Missiles

“Missiles are great for PVE but they blow baby goats for PVP” – Anonymous Turret User

Eve is a game about counters. There is no “I Win” setup. Once side brings a sniper; the other side brings a Falcon. Most players to counter one Falcon would bring a Falcon of their own. They soon find that instead of engaging in a fight, they have to spend most of their time trying to lock anything to engage, which is quite frustrating. Instead think about this scenario: one side brings an anti-Falcon stealth bomber instead of a Falcon. The Falcon pilot will not consider a stealth bomber to be a threat at 190 km. When SB decloaks, targets and fires 3 cruise missiles at Falcon, the Falcon pilot is going to have to reassess the situation when he is blown into armor on the first volley. In short, missiles have their place in PVP, but require a bit of thinking on the part of user done prior to implementation.

Missile Basics

Missiles are not magically teleported to your target like lasers, rails etc. They take time to reach the target.

The damage done by missiles is based on 3 things

1) Missile's maximum flight range. This can be calculated by multiplying its velocity and flight time. If the missile can not reach the target, it will not do any damage.

2) The target’s signature radius. This is compared with the missile’s explosion radius to determine missile damage.

3) The target’s velocity. This is compared with the missile’s explosion velocity to determine missile damage.

Types of missiles

Regular (Standard) missiles

Missile Type_______	Use________________	Base range_________
Rockets	Very Short Range	4,500m base
Light missiles	Short Range	9,000m base
Assault missiles	Short Range	9,000m base
Heavy missiles	Medium Range	37,500m base
Cruise missiles	Long Range	75,000m base
Torpedoes	Short Range	9,000m base

Note: Faction and T2 varieties of Regular (Standard) missiles exist (more on this later)

Defender missiles – Anti-missile missiles. These attack incoming missiles and attempt to destroy them before they can reach their target. NOTE: may require more then one defender to destroy incoming missile. Can only be activated if there are incoming missiles.

FOF Misiles – Friend or Foe missiles, do less damage than standard missiles but do not require a target lock which is perfect if you have been jammed by ECM. FoF missiles go for the closest target that has an "aggression" flag set towards you.

Bombs – Fired by stealth bombers. Once launched bomb travels straight ahead for approximately 17km then detonates. Area of effect is 15km.

Missile Range

Calculating the distance a missile can cover is rather easy:

Each missile has its own velocity and its max flight time, both listed in meters/second and seconds respectively when you look up information on the missiles. Multiplying these two factors gives the distance in meters the missile will travel before expiring. Both of these properties will be modified by your character's skills. To see modified attributes, load missiles into launcher of your ship and right click on them to show info.

NOTE – Just because a target is within your missiles range do not assume that your missile will be able to reach it. A fast traveling target may move out of their maximum flight range in the time that missile took to reach it.

Missile Damage

Link to formula used to calculate damage done by missiles in EVE: Missile Damage

Explosion Radius is one of properties of missiles that gets factored in when calculating damage output. Each missile has an explosion radius and each target has a signature radius. If the targets signature radius is bigger than or as big as the missile’s explosion radius the missile will deal full damage (velocity factor described later may reduce this damage). If the targets signature radius is smaller than the missile’s explosion radius the damage done will be reduced.

Keeping it simple – Big missiles do less damage on small ships then they do on big ships, and small missiles will do the same amount of damage to big ships as they do to small ships.

Related Skills and Modules – The explosion radius of missiles can be reduced by training a skill called "Guided Missile Precision”. One can also use target painters to boost signature radius of target ship and maximize damage.

Missile Type___	Explosion radius___	Ship Type___	Typical Signature Radius___
Torpedo	450m	Dread	1740
Cruise	300m	Carrier	2950
Heavy	125m	Battleship	0400
Assault	125m	Cruiser	0125
Light	050m	Frigate	0040
Rocket	020m	Pod	0025

• A torpedo vs. a Battleship above will have an 11% damage reduction.
• A rocket vs. a pod will do full damage.
• A cruise missile vs. a frigate will have its damage reduced by 87%.

Explosive Velocity is another property of missiles that gets factored in for calculating damage that they do. If the target is slower or as fast as the missile’s explosion velocity, the missile will deal full damage (damage can be reduced by radius as described before). If the target is faster than the missile’s explosion velocity, the damage done will be reduced. NOTE: explosion velocity is not same as missile's traveling velocity.

Keeping it simple – Low explosion velocity does less damage on fast ships.

Related Skills and Modules – Missile’s explosion velocity can be further increased with the skill “Target navigation prediction”. Stasis webifiers can decrease the target’s velocity thus increasing how much damage it receives.

Sample Explosive velocities
Torpedo	250 m/s base
Cruise	500 m/s base
Heavy	750 m/s base
Assault	750 m/s base
Light	1750 m/s base
Rocket	2000 m/s base

• A torpedo against a ship going ~1450m/s will be reduced 50%.
• A torpedo against a target going ~3100 m/s will be reduced to near 100%.
• Cruise missile against a ship going 600 m/s does full damage.
• Cruise missile against a ship going 1740m/s will be reduced 50%.
• Cruise missile against a ship going ~3100 m/s will be reduced to near 100%.

Rate of fire of missile launcher is the property that directly relates to your ship's damage output. The faster you can fire missiles at a target, the more dps you can yield (DPS stands for Damage per Second). Different launchers have different base Rate of Fire (RoF). Rocket launchers have the highest ROF of all launchers in game. When flying ships fitted with these launchers you better make sure you have packed enough ammunition with you. On the other hand, large ship launchers, such as cruise and torpedo launcher, have some of the lowest ROFs.

Keeping it simple – The faster your launcher can fire the next round of missiles, the more damage you will do.

Related Skills and Modules – Missile Launcher Operation, Rapid Launch, Specialization skills, Bomb Deployment all serve to increase ROF of missile or bomb launchers. You can also fit Ballistic Control Unit to your ships to improve both ROF and damage output of your missiles.

There is very good tutorial on missiles accessible from main EVE website that goes over the same basic information as this guide. Link: Eve Missile Guide

Types of Launchers

• Rocket Launcher - fit to frigat hulls; shorter range higher damage; loaded with rockets

• Standard Launcher - fit to frigat hulls; longer range lower damage; loaded with light missiles

• Assault Launcher - fit to cruisers as anti-frigate defense; shorter range higher damage to frigates but less damage to cruisers and bigger ships as compared to heavies; loaded with light assault missiles

• Heavy Assault Launcher - fit to cruisers; shorter range higher higher damage; loaded with assault missiles

• Heavy Launcher - fit to cruisers; longer range lower damage; loaded with heavy missiles

• Siege Launcher - fit to battleships; shorter range higher damage; loaded with torpedoes

• Cruise Launcher - fit to battleships and stealth bombers; longer range lower damage; loaded with cruise missiles

• Citadel Launcher * - fit to capital ships; loaded with citadel torpedoes

• Bomb Launcher* - fit to stealth bombers; loaded with bombs

For all of these types of launchers (except as noted with *) several varieties are available for purchase:

Named Launchers – Example: Arbelest, Limos, Malkuth, ZW-4100, XT-9000, XT-2800, XR-3200, SV-2000, TE-2100, OE-5200, etc. Named launchers tend to be used a lot in pvp. They generally have slightly better fitting, ROF, and capacity for a slight increase in cost. Since meta launchers are dropped in PVE they tend to be abundant on the market at a reasonable cost. Load these with faction missile (i.e. Caldari Navy Paradise Cruise Missile) for increased damage effect.

T2 Launchers – These require more skill to fit; the corresponding missile launcher skill has to be trained to level V. So for example if you would like to use Cruiser Launcher II your character first has to train up Cruise Missiles V, which is a three week skill. T2 launchers are the only launchers able to fire T2 missiles.

Cosmos Launchers – Example ‘Balefire’. These have superior fitting requirements, but are quite rare and more expensive. You can find these selling on contracts.

Faction/Officer Launchers – Some of the richer mission runners invest in these to run missions even quicker, but they are not a good ISK investment for PVP due to the fact that even the worst officer launcher costs a few hundred million ISK. As with Cosmos launchers these get sold over contracts.

Anti-Missile Tactics

Fly faster than missiles flying after you – If your speed is greater than the missile’s velocity, it will never catch up with your ship. The goal here is to outrun the missile until its maximum flight time is exceeded. This is not an option to use countering some of the faster missiles in game, such as light missiles, as no ship is fast enough to outrun them. You can exercise it against some of the slower missile types, such as cruise and torpedo missile. Note that turning drastically reduces your speed and the missile can take a shorter path to catch you.

Fly out of missile maximum flight range – Missile can only cover a certain range before it eventually runs out of fuel and expires. If you are sitting close to the border of this range already you can attempt to move out a bit further. This tactic works best again short range missiles such as rockets, assault, and torpedos.

Simply warp out – Another tactic practices against larger, slower missiles. Missile, unlike ammo, take time to reach their target. If you warp out before the hit you, you can avoid their damage. This tactic works well if the missile ship is sitting some distance away from you giving you 10-20 seconds to react before impact. Remember that an intact ship that is not on grid but ready to warp back into the fight is more useful to your gang than a ship that is dying or that has fallen dead to missiles.

Defender missiles - Defender missiles have a base speed of 7500 m/s and do 70 HP of base damage to incoming missiles Defender missiles can be loaded into all varieties of missile launchers with the exception of bomb launchers. Current opinion on these is that they do not work well, as such you will almost never see these get used for PVP.

Smartbombs – These work on same principle as defender missiles. Smartbombs do damage to the missile and can destroy it before it reaches its target. Since smart bombs do damage to anything within their area of effect, so they can be used to destroy multiple incoming missiles. The trick here is to time their activation correctly and set them off when incoming missiles are within 5km range of your ship.

Electronic warfare – Two types of electronic warfare work against missile boats: ECM and dampeners. Tracking disruptors do not work against missile launchers because missile launchers do not track, neither do they have optimal or falloff ranges. Dampeners counter one of the advantages of flying a missile ship: being able to lock and always hit targets from extended ranges. Once dampened to below 20km targeting range, a Cerberus or Drake, for example, lose a portion of their utility in PVP. ECM breaks target lock of missile ship making it unable to target anything. Missile ships have a defense against ECM - FOF missiles. However FOF missiles do less damage and focus only on the closest target. Some PVPers also forget to bring them along, making ECM quite effective to use against their ships.

Missile Related Skills

For Missile Launcher skills primary attribute is Perception, secondary attribute is Willpower

Skill – Rank – Description

Bomb Deployment - - Basic operation of bomb delivery systems. 5% reduction of Bomb Launcher reactivation delay per skill level.

Citadel Torpedoes - - Skill at the handling and firing of citadel torpedoes. 5% bonus to citadel torpedo damage per skill level.

Cruise Missiles - - Skill at the handling and firing of very large guided missiles. 5% bonus to cruise missile damage per skill level.

Cruise Missile Specialization - Specialist training in the operation of advanced cruise missile launchers. 2% bonus per level to the rate of fire of modules requiring Cruise Missile Specialization.

Defender Missiles - Skill with anti-missile missiles. Special: 5% bonus to defender missile max velocity per skill level.

FoF Missiles - Skill with friend or foe missiles. Special: 5% bonus to F.O.F (light, heavy and cruise) damage per skill level.

Guided Missile Precision - Skill at precision missile homing. Proficiency at this skill increases the accuracy of a fired missile's exact point of impact, resulting in greater damage to small targets. 5% decreased factor of signature radius for light, heavy and cruise missile explosions per level of skill.

Heavy Assault Missile Specialization - Specialist training in the operation of advanced heavy assault missile launchers. 2% bonus per level to the rate of fire of modules requiring Heavy Assault Missile Specialization.

Heavy Assault Missiles - Skill with assault missiles. Special: 5% bonus to assault missile damage per skill level.

Heavy Missile Specialization - Specialist training in the operation of advanced heavy missile launchers. 2% bonus per level to the rate of fire of modules requiring Heavy Missile Specialization.

Heavy Missiles - Skill with heavy missiles. Special: 5% bonus to heavy missile damage per skill level.

Missile Bombardment - Proficiency at long-range missile combat. 10% bonus to all missiles' maximum flight time per level.

Missile Launcher Operation - Basic operation of missile launcher systems. 2% Bonus to missile launcher rate of fire per skill level.

Missile Projection - Skill at boosting missile bay propulsion systems and manipulating guided missiles' jet engines. 10% bonus to all missiles' maximum velocity per level.

Rapid Launch - Proficiency at rapid missile launcher firing. 3% bonus to missile launcher rate of fire per level.

Rocket Specialization - Specialist training in the operation of advanced rocket launchers. 2% bonus per level to the rate of fire of modules requiring Rocket Specialization.

Rockets - Skill with small short range missiles. Special: 5% bonus to rocket damage per skill level.

Standard Missile Specialization - Specialist training in the operation of advanced standard missile launchers and assault launchers. 2% bonus per level to the rate of fire of modules requiring Standard Missile Specialization.

Standard Missiles - Skill with manually targeted missiles. Special: 5% Bonus to light missile damage per skill level.

Target Navigation Prediction - Proficiency at optimizing a missile's flight path to negate the effects of a target's speed upon the explosion's impact. 10% decrease per level in factor of target's velocity for all missiles.

Torpedo Specialization - Specialist training in the operation of advanced siege launchers. 2% bonus per level to the rate of fire of modules requiring Torpedo Specialization.

Torpedoes - Skill at the handling and firing of torpedoes. 5% bonus to torpedo damage per skill level.

Warhead Upgrades - Proficiency at upgrading missile warheads with deadlier payloads. 2% bonus to all missile damage per skill level.

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Things still needed \ to be added --Mystique Raven 18:46, 1 March 2009 (PST) 3-5-09 - maybe add Skill improvemnt, Module improvement, Rig improvement, implant improvment to above

Missile Rigs

Ships with Missile Bonuses

Missile total Hit points to destroy - not having much luck finding this need to look at data dump

Ammo chart T1 / T2 / Faction base damage velocity and all that

Bombs types and uses link to bomber article

PVE Kestrel -> Drake -> Raven easy mode with a good tank F1-F8 go browse the forums