be deadly.

With full skills related to these missiles and related size do almost the same as T2 precision missiles. They have a slightly further range, and slightly worse explosion radius and velocity.

One thing many forget is you don’t require target lock, this means you can engage faster than standard missiles, yes there is the issue of the Auto targeting only engaging the closest hostile target ( no matter ship), but as can be guessed if someone drops on you it’s down to who can land the first blow, and an auto targeting Missile setup will have the edge, but as noted above there are negatives too.

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I like the ‘irrelevant crap’ it provides the low end of the worthless to priceless scale of items, but it also hides options and benefits that no-one has thought of yet.

They are still creating things in this way - there’s been a bunch of posts in the last few weeks about multiplasmids that make your sentry drones go faster.

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I think it’s called something like “thinking outside of the box”.
This goes against the current meta lemming mentality. :wink:

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Auto Targetings always shoot the closest possible target, in a PvP scenario this is almost always a drone within your proximity, something heavy missiles do not apply to at all, which makes them completely useless.

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I think the limiting factor is the skill training more than anything else - there’s almost always gonna be something more important to spend 750k SP on.

That being said, making use of the no lock time element is the key here. Couple of cloaked ships dropping onto grid and unloading full RHML clips could be a nasty surprise in the right circumstances…

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Except whatever you’re trying to shoot needs to shoot you first. And in this case, all of you first.

When I say useless I mean it.

It’s not “poor in the meta” it doesn’t require you to think outside the box. They are useless.

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That’s… still not a very impressive volley compared to T1 missiles.

It’s pretty fun reading what people come up with when theory crafting, even if the modules are way outside my price range and I can’t actually do anything even if the ideas are valid. Heck, the idea I found which inspired the post was someone trying to think about ECM. I don’t know why he suggested using auto fire missiles to overcome the lock breaks when it’s easier just to use normal missiles against the jammer, but even if his idea wasn’t great I had a good time reading.

This would be interesting if viable, but I don’t think it works that way. Too bad the game doesn’t consider flashies outside your fleet and corp as valid targets for auto-targeting. If you’re wondering where I got that idea, someone thorycrafted using flashies as a way to limit friendly fire with the vorton projector, but I don’t think that works with auto targetting missiles. It would be cool if it actually did work that way and it’d be fnny to see Widows or Ravens pulling that off.

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Hmm, ahh crap do they? That blows. I’ve never used an auto targeting missile, can you tell?

Then yeah they’re useless.

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Ha ha ha, I never used them either, it’s kind of funny.

I’m guessing their uselessness made so few people suggest them in a serious sense that a lot of people never touched them.

Someone recommended them as an anti-ECM tool, but what’s even better than doing reduced damage is doing full damage (with regular missiles) to the jammer.

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Yeah, as I remember they were a counter to full ECM application before they allowed the “lock who is jamming you” mechanic.

There are some strats for clearing lower DED escalations that call for RLML auto targeted missiles just for sake of ease / afk-ability, but then drones are that and just better…

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No, they weren’t. They were as useful for that then as they are now.

There is simply no practical way to use a weapon system that simply shoots the closest hostile target.

In practice your best case is it tickles a tackle frig. Most likely it spreads its insignificant damage across several drones orbiting you after you spent 10s loading them.

These weapons were an idea devs put in with a let’s see what happens mind set and were then never touched again.

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Sorry this is incorrect. It’s any hostile attack, this includes target locking.

Auto-targeting missiles don’t require designated targets – instead, they attack any hostile things within range. They can be helpful if you’re jammed by ECM, but they’re only useful in certain situations and need not be a high training priority. Before Odyssey, this skill was called FoF (Friend or Foe) Missiles

I have had Auto-Targeting engage hostile ships as they were yellow boxing me in the past, only other requirement was they had to be within Missile range, then the launchers would start cycling.

If I remember correctly these were around in 2004 along with mines and defender missiles that used to engage missiles back then.

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just went to sisi, yellow box isn’t enough they need to have done something hostile

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Still the auto targeting missiles against instant lockers would be great as these fits tend to rely on the instant lock and ability apply its damage faster than target, but normally at the cost of tank.

So an RLML fit with grouped launchers could one shot an instant locker. This would also apply with larger Missile boats against faster locking ships.

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lol no they can’t. A caracal for example wouldn’t do much more than 700 alpha.

what insta lock ship is has its main goal being to do damage first? also they would still do damage first as they have to attack you before your missiles will attack them.

no, the main goal of most insta lock is tackle, and most scan res mods are mids. this combined with the vast majority of tackle bonused ships being armor tank generally means that tank isn’t what you are giving up.

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So one thing is, my point was the I don’t see a use of a heavy auto-targetting missile, and your point even if it’s true seems to re reinforcing that since you just said RLML…

Slightly more importantly, I don’t think your point is true. The alpha volley of auto-targeting missiles is pretty pathetic compared to Caldari missiles even with skills invested.

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Scenario I:
Three guys each have a Raven with Mizuro’s Modified Rapid Heavy Missile Launcher (why Mizuro? It sounded like a cool name so I decided to use it for example. Tech II launchers work the same for the example, but I just wanted to say Mizuro’s Modified. As for the in-universe reason for why they have it, maybe he ran out of CPU). They load Caldari Navy Mjolnir, Inferno, or Scourge missiles. They some distance from the main fleet and are shooting something.

Nine guys decloak each Raven is targetted by 3 guys (I’m going to say each Raven is hit to give the best case scenario to the auto-targeting missiles later). They have fast lock, so they lock the Ravens in 1 second.

The Ravens are surprised and are tunnel versioned on whatever they were shooting at in the first place for 3 seconds (again, trying to give the benefit of doubt to the auto-targeters).

At second 4, the Ravens start attempting to get a lock on whatever is shooting them. For a medium sized-ship, this will be something like 9 seconds. For a stealth bomber, this is going to be something like 15 seconds, which means the alpha is going to be irrelevant since a stealth bomber is just going to cloak away. At second 13, they fire and do a volley of 4935 damage.

Scenario II:
Three guys each have a Raven with Mizuro’s Modified Rapid Heavy Missile Launcher. They load Imperial Navy Mjolnir Auto-targeting, Federation Navy Inferno Auto-targeting, or Caldari Navy Scourge Auto-targeting missiles. They some distance from the main fleet and are shooting something.

Wait how are they shooting something? Uhhh… let’s say they aggoed someone and then afterburned away and that that someone had other things to worry about. 64500 meters is a nice distance, the Ravens can stay in range of whatever aggroed them.

Nine guys decloak each Raven is targetted by 3 guys. They have fast lock, so they lock the Ravens in 1 second. For some reason, they don’t concentrate on a single Raven, go give auto-targeting missiles the benefit of the doubt even though that seems silly.

At second 2, the Ravens’ missile respond with a volley of 4410 damage, which is clearly less than 4925. And really, it should be a third of that since why are all of them aggroed in the first place?

Scenario 3:
Three guys each have a Raven with Mizuro’s Modified Rapid Heavy Missile Launcher. They load Imperial Navy Mjolnir Auto-targeting, Federation Navy Inferno Auto-targeting, or Caldari Navy Scourge Auto-targeting missiles. They just jumped through a gate.

Each Raven is targetted by 3 guys. They have fast lock, so they lock the Ravens in 1 second. For some reason, they don’t concentrate on a single Raven, go give auto-targeting missiles the benefit of the doubt even though that seems silly.

At second 2, the Ravens’ missile respond with a volley of 4410 damage.

Scenario IV:
A tackle frigate and some DPS ship gang on on the Ravens that just jumped through the gate. The Ravens have the RHML. They have Caldari missiles.

The Ravens notice they there are ships around the gate. They prepare to jump, but realize they might not get the chance. Once gate cloak wears off, they start targeting what they can.

At second 1, the enemy locks on, the tackle frigate gets a Raven, and the DPS ships start firing. If the Ravens are lucky, they’re in low sec and the gate guns respond. If in Null, there are no guns and they might already be in a bubble.

At second 10, the Ravens open fire and do a volley of 4935 damage at whatever they think is the best thing to shoot at.

Scenario V:
A tackle frigate and some DPS ship gang on on the Ravens that just jumped through the gate. The Ravens have the RHML. They have imperial navy auto-targeting missiles.

The Ravens notice they there are ships around the gate. They prepare to jump, but realize they might not get the chance. Once gate cloak wears off, they start targeting what they can.

At second 1, the enemy locks on, the tackle frigate gets a Raven, and the DPS ships start firing.

The auto-targeting missiles of one Raven responds by going after the tackle frigate. To give the benefit of doubt the auto-targeting missiles, let’s say the other two Ravens are aggroed.

The missiles aren’t going to do 1470 since we assume the frigate is actually moving. Frigates move faster than cruisers or battleships. So the damage is drastically reduced. The velocity formula gives me a headache, so I’m not going to calculate that, but safe to say it’s a lot less than 1470.

Scenario VI:
A gang of mostly Ravens but some other ships like logi frigates, destoryers, tackle frigates and stealth bombers jump through a low sec gate and realize it’s camped and they’re outnumbered. Most of the Ravens have Mizuro’s Modified Rapid Heavy Missile Launcher loaded with Caldari heavy missiles.

The gang waits for their best chance and break gate cloak. At second 0, they break cloak. The enemy locks in at second 1. To give the Ravens the benefit of doubt, let’s say 3 campers didn’t use doctrine with the rest of their camp and they afterburn towards the center of the victims with their high slots filled with smart bombs.

The Ravens start locking targets and prepares to shoot.

The victim fleet engages what targets they think are best and each Raven does a volley of 1645. The camping tackle frigates are either engaged with drones or the victim fleet’s tackle frigates.

The only time a Raven engages something other than its desired target is if it cannot get a lock. For example, a Scorpion jams one of them and prevents him from shooting at his desired target. The Raven can respond with his volley against said Scorpion (or Rock, or even a non bonused ship that got RNG on his jammer and somehow jammed a battleship since non bonused ships usually can’t jam anything other than frigates). Even if the Raven was jammed while reloading (meaning switching wouldn’t cost much time), he would rather reload with Caldari missiles to do full damage to the one target he still has a lock on rather than auto-targeting missiles to do reduced damage.

Scenario VII:
A gang of mostly Ravens but some other ships like logi frigates, destoryers, tackle frigates and stealth bombers jump through a low sec gate and realize it’s camped and they’re outnumbered. Most of the Ravens have Mizuro’s Modified Rapid Heavy Missile Launcher loaded with federatiin navy inferno auto-targeting heavy missiles.

The campers lock in at second 1. To give the Ravens the benefit of doubt, let’s say 3 campers didn’t use doctrine with the rest of their camp and they afterburn towards the center of the victims with their high slots filled with smart bombs. As a result, most Ravens are aggroed. However, they didn’t all arrive in the same spot, so not all of them are aggoed and in fact some just aren’t doing anything. At seconds 4 to 8, some Ravens are aggroed by smarties and tackle frigates and begin to open fire one by one.

Some of the Ravens are hitting drones with their missiles. Others are hitting tackle frigates. Some of them aren’t tackled but were aggoed by the smarties and shoot at that. And others only launch their drones and aren’t actually shooting anything.

There is a way for the Ravens to be able to do some damage so that their damage is being reduced by S/ER instead of the velocity formula. It is if they can just slow those tackle frigates down.

Webs only slow them down by 60% so unless you stack 3 of them, a frigate is still going to be fast relative to a heavy missile (remember heavy missiles are slower than lightones).

Web grapplers in optimal range will slow down a frigate a lot. But the thing is to use one you would need… a target lock.

So if the Ravens didn’t grapple the tackle frigates, most of their missiles would be doing scratch damage. And if they did grapple them, that meant that they waited for a lock. If they did wait for a lock, they could just lock onto what they wanted to shoot in the first place with Caldari missiles and do full damage. Even if they wanted to shoot the tackle frigates instead of a DPS ship, grappling and using Caldari missiles would still be better than grappling and using auto-targeting ones.

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The volley damage of these missiles aren’t very impressive even under the case you get dropped by multiple people with instant-locks and every guy got aggroed. The auto-targeting missiles would not do even close to their already unimpressive advertised damage most of the time. They could do a lot more damage against slower targets, but slowing things down need a lock and if you can do that Caldari missiles are better.

The best use I can think of for these things are AFK use or if you managed to be attacked while not having locks on anything and you are able to fire 3 volleys in the time it takes to even start locking onto something in range.

The “only” problem with AFK use is that there “best AFK ammo” isn’t exactly a great use for PVP. Besides, even if AFK was a popular PVP strategy, it wouldn’t be very fun. And the situation where you’re being shot at, not having locks, and not being able to start locking at something in range of your weapons is a situation I really don’t think happens. If it did, then doing reduced damage would be better than none, but even the module that breaks locks (ECM) still leaves you with a valid target.