Missile mechanics

This article takes a look at mathematics behind missiles. We look at the equations that govern how far your missiles will travel and how much damage they deal. There's some math at the beginning, but you can skip over this if you wish.

Missile Damage Output

First Look at the Damage Equation

Here is the equation for missile damage:

If this looks daunting, then skip ahead to read the applications of the formula to combat. Here are the terms in the equation:

• D : base damage of missile
• S : Signature radius of target
• E : explosion radius of missile
• V_e: explosion velocity of missile
• V_t: velocity of target
• drf: damage reduction factor of missile

The log function used here is in base e, not base 10. You may have seen it written as ln. Note that unlike the turret damage equation, the missile damage does not care about angular velocity, but absolute velocity. To find your damage, the game computes each of the three numbers you see, picks the smallest of the, and multiplies that by the base damage. The damage reduction factor is a hidden stat, but seems to be the same for all missiles of a given size.

Damage Reduction Factor

Missile Type	DRF	log(DRF)/log(5.5)
Rocket	3.0	0.644
Light Missile	2.8	0.604
Heavy Assault Missile	4.5	0.8823
Heavy Missile	3.2	0.6823
Torpedo	5.0	0.9441
Cruise  Missile	4.5	0.8823
Citadel Torpedo	5.5	1.0
Citadel Cruise Missile	4.5	0.8823

Note that you want a small DRF, since smaller powers of numbers less than 1 are larger. 

Typical S/E Values

Below is a table that lists some expected values for S/E for each missile type against various hull sizes:

Speed Tanking Missile Damage

We will now look at what velocities you can speed tank missile damage, and how much damage reduction you can get from speed tanking. To start, we'll assume that S/E = 1. Of course, the table above shows that this is very wrong, but you can factor in this by multiplying the explosion velocity V_e by S/E, which will adjust the figures appropriately. Hence, if a ship fires a standard light missile at a frigate then we multiply the explosion velocity of 170 by S/E, which will be about 80%, which gives us an effectively explosion velocity of about 136. Below is a list of explosion velocities for most missiles.

Explosion Velocities for Missiles

Rockets	Standard	150
	Anti-Ship	150
	Range	150
Light	Standard	170
	Anti-Ship	174
	Precision	179
Heavy	Standard	81
	High Damage	97
	High Precision	87
Heavy Assault	Standard	101
	Anti-Ship	93
	Range	101
Cruise	Standard	69
	High Damage	58
	High Precision	71
Torpedoes	Standard	71
	High Damage	61
	Range	71

One final chart will be needed. This chart will indicate how many times faster than the missile's effective explosion velocity you must travel to reduce the incoming damage by a given amount, roughly.

Using These Charts

How can we possibly use these charts effectively? Well, suppose I'm firing standard light missiles at a target. My explosion velocity sits at about 170. If I'm shooting this missile at a frigate, then my effective explosion velocity becomes 136. Since he's webbed and has his afterburner on, he's going at about 400 m/s, which is roughly 3 times my explosion velocity. We look at the proper row in the table above and scan across until we see which columns 3 lies between. We then look up and see that I'm doing about 50% reduced damage on him. If we were allowed to travel without the web, he could easily hit 10 times my explosion velocity, at which point the damage drops to 30-40%. From this, you should take away the fact that even a target that's the right size for your missiles moving even at very normal speeds might cut your DPS by 50%, much like a turret tracking something of the right speed and size might take a similar DPS cut.

From this, take away that ships do not need to be moving very quickly to slice missile damage, as the explosion radii are typically quite low.

Increasing Missile Damage

There are many things a player can do to increase the missile damage.