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
- Ve: explosion velocity of missile
- Vt: 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.
| Missile Type | DRF | log(DRF)/log(5.5) |
| Rocket | 3.0 | 0.644 |
| Light Missile | 2.8 | 0.604 |
| 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.
