Front Loaded

Hi All,

 

I have an alt (don’t we all) who has some fairly mad missile skills. Cruise missile and spec to V. And I’ve never really used him… that is until now. Thought I’d have something of a play and see if I can grind him up so he can use L4s.

This may take some time, especially given I’m running combat missions, but I figure the income is welcome in any case. But really, this is for comparison purposes. How does a high end gun or gun/drone tech compare with a high end missile tech, and what are the practical differences for mission running?

Well the first stand out is really the defense – when I mention front loading for shield tanked ships, I mean that all of the defense is immediate. Your shields are your primary defense, and they get hit first. Your capacitor is immediately stressed by boosting, and when repping your shield boosts hit at the start of their cycle. Essentially, you’re in a position where it pays to remove the biggest incoming DPS first.

Given that missiles (cruise especially) can reach out and touch someone right to the edges of their range, there is no need to triage by range as optimal/fall off aren’t applicable. Nor is transversal speed. Instead the sig radius of your target versus your missile explosion radius and speed of your target versus missile explosion speed are the key factors. Put simply, if you can lock it, you can hit it. How well? Well now, that depends….

As an example – Navy Megathron and the mighty Navy Raven shooting at two battleships, six cruise hulls and 4 frigates all at 40km.

The Navy Meg with its gun/drone split systems and (using AM ammo) has an optimal of about 30km. At this range, you can reverse order your targets by size and take out the frigates two at a time first by assigning sentries and guns to separate targets. On taking out the first two, the remaining ships will either speed in towards you (the cruisers and frigates) or move much more slowly to their optimal (the battleships).

At this point, and because the rats have not chewed through your shields as they’re not at their optimum for max DPS, the only significant stress on your capacitor is your guns. To ensure your guns and sentries are still effective against the targets, you’d choose to continue taking out the remaining frigates (if you’re quick enough) and then the cruisers. The battleships are very much last. This of course presupposes you’re not getting yourself into too much trouble popping all of the triggers. Any remaining frigates under your guns can be taken out by hobgoblins or other light drone.

In the case of heavy incoming fire, cruisers and battleships become the priority to reduce DPS, with frigates very much a secondary consideration (scrammers being the obvious exception). Cruisers and battle cruisers especially because of the speed that they move, and the fact that they can often be one or two shot kills. What you don’t want is a number of cruiser hulls operating at their optimal and well under yours….

Now the Navy Raven. I’ve found that with good skills, you can in fact damage and kill frigates with cruise missiles. This is without rigs or implants too I might add. It’s not quick, or efficient by any means, but I expect it to seriously improve with a little investment and/or the addition of a target painter. I also have about another 150 DPS to squeeze out of the hull to take her close to 900 tunable damage without drones. Faction missiles btw, not T2.

With that in mind, and given the same scenario, lets run through. Without optimal/fall off/transversal to worry about it’s very much a case of engage repper, lock targets and F1. Your locking speed will naturally resolve the battleships first, and because you don’t care how close or far they are, how your shields are holding up is the major consideration. With tunable damage and the right missile, battlecruisers especially and sometimes cruisers can be taken out with one salvo.

In practical terms, the damage application is close enough to instantaneous under 30km, and the lag to target really only becomes a consideration once your targets at 60/70km+ when you might have an unnecessary missile flight launched and on way to target just when it is destroyed by the previous cycle. Light drones are there to mop up the frigates – with elite frigates this can take a while, and they are known to find light drones a crunchy snack on occasion.

TL;DR Gun techs choose targets to best remove DPS before it can get applied and while best applied by you. Missile techs choose targets to remove DPS (and perhaps ECM).

Put another way, a gun boat has the advantage against small targets at range and the option to remove them relatively easily. A missile boat has the advantage of applying its DPS at any range to any target, with the proviso that smaller targets are more difficult to kill.

I will be upgrading over time, so I’ll review again once I’ve chucked some rigs and implants at things. Also need to see just how much of an effect precision missiles have. I will say this much, I’ve been pretty impressed so far. The Navy Raven is one solid piece of kit.

 

H out

 

P.S Ancillary shield boosters…. oO

P.P.S Half tempted to try and put together a video. FRAPS recommended?