5 - Max number of launchers(cap ship)

.8 - base ROF for missiles from a normal launcher

.16 - ROF with 5 launchers.

3 - max number of missiles out.

Heavy AP Missile - 5000 Damage
Heavy AP Speed - 150 speed
This means that a missile can go approximately 72 distance before you can re-launch that missile slot. Any further and damage per second is decreased accordingly.

72 distance; 31250 damage per second.

144 distance; 15625 damage per second.

288 distance; 7500 damage per second.

500 distance; 4500 damage per second.

That means that a gunner with absolutely no effort other than switching to gunner, getting a dread, and buying some missiles, can put out damage rivaling most tech 20 zerkers. But if you move 300 distance further away, their DPS goes down to about a fourth that, and if you move to, say, 1000 distance, their DPS is miniscule.

Did nobody see this coming when missiles were made? Has any thought gone into them AT ALL?

They're either pathetically broken or they're pathetically weak. There is no middle ground. How is this balanced? I do not understand at all.


So player missiles are horrifically unbalanced. Then lets look at base missiles, just for kicks and giggles!

Firstly, a base missile has no max range. You can fire at anything from any range. Cool, right? Wait, missiles have crap radars. So much for that Idea. And oh yeah, your bases can fire one missile at a time...each. Enemy bases are usually about 3-4k out, and pvb is nonexistant anymore.

1 missile goes 100 speed, meaning it takes, say, 30 seconds to get to its target. Annihilator missile equals 5500 damage. 5500 damage/30 makes for...183 damage per second.

An annihilator cannon does 940.5 damage per second before station mastery. With station mastery and augs you hit the ROF cap(18810 DPS before damage modifications) and then you increase your damage by about 300%, coming to a total of about 60k DPS.

This means that an annihilator missile bay equates to roughly a .0031% DPS increase.

I mean, seriously, does anyone even THINK about these numbers? We don't need mild tweaking, we need a complete re-work of the missile system. And I'm not smart enough to do it, before you ask.

Yet some devs, cough, consider the current missiles to be completely balanced. And intentional.

Well that's another problem. A gunner can do 32750 damage at level 600, or they can do it at level 2000, and there's no difference between the two. All other classes scale damage over level/money/whatever.

im sure a level 600 sniper can do 32k dps, consistently too at all ranges

Only a pimped out one

A gunner having t17 launchers is kinda expected, though. If they didn't it would be like a t20 sniper killing stuff with a mag 4 or something. It works, but people are going to lol a bit.

well put it this way, without the 5 launcher stacking gunner would be totally rubbish at all stages of the power curve, both early level and late level.

I gotta say a gunners strongest point is from around the 500 to the 800 mark. At this point youve maxxed the main skill (finally) and are able to MF. The ai aren't too strong and spamming missiles is easy. Hit lvl 900 and the leveling suddenly comes to a stop. Ai have gotten stronger, other classes have too, but gunner just sits there with his large ap's.

Missiles are to Gunners as Fighters are to FC. However, FC's get their damage from slaves. Without the slaves, you'd lose most of your fighter DPS, and obviously all of your slave DPS.

Therefore, most(75%+) of a FC's DPS comes from slaves.

A Gunner should have that for its weapons.

Launcher stacking wasn't an intended feature of the class, it happened due to item code, and proved (due to the part of the code they work on, shared by solar panels etc) to be irritating. We limited launchers accordingly, but after the fact.

Missile spamming wasn't intended either, but there's a lot of resistance to adding <MINDISTANCE> and <MAX> on launchers without addressing some of the other issues Gunners faced, as it'll be an apocalyptic nerf for Capital ship spammers. (Oh, and you're not supposed to use click.exe which limits your DPS btw).

And yes, I'm aware that as a HF, 60-80% of all missile DPS is lost to AI targeting / spamming energy weapons, thus making "squat & spam" the most viable strategy.

We're also aware of the radar issue, but if you read my recent commentary on missiles, we need to split AI & player templates apart before buffing them. I'm also of the mind that their turning is severely nerfed - I think they got hit by the engine rebalance.

Base missiles are splash damage ~ I agree they never got properly finished, but there was serious concern about people abusing them. I can easily buff them up the wazoo, but that's rather pointless, as Gunner bases don't receive +missile skills, to my knowledge.



And yes, someone did think about missiles a lot. Here's a tip: rant in suggestion threads concerning missiles, not out here in the hinterlands. Oh, and read dev posts on missiles before spanking off a rant that's largely known about.

I like what Paxx said: you know what would prevent missile dps from scaling so horrifically with range? eliminating the cap on controlled missiles and limiting the launch rate more carefully.
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Whats that? it would make them more like a real weapon?
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huh, you're right.
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and?