I've had a few thoughts about missiles in general. First off as a visual improvement rather then firing a straight line one after another or one grouped glowing dot I propose this. Once the new launcher hardpoints are added the missiles would fire from a single launcher, move away from each other in a circle then as they reach closer to the target they would come together hitting the same point on the target. Similar to the Leviathan doomsday.
The developers could use the same animation as the energy neutralizer and energy vamps, where it bulges on one end and then has a cone shape towards the ship. Perhaps make it larger or extend the size a bit. You could wrap a texture and animate the missiles to follow that shape. This would allow missiles to change completely in that they could be more like turrets from the server's perspective. Have it act like a turret rather then create an object in space, just delay when the damage is applied. This would be similar to the fighter bomber fix but not have them do instant damage. If a defender missile is launched then another animation would be used to show a missile or two intercept and flash somewhere in between, and reduce how ever many missiles were taken out. Not only would this look cooler but it would ease lag in large fights on the server. It would also allow launcher hardpoints to be easier to apply to the models of ships, you only need to put one on there under a wing or on top of the ship. It would free up art resources and help immersion since one launcher can from looking at the icon fire off more then one missile at once.
One other thought coming from more of a combat perspective, is that turrets are widly more effective from a pvp standpoint then missiles. Yes missiles are considered to be more benifical to pve then turrets but I feel that this comparison is lacking. For one when comparing weapon systems in a balanced way you have to look at how quick pvp fights are. In almost every case a turreted ship in 1v1 and fleets will always outperform by a large margin. Where the thought that lower damage is ok in missile ships since they excell for pve. In pve while missiles have a leg up to be sure, things like sentry drones and muaraders have exceptional isk gains per hour. To the point where the benifit margin of missiles isnt that much larger missions are finished in close amounts of time to each other. I think what would help to increase balance would be to add a damage modifier for distance traveled when firing a missile. The farther it takes to travel the more damage it would deal.
I may just be a missile lover dreaming, and im sure other issues would arise from implimenting somethign like this. But I would be interested to see how close missiles ships could be brought more in line with turret ships. I would like to be able to prefrom just as well in pvp and pve regardless of which type of weapon flavor I enjoy the most. I like that they all have differences to them, lasers having faster reloads things like that. I would like the outcome of the fight to be based on skills, equipment, and pilot capability rather then having a huge disadvantage to a particaular weapon group. If I had to lose effectivness in pve then I would be glad as long as all weapons have closer opertunities to preform just as well in both aspects of the game. Switching games of play should require just modual changes like autocannons to artillery.
