One Missile to Replace Them All

No. Years ago I advocated ONLY for a damage buff, raw damage buff. The only delineating feature between missiles and guns is application, with perfect flying guns can apply perfectly, with poor flying they apply poorly. With missiles they are guaranteed to hit if the target is within range&flight time. If you buff the application, you are essentially buffing the tracking of the missile. Buffing the damage has a much less pronounced effect because missile damage mitigation is based on a formula which is more heavily penalising the further out you get. If you buffed the damage of HML by 20% it would not equal 20% more dps per se, since so much of it is mitigated. If you buffed the application, you get a straight 20% dps increase.

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And flight time.

And they can literally be outrun.

And they have rapid launcher variants for burst dps.

Probably the most important value in buffing application would be that it would start messing with kitey ■■■■■■■■ more. Need less of that crap meta, not more. Missiles are good at outrunning most ships and they’ve generally got the range to hit kitey ships.

Improving application does not give them a straight increase in dps, because they already apply nearly perfectly to battleships (if not absolutely perfectly). Improving their application gives them better dps against smaller ships. Which is sorely needed in my opinion. Purely based on my hate of kiting meta.

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I’m with you Isy - If a weapon system is meant to be used to counter Frigates - it shouldn’t work well against lager ships - Think your point is valid and CCP needs to nerf it - BTW I fly Frigates ALOT and 29 km is NOT frigate engagement range - most Frigate damage systems aren’t any good unless you are within 5000 meters - so to make a missile system to counter frigates that hits out to 29 km without boosts? Really CCP?

You realize small rail guns have the potential to shoot out to 100km right?

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Drop the hubris

You do realize that T2 small beams with a locus rig can hit past 40K and on some ships over 80K?
Then we can get into some of those T2 frigates and lemme tell you Bombers and EWAR frigates are often sitting 40K+ no problem still doing their job. To say nothing of what you can do with Garmur or also Worm if you’ve a buddy providing the tackle while your two OP as ■■■■ light drones work the guy over and you send over some light missiles from range too.

Yes its beyond your average empire T1’s engagement profile for a 1v1, but it sure as heck isn’t beyond actual fleet/gang usage for all frigate hulls. And lets not forget how Logi can sit at the edges of a fight and beam in the reps.

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I can shoot with my thrasher at range of 30km or so … with bad gun skills, no mods for gun ranges AND using titanium sabot/depleted uranium (no range modifiers).

Drop your poorly thought out agenda, your numbers are wrong and dont reflect proper small size weapon ranges.

Unbonused stats:
Small beam range: 29km+3km
150mm rail: 32km+7.5km
280mm artillery: 27km+11km
Light missile: 42km

Those are all unbonused stats and theyre all quite close to each other when using long range ammo. Railguns and artillery will hit to the same range (albeit in falloff) as light missiles. Once you add in bonused hulls then you will be projecting at the same range or further.

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Didn’t they already nerf the RLML last year by removing the hull bonuses that affect range? Why wasn’t that good enough?

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That didnt happen.

Um… My Kestrel can hit out to 80km with light missiles. No clue why people seem to think light missiles can’t and shouldn’t fly far.

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WHOA! slow your roll there buddy boy! Isaiah Harms is the guy spouting off numbers - I’m just pointing out that in small gang frigate combat blasters, autocannons and rockets are what are used most because they have DPS and oh yeah! SHORT range!

But don’t worry - it’s very cute that you picked the long range weapon systems for your example - blob much? If you didn’t notice the OP used the context of SMALL gang - not HEY I have 100 guys what shall we fly? ARTY THRASHERS!!! YAAARRRR!

In theory, any ammo should have practically unlimited range; it’s just a question of accuracy. Oh I forgot. Eve doesn’t do physics.

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Seems you forgot your own argument. Youre the one saying that its rediculous that light missiles have so much range (a frigate weapon system). Im showing you all small long range weapons have similar range.

Also, for someone who claims to do frigate fights a lot, you must not do any scram kiting. Arty, rails and beams can all be used and are quite effective from 9-5km. Have you never fought an arty firetail or beam tormentor? Not to mention drones can attack out to lock range, so the tristan, algos, dragoon can all potentially attack well past light missile range.

Your ignorance is astounding that you associate long range to blobs. I have more solo kills than your kills/losses combined. Not to mention you just lost a beam retri, so… by your logic youre part of the blob and using long range weapons instead of short range.

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Wow Stitch - way to get personal - you looked up my killboard! hey did you find my combat main too?

If you knew me you wouldn’t call me a blobber. =P Now I don’t want to begin attacking you personally, so please lets be gentlemen about it okay?

Even though frigates can project range, the dps falloff at that range is atrocious - There is a dps falloff graph in EFT if I remember right.

Now I could continue this argument, but it occurs to me that we are getting sidetracked from the OP’s point, and it would be rude to continue.

His point was the RLML were specifically developed for cruisers to fight frigates, and yet they work so well against other larger hulls. I’ve watched two Orthrus’s attack a Hyperion and force him off his gate camp. Do you think that was the intention of CCP? Really?

So by the OP’s logic, we should also remove cruise missile launchers as Rapid Heavies beat them, and we should remove citadel cruise launchers as Rapid cruise launchers beat them on dreads and titans…

The reality is, each weapon has it’s own unique use and niche. Going back to the HAM arguments, I run am armor tanked bellicose. It sports dual web, a scram, and a target painter. I would never put rapid lights on it. Due to the setup, I know my HAMs do better DPS.

Look at heavies, yes they are not the best weapon. However fleets of HM caracals can be quite deadly. They have enough range and speed to avoid fights they do not like and enough alpha to make up for the missile flight time.

So really, rapid lights are a limited weapon. They are balanced with the ammo they hold (anyone miss when they held 80 missiles each?) And reload time. They ate not the best for all scenarios, but are good at some.

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I never called you a blobber, you called yourself one by claiming only blobs use long range weapons and then I stated your recent loss shows you using a beam retri. Dont get defensive when youre the one who started with the accusations and assumptions about blobs. If you cant handle the heat, dont open the oven while telling it that its a refrigerator.

Youre talking about orthrus, not rlml. Will 2 bellicose, caracal, nosprey or a scyfi force off a hyperion? No. The orthrus gets a huge damage boost, and its not damage locked like a cerb, so it has way more flexibility.

RLML on most ships arent OP. Theyre useful in their role and weaker against cruisers and up, assuming they have some kind of tank. The main issues with RLML are twofold:

  1. Theyre too easy to fit, which leads to large tanks. You dont need an XLASB+LSE to kill frigates
  2. The other missile systems are not as viable for kiting unsupported. If heavy missiles werent in such a bad spot, they might be a useful 2nd option to use instead of RLML.

Those are the main concerns with RLML/medium missile systems.

There is also some merit to reducing the clip size of RLML by 2-3 missiles, which reduces the damage per clip and makes it harder to kill cruisers. However, id still say if RLML were harder to fit and other medium missiles were better then that would give far more choice, rather than just nerfing RLML damage output because of 1 ship.

Orthrus - 15% Bonus to Missile Damage
Navy Osprey - 25% Bonus to Kinetic Light Missiles Heavy Missile and Heavy Assault MissileDamage
20% Bonus to EM, Explosive Thermal Light Heavy and HAM Damage

…ya know? This isn’t even worth replying too because it’s just soo…LOL!

Counting launchers is hard.

Orthrus has 5

Nosprey has 3

Orthrus has more volley damage and can choose any missile type it wants without restriction.

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I took that to mean BONUS! My bad! please forgive me oh great master edumacator!