Christari Zuborov
Ore Mongers
R0ADKILL
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Posted - 2007.08.01 00:27:00 -
[1]
Edited by: Christari Zuborov on 01/08/2007 00:30:26
My specific issue along the lines of the missile launcher additions to the Amarr ships is it's completely counterintuitive to use HAMs vs. faster flying vessels.
While they do in fact have a faster ROF, and they do have a faster explosive radius, they don't have a higher velocity to reach their target.
Putting HAMs on a vessel in low-sec is like putting **** on a boar, they are completely useless. In 0.0 you have either fast agile, or slow lumbering flying vessels - almost zero in the speed band that these missiles are made for. Firing HAMs at BCs or above is pretty much a nuissance act, and firing HAMs at AF or below won't even hit.
Currently in order of speed, from fastest to slowest, missiles are:
cruise - 3750 km/s
light - 3750 km/s
heavy - 3750 km/s
rockets - 3250 km/s
hams - 2250 km/s
torp - 1250 km/s
While they should be, given in order of base damage, assuming that a larger punch equals more explosive content, and given the trade-off of also packaging a guidance electronics payload:
rockets
hams
light
heavy
cuise
torp
So what does one do if every missile type is slower than a fast ship? You train the skill called "Missile Projection", it's used to increase the speed of guided missiles to bring your missiles closer to the ship speed, but this doesn't do squat for unguided missiles, and that's the type of missile that HAMs are! In fact, the three slowest missile types ALSO happen to be the unguided type!
Normally, if you worry about hitting a fast ship, you train projectiles/lasers...
The reason you train a projectile/lasers system is that if your target is in your range, and as long as their angular velocity isn't greater than your turrets traverse speed in rad/s, you hit them. This won't work with HAMs, as some of our ships will now be flying faster than the speed of missile leaving your hardpoint.
This is a nerf to Amarr, they're taking away the ability to hit the faster ship types by replacing turreted points with missile points restricted to using the second slowest missile in game, which can't even hit a fast cruiser when their description states they should be used against smaller ships.
One last point to CCP. You might want to change the Cruise Missile description from "Lifting-wing, jet-propelled guided missiles with heavy payloads." to "Jet-propelled guided missiles with heavy payloads.", as there's not much use for a lifting-wing in space!!! 
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