CCP Rise wrote:Hello!
As you all know, we are rebalancing all of the tech 1 battleships for Odyssey. This means its a very good time to begin looking at large missile systems. This post covers Cruise Missiles specifically.
The biggest problem for Cruise missiles is that their main draw is their range (roughly 75k with no skills, 170k with all 5s, and 250km or so with a Raven). Unfortunately, using long-range missiles in most pvp situations is unrealistic, as the flight time for the missiles, which can be up to 20 seconds, allows plenty of opportunity for your target to evade damage. On top of that, in situations where flight time isn't as much of a problem (like small scale engagements), cruise damage is extremely low. The result is a situation where Cruise Missiles have pve applications, but otherwise torpedoes become the only available weapon system for missile focused battleships. We want to change that!
We are hoping to improve Cruise from two angles. First we will increase their damage by around 30%. This will happen partly in a change to the base missile damage, and partly in a rate of fire increase for the launchers. Secondly, we are going to increase the base velocity of cruise missiles substantially, making their role as the premiere long range missile at least slightly more realistic. These two improvements will be balanced by an increase in power grid need for the launchers, and a small explosion radius increase for the missiles.
Specifically:
5% increased rate of fire for all Cruise Missile Launchers
200 added power grid need for all Cruise Missile launchers
4700m/sec base missile velocity for all Cruise Missiles (up from 3750m/sec)
14 second base flight time for all Cruise Missiles (down from 20 seconds)
25% increase in base damage for all Cruise Missiles
10% increase in explosion radius for all Cruise Missiles
Please keep in mind this change is not comprehensive. Following Odyssey, we hope to do more work to improve the missile systems in EVE by potentially adding new modules and/or interactions.
Look forward to hearing your feedback, as always
Rise