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This document is concerned only with the damage that is created when a missile explodes near a ship. It specifically does not cover aspects of missile weaponry such as launcher speed or missile flight time. Nor does it concern itself with the ultimate damage to the ship, which may be shielded or armored against the kind of damage that the missile creates.

The Basic Picture

A missile's target is surrounded by an invisible bubble called its Signature Radius. This is the area that weapons see when they try to lock on to the ship. Generally, the bigger the ship, the bigger the Signature Radius. (However, various things can extend or shrink the size of the bubble. Follow this link to find more on the Signature Radius.)

When a missile crosses the Signature Radius of its target, it explodes. The explosion expands in a bubble of its own. The speed at which this bubble grows is called the Explosion Velocity, and the maximum size that the bubble will reach is called the Explosion Radius.

The missile does not so much hit the ship as explode near it. EVE uses a mathematical equation to compute the precise amount of damage that the explosion does to the ship. You can read about the details in the Technical Section of this document. In general, however, here is the way that missile damage is computed.

When a Missile Explodes

The missile has a Base Damage. This is listed as "explosive damage", "kinetic damage", or so on in the Attributes tab of the missile's Get Info window.

Heavy Missile Attributes

This amount may be augmented somewhat by certain skills and/or equipment, and when the term "Base Damage" is used here, it means the listed damage of the missile plus any augmented damage. It is the damage you expect the missile to do if it scores a direct hit.

Much of the time, 100% of the Base Damage is applied to the ship. Two situations, however, can reduce the damage:

• If the ship is moving very fast with respect to the explosion velocity, damage may be reduced. Think of this as a fast ship being able to somewhat outrun the explosion.
• If the signature radius of the ship is very small with respect to the explosion radius of the missile, damage may be reduced. Think of this as a small ship flying through a large explosion and only impacting on a part of it.

If both of these situations apply, EVE will choose the one that reduces the most damage.

In the simplest terms: big, slow ships usually take 100% missile damage. Small, fast ships may take less damage. It is not the speed of the missile that matters, however, but the speed and size of the explosion.

Explosion Details

If you have been using missiles, this probably does not surprise you, and you may want more details, but since the actual damage number depends on target speed, missile speed, signature radius and so on, there is no way to give a simple summary or table of how much damage a particular kind of missile will do against a particular kind of ship.

Without going into the mathematical details (see below), the only other factors that might matter are these:

• Unlike with turrets, the angular velocity of the target does not matter for computing damage. The missile still has to get to the target, but once it arrives, damage is computed using the target's straight line velocity.
• If a missile reaches its target, it will always do some damage. It is the speed of the explosion that helps determine how much ... not the speed of the missile.
• Because damage is related to both speed and Signature Ratio, using a microwarp drive, which increases both speed AND signature ratio, will not reduce damage. An afterburner does not affect Signature Ratio, however, and could possibly help.
• If you are using missiles, you want a faster explosion (Explosion Velocity) and a smaller one (Explosion Radius) – in other words, a short, tight explosion is more effective than a long, loose one.

An Illustration

As an illustration, here are the basic statistics for the Inferno Missile. These are sorted on Explosion Velocity.

Missile	Explosion Radius	Explosion Velocity	Base Damage (Thermal)
Inferno Precision Light Missile	25	204	83
Inferno Light Missile	40	170	83
Caldari Navy Inferno Light Missile	40	170	95
Inferno Fury Light Missile	69	143	116

First, notice that the only difference between the regular Inferno and the Caldari Navy Inferno is a change in the base damage. Secondly, you can see that the Fury missile has a larger base damage, but that the Precision missile has a faster Explosion Velocity and smaller Explosion Radius.

Explosion Radius and Velocity come into play whenever the target is small and/or fast. This means that the Fury missile will deliver its full damage against a bigger, slower ship, but is likely to have its damage reduced against smaller, faster targets. A Precision missile will also deliver its full damage against a bigger, slower ship (though it will do less damage than the Fury because of the lower base damage), but it will also be more likely to deliver full damage to smaller, faster ships.

Other classes of missiles follow the same pattern. Again, the list is sorted on Explosion Velocity.

Missile	Explosion Radius	Explosion Velocity	Base Damage (Thermal)
Inferno Light Missile	40	170	83
Inferno Rocket	20	150	33
Inferno Heavy Missile	140	81	135
Inferno Torpedo	450	71	450

Rockets have the smallest Base Damage (BD), but they have a very small Explosion Radius (ER) and a fairly fast Explosion Velocity (EV). So, you would expect them to do very good damage to small targets (due to their ER and EV), but relatively less damage to large ones (due to their BD). Torpedos have five times the Base Damage of Light Missiles, but they have ten times the Explosion Radius and half the Explosion Velocity. So, you would expect Torpedos to be very good against large, slow ships (due to their BD), but very poor agains small, fast ships (due to their ER and EV).

If that all makes sense, then good ... if not, then just keep in mind that, all things being equal, EVE has balanced the damage done by missiles among themselves as well as with the damage done by projectiles, beams and other types of weapons.

How to Increase the Damage of Your Missiles

Skills and ship equipment can have a direct impact on missile damage. A number of implants do the same. In addition, modules such as Target Painters and Webifiers can affect the target's Signature Radius and Speed, thus making missile damage more effective.

Skills

A number of skills improve a player's expertise with missiles. These are the ones that specifically affect the amount of damage done when a missile explodes.

• Guided Missile Precision reduces the impact of the target signature radius on the damage. This effectively decreases the explosion radius of the missile by 5% per skill level, which makes it more likely to do full damage to a small/fast target.
• Target Navigation Prediction reduces the impact of the target velocity on the damage. This effectively increases the explosion velocity by 10% per skill level, which makes it more likely to do full damage to a small/fast target.
• Warhead Upgrades provides a direct 2% increase in missile damage per level.

Modules, Rigs and Ammunition

While there is additional equipment that affects missiles and launchers, those do not alter the missile damage as such.

Ballistic Control System: among other things, gives a bonus to basic missile damage.

Missile Launcher Rigs

• Warhead Calefaction Catalyst: increases the damage of the missile but increases the CPU requirement for the launcher.

• Warhead Flare Catalyst: increases the explosion velocity of the missile but increases the CPU requirement for the launcher.

• Warhead Rigor Catalyst: decreases the explosion radius of the missile but increases the CPU requirement for the launcher.

Advanced Tech II Missiles

• Precision Missiles are more effective against smaller, faster targets, but do less base damage per missile.
• Fury Missiles have a larger base damage per missile, but are less effective than Precisions against smaller, faster targets.
• Both have a somewhat shorter range than regular and Faction missiles.

Implants

There are also a wide array of implants that can modify the missile damage. (to be added)

Affecting the Target Ship

Missile damage can be substantially increased by affecting the target ship in order to change its Velocity and/or Signature Radius.

• Target Painters can effectively increase the Signature Radius of the ship by a percentage. This makes the ship bigger and more likely to take full damage.
• Stasis Webifiers can decrease the ships velocity by a percentage. This makes the ship slower and more likely to take full damage.

Note that both of these are more effective if you are firing big, slow missiles at small, fast ships. They may be completely unhelpful if you are firing small, fast missiles.

Technical Section

This section discusses the mathematical equations that govern how much damage missiles deal.

Missile Damage Equation

Here is the equation for missile damage:

Here are the terms in the equation:

S	Signature radius of target	Note: The bigger the better
Vt	velocity of target	Note: The smaller the better
D	base damage of missile	Note: The bigger the better
E	explosion radius of missile	Note: The smaller the better
Ve	explosion velocity of missile	Note: The bigger the better
drf	damage reduction factor	Note: The smaller the better

Note that unlike the turret damage equation, missile damage takes absolute velocity of the target into account, not the angular velocity. To find your damage, the game computes two values. The values are compared to 1, and the smallest is chosen. (Note that this number can never be bigger than 1.) That number is then multiplied by the base damage to get the amount of damage applied to the ship.

Finding the target values

Target velocity (V_t) is the speed of the target. If your overview is set up according to the Overview Guide, you can see the velocity of any ship near you on your overview.

Target signature radius (S) is the effective size of a ship. It is affected by various factors, for example the ship type, modules, rigs, skills or implants. It is not displayed in the overview.

Finding the missile values

The Base damage of a missile (D) can be found in the missile information under “EM damage”, “Kinetic damage”, “Thermal damage” or “Explosive damage”. Base Shield Damage and Base Armor Damage are not relevant for this calculation.

The Explosion radius of a missile (E) represents the size of the explosion. It can be found in the missile information under “Explosion radius”.

The Explosion velocity of missile (V_e) is the rate of expansion of the explosion. It can be found in the missile information under “Explosion velocity”.

Finding the damage reduction factor of a missile

The “damage reduction factor” (drf) of a missile is not mentioned in the game, it is however included in the data that CCP publishes [1], and you can easily view it in the EVEMon item browser (you can also see the value 5.5 from the above equation in the same data, where it is called the Damage Reduction Sensitivity).

Missile Type	DRF
Precision Light Missile	2.6
Precision Heavy Missile	2.7
Auto-Targeting Light Missile	2.8
Light Missile	2.8
Rocket	3
Heavy Missile	3.2
Auto-Targeting Heavy Missile	3.2
Javelin Rocket	3.2
Fury Light Missile	3.2
Precision Cruise Missile	3.5
Cruise Missile	4.5
Auto-Targeting Cruise Missile	4.5
Rage Rocket	4.5
Citadel Cruise Missile	4.5
Fury Heavy Missile	4.5
Heavy Assault Missile	4.5
Javelin Heavy Assault Missile	4.6
Fury Cruise Missile	4.7
Rage Heavy Assault Missile	4.8
Torpedo	5
Javelin Torpedo	5.2
Rage Torpedo	5.2
Citadel Torpedo	5.5

Practical application of the equation

The equation provides us with some basic information.

The base damage of the missile is multiplied by min(1, S/E, (S/E*Ve/Vt)^(ln(drf)/ln(5.5)). This means that the base damage is multiplied by the smallest of either 1, S/E or (S/E*Ve/Vt)^(ln(drf)/ln(5.5). This leads to the base damage being no higher than 100%, due to the fact that as soon as the other values exceed 1, 1 will always be selected in the calculation.

The damage of the missile is dependent on four things: Signature radius of the target, speed of the target, explosion Radius of the missile and explosion velocity of the missile. If the ship is moving below a specific threshold, the explosion velocity and the speed of the ship do not affect the missile damage. In this case, only the signature radius of the target and the explosion radius of the missile affect the missile damage. Further decreases the ships speed will not increase the damage; however increases the signature size will, until the damage reaches 100%.

An important fact that derives from the equations is the fact that there is a minimum speed that a ship needs to fly before the velocity can reduce the missile damage at all. Looking at the case where the target's base sig radius is larger than the missile explosion radius then the equations part that is affected by velocity, (S/E*Ve/Vt)^(ln(drf)/ln(5.5), is set to be 1 and solved to Vt = (S/ (1^(1/ (ln(drf)/ln(5.5)) * E)) * Ve. Since 1^x = 1 this means 1^(1/ (ln(drf)/ln(5.5) = 1, reducing the equation to (S/E) * Ve = Vt. The drf gets removed from the equation. Since E and Ve are defined by the missile, Ve/E can be combined into a single factor for each missile class.

Missile	Minimum velocity factor
Citadel Torpedo	0.01
Citadel Cruise Missile	0.016571429
Rage Torpedo	0.093846154
Fury Cruise Missile	0.105454545
Javelin Torpedo	0.157777778
Torpedo	0.157777778
Auto-Targeting Cruise Missile I	0.23
Cruise Missile	0.23
Precision Cruise Missile	0.262962963
Fury Heavy Missile	0.451162791
Rage Heavy Assault Missile	0.516666667
Auto-Targeting Heavy Missile I	0.648
Heavy Missile	0.648
Precision Heavy Missile	0.776785714
Heavy Assault Missile	0.808
Javelin Heavy Assault Missile	0.808
Fury Light Missile	2.047058824
Auto-Targeting Light Missile I	3.4
Light Missile	3.4
Rage Rocket	4.666666667
Precision Light Missile	5.114285714
Javelin Rocket	7.5
Rocket	7.5

The signature radius of the ship needs to be multiplied with the minimum velocity factor (mvf) to decrease the missile damage.

Examples

Example 1:

The heavy missile has a mvf of 0.648. The Drake has 140 m/s speed and a signature radius of 285 m.

The required speed is therefore 184.68. (285 * 0.648) Since the speed of the Drake (140 m/s) is below the required speed (184.68 m/s), the speed does not affect the missile damage. The damage is determined by 1, the lowest of the three factors and the missile does full damage.

Example 2:

The heavy missile has a mvf of 0.648. The Drake fits a 10mn Afterburner I, increasing the speed by 125%, the maximum speed is 157.5 m/s; signature size is unchanged.

The required speed stays the same. The damage is determined again by 1 as both other options are greater than 1. The Drake again takes full damage.

Example 3:

The heavy missile has a mvf of 0.648 The drake fits a 10mn Microwarpdrive I, increasing the speed by 500%, the maximum speed is 700 m/s, signature radius is increased by 500% to 1425 m.

Required speed is therefore changed to 923.4 (1425 * 0.648) Since the speed of the Drake with a MWD (700 m/s) is below the required speed (923.4 m/s), the speed does not affect the missile damage . The damage is determined by 1, the damage is 100% of the possible damage and it is no different than the damage the ship receives without the MWD.