HMLs, HAMs, and The Crazy Physics of Eve

There is a fun little debate over heavy missiles spawned CCP Fozzie talking about reducing range and damage of HMs.  Read the comments of that blog post for fun. At the crux of the argument seems to be the underlying strengths of various battlecruisers, the weapons they fit, and range.  In the interest of full disclosure, I fly Drakes and Tengus a lot, and usually they sport HMLs, either T2 or Faction flavors.  And I think the hatred of those two ships using missiles comes not so much from the damage projection as from the rather outlandish interplay of slot layout, cap usage, and the location of armor and shield tanking modules. I’m a relentless fit experimenter.  I love trying to come up with crazy tanks while still putting out enough DPS to complete L4 missions in something resembling a sane amount of time.  A common thematic problem I run into is the fact that a shield tanked ship, on average, can almost always get a better tank and a better gank because of the slot layout when designing to PvE activities as compared to an armor tank.  Some ships buck this trend when you factor in drone bonuses, but Continue Reading →