This thread is meant to start a discussion on a way to resolve an issue and bring missiles in-line with other weapons platforms.
Missiles have always been a sticking point for me in EvE. Missiles don’t miss. They do take some time to get to their target, but they just don’t miss. If you’re transversal is high, so much that even the smallest guns won’t track, missiles still hit. They may do low/no damage if you’re going really fast, but they still hit.
This makes them one of the most consistent weapons in the game. Along with completely ignoring tracking, versus a larger ship than missile size, the damage is the same from 0 to max range. Add in that you can stick ‘rapid’ versions of smaller weapons on larger ships, giving them even further advantage as signature isn’t an issue either.
These things all combine to one of the reasons that after the resist nerfs, missiles are in even better of a position, especially since they don’t care about range since they have no falloff aside from ‘max range’
Warheads have effective ranges. Explosion range would matter as dissipation would be different based on warhead size. But velocity… not so much. That would be relatively the same for various sizes of warhead.
The fact that missiles completely ignore tracking is a bit stupid. Missiles track just like guns - the difference is that they can track after launch. Transversal still matters.
I do know that CCP can’t have missiles update transversal during flight. The calculations required when there are hundreds of thousands of missiles in space at any given moment, if not millions, would cause the servers to melt. So we can’t really use a realistic mechanic for missiles. However, the way they are now is absurd.
So instead of a guaranteed chance to hit with damage decreasing due to sig/speed, I’d suggest they be changed to be similar to projectiles, but with a few things that make them unique.
Minimum activation range: Basically, missiles going off right next to your ship would be suicide. So missiles generally arm outside a certain minimum range from the ship, based on the warhead size.
Tracking: This would actually be fairly similar to turrets, with a minor caveat – they’d be worse inside optimal, and have a linear falloff from start of falloff to max flight range due to having less fuel to maneuver with. This part is where I’m having a hard time coming up with a way to make it more realistic without making them static like a normal turret - missiles transversal would change relative to the missile, not the launching ship. However for the game mechanics, it might make sense as we wouldn’t want to make so many calculations.
Another thing that is slightly separate but still important to get into is the “Rapid” launcher variants, that let you have a cruiser or battlecruiser with devastating application to frigates, with no similar weapon systems for any other ship aside from the Capital HAW (which are just 3 Large turrets stuffed into one platform, similar to Rapids)
Basically the hit chance would look something like this (excuse my crap paint):
I believe this change would bring missiles in-line with the rest of the weapon systems in the game, making other weapon systems competitive in the ongoing meta, while still being unique.
I’m not saying that this idea is perfect. That is the purpose of this thread, to get people to talk about a way to sort them out in a way that CCP might be able to implement.
The point I’m aiming at is that they’re currently fairly broken, and it’s only gotten worse over time. It’s about time CCP took a look at them. To me the biggest sticker is the “can’t miss” mechanic. Light missile jackdaws hitting from 119km with 1482 volley/241DPS is dumb. (1385/226 without pyro).
