Topic: Missiles, longest range weapon in Perpetuum? Falloff can fix this.

Standard gear.

Light EM gun = 120m

Light laser = 150m

Light missiles = 150m

Bonuses involved nothing changes here. Lasers and missiles are equal for light weapons.



Medium EM gun = 270m

Medium laser = 325m

Medium missiles = 350m


Now add level 10 skills for a 30% range increase and new ranges are:

Medium EM gun = 351m

Medium laser = 422.5m

Medium missiles = 455m

With max skills the medium missile range advantage grows even bigger. Missiles have a 32.5m range advantage over lasers, the apparent long range weapon of Perpetuum.

Now to include falloff, 100m for medium laser. 130m if the fallof extension is maxed out. I don't have exact stats for falloff, but I recall that if I went just 10 metres over optimal and I had 60 metre falloff, my damage was reduced quite a bit, any more beyond that and the damage was reduced to practically nothing.

I can think of a good way to solve this without changing missile ranges, while helping turrets (especially EM guns, their bots give a falloff bonus) a little on range, and this is something that needs to be looked at any way, and that's the falloff calculation.

Falloff is pretty crappy, when I saw I had 60 metres fallof, I thought that meant i'd have close to 60 metres extra to deal some damage from, welll, yeah, I was dealing damage when I was 20 metres outside my optimal, about 90% less than usual damage. 40 metres outside optimal with 60 metre falloff? My usual 30 damage hits were reduced to about 0.3 damage. Why even bother saying my falloff is up 60 metres if I can't even go 20m and still deal damage that's even worth wasting my AP/ammo on.

Last edited by Sinister (2010-01-18 15:32:06)

Re: Missiles, longest range weapon in Perpetuum? Falloff can fix this.

not to mention the missile damage forumla is borkked atm

Re: Missiles, longest range weapon in Perpetuum? Falloff can fix this.

Tracking Module doesn't apply to missiles and the Nuimqol race gets a falloff bonus. Missiles are by no means the best long range weapons, they are in fact the worst.

Re: Missiles, longest range weapon in Perpetuum? Falloff can fix this.

missles are OK long range wepons

Since you can swich ammo in flight to *gasp* Short range wepons!  lol


Try to do that with EM or lasers roll


Also, other races need to spend 1 headslot just to match the missiles in optimal, then second to get it higer.

Thats 2 slots to be longer optimal than missiles.

And yes, the falloff range is dramatically reducing your damage to wet rags and bananas, so fighting in falloff is like waching 2 retards fighring eachother with sticks.

Not to mention, missiles aperant ability to slaughter small bots in few vollies, no matter the size.

Last edited by Siddy (2010-01-18 18:12:23)

Re: Missiles, longest range weapon in Perpetuum? Falloff can fix this.

Styx wrote:

Tracking Module doesn't apply to missiles and the Nuimqol race gets a falloff bonus. Missiles are by no means the best long range weapons, they are in fact the worst.

Thanks for pointing out one of the other issues. Falloff is almost worthless. You can have a 130km falloff, but if you go over 25km outside of your optimal, it's not worth the ammo use or energy use of turning on your guns, because the damage reduction for firing in falloff gets very nasty ridiculously soon.

Missiles the worst range? That's why missiles have a 30% range increase over EM guns, I'd say EM guns have it the worst.

So when a long range medium turret claims to have 100km falloff or whatever, it's a load of rubbish, nobody can expect to fire their guns even half way into the falloff and do damage worth shooting for.

EM guns get especially screwed by this because their new bonus is a falloff bonus which is 100% worthless. Wow, so instead of having a 60km falloff, with max skills they can now have a 90km falloff. This means they can get maybe an extra 5km away from their target with level 10 robotics and still deal decent damage than they could have if they didn't get bother getting any falloff skill bonus atall.

We'd never hear the end of it if missiles had one of their main bonuses replaced with a crappy bonus like "missile falloff" that allows you to deal your usual damage at an extra 1% range per level. (max 10%) 10% more range is all the EM guys can have to achieve with even with 10 in robotics for maxed falloff bonus.

Falloff is only a bad bonus for the EM bots because Falloff isn't very useful atall.

Last edited by Sinister (2010-01-18 21:26:51)

Re: Missiles, longest range weapon in Perpetuum? Falloff can fix this.

Why are you using completely irrelevant data to substantiate your points?

Anyway, you happily danced around the fact that Tracking modules exist. Any well fit Nuimqol bot using long range weapons should have at least 2 tracking modules to increase range. Rather than just looking at the raw stats try to also think about the proper fit you should be using with the bot.

Re: Missiles, longest range weapon in Perpetuum? Falloff can fix this.

Styx wrote:

Why are you using completely irrelevant data to substantiate your points?

Anyway, you happily danced around the fact that Tracking modules exist. Any well fit Nuimqol bot using long range weapons should have at least 2 tracking modules to increase range. Rather than just looking at the raw stats try to also think about the proper fit you should be using with the bot.

Medium EM gun = 270m

Medium laser = 325m

Medium missiles = 350m

270 * 1.10 = 297m (1st tracking module)

I don't know if skills and any other tracking modules multiply the current range including extension and fitted modules bonuses, or just the base range, but i'll say they do, if they didn't guns would be even worse again.

297 * 1.10 = 326.7m (2nd tracking module)

Even with 2 tracking modules wasting important slots, missiles still have better range than EM guns. 350m vs 326m with 2 tracking modules.

Oh but EM guns have a 60m falloff, 90m with max skills, is what you'll probably say. So? 90m falloff gives about 15m outside range where the EM guns still deal what could be considered worthwhile damage with a 90km falloff.

Last edited by Sinister (2010-01-18 23:54:58)

Re: Missiles, longest range weapon in Perpetuum? Falloff can fix this.

lasers are the longest range currently, with 552 range on your standard HLC medium laser, true enough missiles can do 380m without falloff (becuase there is no falloff), you must count falloff as range however, because you can steal deal damage (although somewhat reduced).

Once the missile formula for damage has been fixed, the will be pretty balanced.

Missiles have just had a miss balance too, (although the chance to miss can be reduced to 0%, on which i dissagree with).

The only problem is missile usage is 1-2AP for that kind of range, where lasers and EM guns are alot higher, so to balance, i suggest a increased AP usage of 10-15AP for longer range medium/large missiles.  This wont hurt missile users all too much, because PVPers use buffer tanks, and PvE players can kite/stay outta range. 
Of course, the short range missiles should stay the same, low AP cost, you can just say the long range missiles need energy for calibration.

Last edited by Daniel (2010-01-19 02:30:52)

Re: Missiles, longest range weapon in Perpetuum? Falloff can fix this.

Remember to take the negatives of missiles into account as well.  Few missiles can be loaded per launcher, there's a flight time involved, the cycle time per shot is higher, they're easily blocked by terrain, etc.  Furthermore, I don't believe any of the missile bots have range bonuses, so if you can ride in a Laser bot w/a range bonus, you're out distancing a like-class missile bot already. 

It sucks that lasers are broken, and I'm all for having them fixed, but this post is leaning towards whining that Missiles should be nerfed rather than lasers should be balanced (which is already in the plans, I believe?).

Re: Missiles, longest range weapon in Perpetuum? Falloff can fix this.

Burrito, +1  about flight time and cycle.
why sinister didn't count dps as well? For example Artemis with long range laser will do 2 more rounds.
Also before whining about damage and range I would ask about resists - i hardly understand it's 'math'

Last edited by sGhouLs (2010-01-19 08:19:01)

Re: Missiles, longest range weapon in Perpetuum? Falloff can fix this.

Burrito wrote:

Remember to take the negatives of missiles into account as well.  Few missiles can be loaded per launcher, there's a flight time involved, the cycle time per shot is higher, they're easily blocked by terrain, etc.  Furthermore, I don't believe any of the missile bots have range bonuses, so if you can ride in a Laser bot w/a range bonus, you're out distancing a like-class missile bot already. 

It sucks that lasers are broken, and I'm all for having them fixed, but this post is leaning towards whining that Missiles should be nerfed rather than lasers should be balanced (which is already in the plans, I believe?).

I don't know of any laser bot with any kind of range bonus atall. EM bots don't get a range bonus either, all they get are falloff bonuses and falloff is practically worthless.

No I don't call for missiles to be nerfed anywhere in this thread. I call for falloff to be changed so that it is actually useful. Being able to deal ok damage up to 15-20% into your falloff range and worthless damage beyond that is just pointless and makes falloff crap.

Last edited by Sinister (2010-01-19 11:44:36)

Re: Missiles, longest range weapon in Perpetuum? Falloff can fix this.

sGhouLs wrote:

Burrito, +1  about flight time and cycle.
why sinister didn't count dps as well? For example Artemis with long range laser will do 2 more rounds.
Also before whining about damage and range I would ask about resists - i hardly understand it's 'math'

Missiles are doing more DPS than lasers and EM guns right now. I have tested this, and the dps difference is substantial. This may or may not change once the broken missile damage calculation is fixed.

Re: Missiles, longest range weapon in Perpetuum? Falloff can fix this.

Burrito wrote:

Remember to take the negatives of missiles into account as well.  Few missiles can be loaded per launcher, there's a flight time involved, the cycle time per shot is higher, they're easily blocked by terrain, etc.  Furthermore, I don't believe any of the missile bots have range bonuses, so if you can ride in a Laser bot w/a range bonus, you're out distancing a like-class missile bot already. 

It sucks that lasers are broken, and I'm all for having them fixed, but this post is leaning towards whining that Missiles should be nerfed rather than lasers should be balanced (which is already in the plans, I believe?).


missiles will fly trought to obstackes if fired before enemy moved behinf them.

Works sam way with any other wepon.

Cycle time is offsset by the higest alpha in game. And alpha damage is very useful in PVP.

So far no laser bot have range bonus.


Just pointing out some of the misconseptions ^__^


Th real things that irks me is that missiles AUTO slaughter small bots. Its like it was 2003-2006 in EVE, you had no busines to go against missiles in small ships. Ment auto death.

Te fact that missiles also do stupid long ranges doesent bother me as much as the fact you can swich thelong and short range missiles and not launchers.

Missiles are very flexible. I predict that in they current form they will be first pick for PVP.

Last edited by Siddy (2010-01-19 16:33:48)

Re: Missiles, longest range weapon in Perpetuum? Falloff can fix this.

Siddy wrote:
Burrito wrote:

Remember to take the negatives of missiles into account as well.  Few missiles can be loaded per launcher, there's a flight time involved, the cycle time per shot is higher, they're easily blocked by terrain, etc.  Furthermore, I don't believe any of the missile bots have range bonuses, so if you can ride in a Laser bot w/a range bonus, you're out distancing a like-class missile bot already. 

It sucks that lasers are broken, and I'm all for having them fixed, but this post is leaning towards whining that Missiles should be nerfed rather than lasers should be balanced (which is already in the plans, I believe?).


missiles will fly trought to obstackes if fired befire enemy moved behinf them.

Works sam way with any other wepon.

Cycle time is offsset by the higest alpha in game. And alpha damage is very useful in PVP.

So far no laser bot have range bonus.


Just pointing out some of the misconseptions ^__^


Th real things that irks me is that missiles AUTO slaughter small bots. Its like it was 2003-2006 in EVE, you had no busines to go against missiles in small ships. Ment auto death.

Te fact that missiles also do stupid long ranges doesent bother me as much as the fact you can swich thelong and short range missiles and not launchers.

Missiles are very flexible. I predict that in they current form they will be first pick for PVP.

And that's how the people using missiles want to keep it, hence players generally are not reporting how overpowered they are, and instead choose to argue against those who do so. I even had a missile user interested in the missile damage bug I found 2 days ago and he claimed to run tests for 2 hours and was unable to find anything wrong, and yet Dev Zoom proved my findings when he found that missile damage was indeed higher than it should be, with seismic damage on missiles being multiplied by the damage bonus twice.

The warpish assault bot in my tests puts out more dps than an artemis or kain and doesn't even scratch its own core because missiles are practically free to fire. Sure the damage calculation was bugged, but I really wonder how much damage they will still do once it's fixed.

Maxed skills warpish with standard launchers = 2.6 second cycle time on launchers, add in a couple of missile tunings and it'll be down to 2.2 second cycle time. A baphomet assault bot with 1200 armor would be dead in just 5.2 seconds. An artemis mech with 2500 armor would be dead in 11 seconds. Not even enough time to run the repairer once.

Last edited by Sinister (2010-01-19 14:34:09)

Re: Missiles, longest range weapon in Perpetuum? Falloff can fix this.

im more worried that in current state the pelistial mech are gona be king in PVP since they got free utility slots for Enrgy warfere.

You got got Tyranos with 2 free energy slots that can rape your cap out in few turns.

Or drain you to keep his armor going...

Re: Missiles, longest range weapon in Perpetuum? Falloff can fix this.

Siddy wrote:

im more worried that in current state the pelistial mech are gona be king in PVP since they got free utility slots for Enrgy warfere.

You got got Tyranos with 2 free energy slots that can rape your cap out in few turns.

Or drain you to keep his armor going...

Yeah with the issue of missiles doing the most damage, having the best range, and the warpish using barely any AP to make full use of its 5% missile damage 5% cycle time bonuses which give it a 2.4 sec cycle time at max skills, making it into a sick killing machine that can rape assault bots in 5 seconds, I almost forgot about the whole energy drain/neut issue.

It's simply unbalanced that missile bots get to fit drains without wasting slots while turret bots don't get that luxury. I don't care if drains are their main EW, all the current situation does is give missile bots exclusive rights to fit energy drains, and what do they sacrifice for that? What do turret bots get in return? Nothing, because a missile bot can just fit drains aswell as all other types of EW all at once and not lose any damage to do it.

Once bugged missile damage is fixed, I will run dps tests again and I bet missiles do at least as much damage as turrets do. In which case, why should they also get the best range, while also having the convinience to change from short range to long range on the field. The drains/neuts is a related issue but that's an obvious imbalance which needs to be fixed somehow anyway. Simply let turret bots fit drains without losing weapon slots is the best solution, it's not like missile bots have to sacrifice missile slots to fit ECM or sensor surpressors is it?

Last edited by Sinister (2010-01-19 16:58:05)

Re: Missiles, longest range weapon in Perpetuum? Falloff can fix this.

lol, didn't you noticeв that pelistals have -1 slot in legs? where yoг gonna put his repairer?
or you prefer to lose your speed? pelistals are the slowest bots in game, you wanna make them the shittiest?

Re: Missiles, longest range weapon in Perpetuum? Falloff can fix this.

sGhouLs wrote:

lol, didn't you noticeв that pelistals have -1 slot in legs? where yoг gonna put his repairer?
or you prefer to lose your speed? pelistals are the slowest bots in game, you wanna make them the shittiest?

They also have +1 slot in head. Get a clue please.

And i'm not even asking for them to be nerfed. I'm simply asking that falloff is made a bit more useful.

Last edited by Sinister (2010-01-20 15:27:25)

Re: Missiles, longest range weapon in Perpetuum? Falloff can fix this.

it's the same thing. by asking make falloff useful you ask to cut range of rockets.
before this «balancing discussions» better to ask what the statement whit resists? didn't you noticed that they are working... little bit... WRONG?!

Re: Missiles, longest range weapon in Perpetuum? Falloff can fix this.

sGhouLs wrote:

it's the same thing. by asking make falloff useful you ask to cut range of rockets.
before this «balancing discussions» better to ask what the statement whit resists? didn't you noticed that they are working... little bit... WRONG?!

Duh, *claps* yes resists are working, questioning them was all part of my process of discovering the issue behind missiles doing more damage than they should, missile damage was bugged, I located this bug and reported it to the devs, who looked into it and found the source of the bug, and it will be fixed in the next patch.

But I guess you'd rather the game stay bugged, you come across as that type, along with most of your guild.

Re: Missiles, longest range weapon in Perpetuum? Falloff can fix this.

Sinister, thank you!
Game has bugs, that is why need to to fix them and then do work on balancing. thank you for answering yourself question.

Re: Missiles, longest range weapon in Perpetuum? Falloff can fix this.

sGhouLs wrote:

Sinister, thank you!
Game has bugs, that is why need to to fix them and then do work on balancing. thank you for answering yourself question.

Development doesn't work like that, the game will always have bugs, and no matter how many get fixed, more will always occur.

Re: Missiles, longest range weapon in Perpetuum? Falloff can fix this.

Oh dear god, where to begin.

First off, missiles are NOT the highest damage weapons in the game. They have the largest alpha damage, and the lowest cycle time. And with exception to the waspish, none have cycle time bonuses. They also have the glaring problem of no falloff, and if the missiles are fired at 200m with a 250m max range, and arrive at the target with a 251m range traveled (because said target ran away after missiles were fired) then the missiles do 0 damage.

At this point all missiles need is a damage boost to be in line with their low cycle time and low ammo capacity. (After the bug Zoom confirmed is fixed of course.) Other than that, I guess they are somewhat balanced. (Lasers still need their buff, and EM guns still reign as the pvp weapon of choice.)

Now as for falloff, I think it should be changed as well, make hits made in the falloff range do full damage. But also make them hit much less often. (50% or so less accuracy.)

Re: Missiles, longest range weapon in Perpetuum? Falloff can fix this.

Blackomen +1

Long range artemis build shoots 500+ m optimal range. Missiles won't reach this numbers.
I really don't understand the mathematics of damage system. Missiles have crazy alfa (compare compact missiles and short range weapons, difference in x3), but our test with artemis showed that lasers dps were bigger than mine (don't be tricked — his robot bonuses on damage +25% and mine +15%, and basic damage of lasers gun also bigger than rocket launcher's.)

If we talk about balancing rockets don't take them separately from pelistal robots.

From some discussion in corp chat we came to opinion that rockets could have more than one type of rocket launchers.

First one — we have them. Missiles launchers with guidance system.
Second one — Missiles launcher with «pre-guidance» systems.

First type — middle and long range systems with guidance of missiles. More less damage, big range, without misses (it is really stupid when guided rocket misses), balanced cycle time. Also this rockets launcher can't launch missiles if range is less than «some-range-number».

Secon type — short and short-middle range missiles. Difference from first type.
Big damage (imagine it like sort of jet shell), short range, shorter cycle time. And this type of launcher don't do «whole-flight-guidance» of missile, just pre-guidance (like tank guidance). So big percentage of miss. May be for this one type it could be made about 30%, and with skill boosting reduce to 10% (still balancing question).

P.s. LoL, i am like Sinister now lol

Re: Missiles, longest range weapon in Perpetuum? Falloff can fix this.

Blackomen wrote:

Oh dear god, where to begin.

First off, missiles are NOT the highest damage weapons in the game. They have the largest alpha damage, and the lowest cycle time. And with exception to the waspish, none have cycle time bonuses. They also have the glaring problem of no falloff, and if the missiles are fired at 200m with a 250m max range, and arrive at the target with a 251m range traveled (because said target ran away after missiles were fired) then the missiles do 0 damage.

At this point all missiles need is a damage boost to be in line with their low cycle time and low ammo capacity. (After the bug Zoom confirmed is fixed of course.) Other than that, I guess they are somewhat balanced. (Lasers still need their buff, and EM guns still reign as the pvp weapon of choice.)

Now as for falloff, I think it should be changed as well, make hits made in the falloff range do full damage. But also make them hit much less often. (50% or so less accuracy.)

Personally I think once the damage bug has been fixed missile damage will be in line with the other weapons, i'm not sure if missiles are actually supposed to do as much damage as turrets because missile launchers only cost 1ap to fire and that's nothing.

There's something wrong with game balance if EM guns are "the pvp choice". Especially since this game gives each factiion, a weaker faction to fight and a stronger faction. I don't really care how they change falloff, as long as they make it more useful than it is now.