EVE Guide Weapons 101 - Missiles  

Weapons 101 - Missiles

This guide is meant as an introductory overview of the different missile launcher types in EVE, comparing the basic strengths and weaknesses of all missiles, basic skills that affect their performance and general tips of usage. Also be sure to check out the flash-based guide on the official EVE website, which demonstrates in detail how things like explosion radius and explosion velocity work.


Table of Contents
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I. Introduction to Missiles
II. Guided Missiles
III. Unguided Missiles
IV. FoF and Defender Missiles
V. Missile Skills
VI. Missile Ammo

I. Introduction to Missiles]

In EVE, missiles are propelled damage dealers launched from a missile bay. They differ from turrets in that they always hit if they manage to reach the target, and the fact that they have to physically reach the target in order to inflict damage, as opposed to the instantaneous hits from turrets. The Caldari specialize in missile platforms, while the Minmatar also utilize missiles greatly as secondary weapon systems.

In EVE, missiles generally do lower but more consistent damage than turrets. Since they are not constrained by all the hit formulas turrets suffer from, missiles can be extremely effective if used right, especially in regards to size difference between missiles. Also, missile bays can load any damage type, making missile-based ships often more versatile than their turret-clad cousins.


General missile characteristics are as follows:

• Rate of Fire (launcher)
  

The rate at which the missile bay fires missiles. This value is affected by skills and modules.

• Maximum Velocity (missile)
  

The speed at which the missile travels. This is a base value that is affected by skills, and sometimes by the ship flown. Guided missiles are generally much faster than unguided.

• Maximum Flight Time (missile)

How long the missile can fly in seconds before it disappears, provided it does not reach it's target first. The maximum range of a missile can be calculated by multiplying this value with the missile's velocity. This base value is affected by skills.

• Damage (missile)

Base damage of the missile itself. This value, unlike with turrets, is not affected by the missile bay itself. It is affected by several skills and modules.

• Explosion Velocity (missile)

The "speed" of the missile's explosion. If the target's velocity is greater than this explosion velocity, the damage of the missile is reduced (the target "outruns" the missile's explosion). This value stacks with explosion radius.

• Explosion Radius (missile)

The explosion radius of a missile determines how effective it is against differently sized targets. To determine how this value affects a missile, EVE compares the missile's explosion radius with the target's signature radius. If the ship's signature radius is greater or equal to the missile's explosion radius, there is no change. However, if the ship's signature is lower, the game reduces the missile's damage by the appropriate percentage, meaning that the larger the missile used on a small target, the less effective it will be in damaging it. This is a linear relationship, meaning that the exact percentile difference between the explosion radius and signature radius is also the amount of damage reduction. This value is affected by skills, but only on guided missiles.

Example: A missile with an explosion radius of 400m is fired upon a ship with a signature radius of 150m. As 150m is 37.5% of 400m (= 0.375), the damage of the missile itself is reduced by 62.5%

II. Guided Missiles]

Guided missiles in EVE are split into three size categories; light, heavy and cruise missiles. These missiles are all long-ranged, agile damagedealers for their size classes, effective at sniping but lacking the punch of unguided missiles. They are fired from the Standard, Heavy and Cruise Missile Launcher, respectively.

The main purpose of the guided missile is to track and hit small, fast targets at ranges where the target cannot fire back. Because of their ability to damage a wider range of ship classes thanks to a lower explosion radius and greater velocity, guided missiles such as cruise missiles are often regarded as a "safer" option than the slower, more damaging torpedoes. However, guided missiles may often lack the punch to overcome the stronger tanks.

III. Unguided Missiles]

Unguided missiles in EVE are split into four size categories; rockets, assault missiles, torpedoes and citadel torpedoes. These missiles, like guided missiles, fit into the general ship size categories in EVE; Rockets are fired by Rocket Launchers and are designed for use by frigates, assault missiles are used with Heavy Assault Launchers and excel against cruisers and larger targets, Torpedoes are fired using the Siege Missile Launcher and are most effective against other battleships, and Citadel Torpedoes are the only capital-sized missile class in the game, used with Citadel Launchers.

Usage of unguided missiles tends to be trickier than guided, due to their limited speed and range. Also, since their relatively high explosion radius isn't affected by skills, they have a tendency to be much less effective against smaller targets. Also, while unguided missiles can do massive damage, they rarely outstrip the sheer damage potential of turret ships. On the other hand, their damage output is far more consistent than that of turrets due to the lack of hit formulas on missiles, so their actual damage can often be higher than on close-range turret ships.

With that in mind though, it is worth noting that torpedoes can have an effective range of up to 55km, which far outstrips that of large Blasters and Autocannons, while rockets can reach up to 7km and assault missiles edge over 10km.

IV. FoF and Defender Missiles]

F.O.F. (Friend or Foe) and Defender missiles are two specialist sub-classes of missiles in EVE.

Defender missiles are light anti-missile rockets that can be fired from all missile launchers in EVE. They are designed to intercept and neutralize incoming rockets, although in some cases it may need several defender missiles to destroy one incoming missile (such as torpedoes and cruise missiles). Defender missiles target incoming warheads on their own, and will not fire unless a volley is incoming, at which point they will autofire until there are no more missiles to target or manually stopped. They are generally most effective when used with the cruiser-sized Assault Missile Launcher, due to it's high refire rate and the larger capacity when compared to Standard Launchers.

FoF Missiles are "fire and forget"-type warheads, mostly used when the missile boat has been jammed or cannot target an enemy for any reason. When activated, the FoF missile will fire and target the nearest hostile ship or drone. Although useful when completely locked down, they are rarely used due to the lack of control the user has, as well as the fact that they do less damage than their guided counterparts.

V. Missile Skills]

A large number of skills affect the performance and statistics of missiles and missile bays, all of them in the "Missiles" skill sub-group. The base skill for all missile launchers is the Missile Launcher Operation skill, which gives a uniform 2% rate of fire bonus on all missile launchers fitted.

Base Missile Skills

There are nine base missile skills in EVE; three guided missile skills (light, heavy and cruise missiles), four unguided (rockets, heavy assault missiles, torpedoes and citadel torpedoes), and two specialist skills (FoF missiles and defenders). All these skills give a 5% damage bonus per level to their respective missile type, save for the skill Defender Missiles, which gives a 5% velocity bonus to defender missiles.

Missile Performance Skills

There are five missile performance skills in EVE that affect the base characteristics of all missiles and launchers. These are:

• Missile Bombardment - 10% increase in all missiles' maximum flight time per level
• Missile Projection - 10% increase to all missiles' maximum velocity per level
• Rapid Launch - 3% reduction on all missile launchers' rate of fire per level
• Target Navigation Prediction - 10% decrease in factor of target's velocity for all missiles per level
• Warhead Upgrades - 2% bonus to all missile damage per level

The following skill only affects guided missile (light, heavy and cruise missiles):

• Guided Missile Precision - 5% reduction to guided missile explosion radius per level

Missile Auxiliary Skills

There are two Auxiliary skills that affect the fitting requirements of both turrets and missile launchers, called Weapon Upgrades and Advanced Weapon Upgrades, that affect the CPU and Powergrid use of missile launchers, respectively.

• Weapon Upgrades reduce the CPU requirements of a turret by 5% per level. This can be extremely useful, as missiles tend to be rather CPU-intensive.
• Advanced Weapon Upgrades reduce the Powergrid requirements of a turret by 2% per level. This is an advanced skill, has a high training multiplier and requires lvl 5 in Weapon Upgrades before training.

Missile Specialization Skills

There are six missile specialization skills in EVE, one per main missile type (there are currently no specialization skills available for FoF missiles nor defenders). These skills are the prerequisite for use of tech 2 missile launchers, and all of them require lvl 5 in their parent weapon skill (Torpedo specialization requires lvl 5 in torpedoes, for instance). Note that there is no citadel launcher specialization skill.

All specialization skills grant a 2% bonus to the respective launcher's rate of fire (Cruise Missile Specialization grants a ROF bonus only to Cruise Missile Launcher II).

VI. Missile Ammo]

All missile types have 4 basic versions, one for each damage type. No missile does more than it's one damage type. There is generally no difference in the stats between the various damage type missiles - they all do the same damage and at the same speeds. As such, tactical decisions between ammo types are limited to the damage type the pilot wishes to do.

Tech 2 missiles (used only with t2 missile launchers), like turret ammo, fall into two categories; range/accuracy and damage.

On guided missiles, the two categories are named Fury and Precision. Fury missiles do higher damage at the expense of significantly reduced flight velocity, which limits their range greatly. On the other hand, Precision Missiles have half the explosion radius of their t1 counterparts with no reduction in damage or range.

Unguided t2 missiles split into Javelin and Rage. Javelin unguided missiles have most of the flight characteristics of their guided counterparts, if not better; i.e. a Javelin Torpedo will fly as fast as a regular cruise missile, but for 5 seconds longer. They also have higher explosion velocity and lower explosion radius, making them that much more effective against smaller targets. Rage missiles, on the other hand, do alot of damage - 50% more damage to be exact. However, they are even slower than their t1 versions, less than half the explosion velocity and double the explosion radius, making them inefficient against small or even same-sized targets (rage heavy assault missiles tend to be more effective against battleships than cruisers, while rage torpedoes are usually only used on capital ships or battleships that have been lit up using several Target Painters, thereby artificially inflating the target's signature radius).

Also, unlike their Tech 1 variants, Tech 2 missiles also confer disadvantages to your ship or missile launchers. This disadvantage is uniform; damage-type t2 missiles incur a penalty to capacitor recharge rates, while range/accuracy missiles give a penalty to velocity. The actual values of the disadvantages differ between missile classes (Rage Rockets give a 45% penalty to cap, while Rage Torpedoes give a 20% penalty to cap).

Note that these penalties stack, meaning that 4x Cruise Missile Launcher II's fitted with Fury Cruise Missiles give a total of 107% penalty to capacitor recharge (20% penalty per launcher, ^ 4 or 1.2 * 1,2 * 1,2 * 1,2), meaning that the capacitor recharge of the ship will be reduced to 0 (the extra 7% are discarded) as long as there are fury cruise missiles fitted into all four launchers.

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