Enzyme missile rack needs buff

[Irkengeek]

The enzyme missile rack is a very cool idea, but is next to useless. The impact damage is only 5 (vs 50-64 for a regular missile), the damage over time does not stack, it does not penetrate or work on shields, the effect wears off after 20-30 seconds, and in comparison to any other weapon, it does the least damage per second in the game. For the amount of materials and grinding needed to get the thing, its a joke. This missile needs attention.

Ways to fix it and make it a viable weapon:

• Increase the duration of the effect.
• Increase the impact damage.
• Allow the effect to stack with each missile impact.
• Allow the missile to penetrate shields.
• Increase the dps of the effect or make the damage a percentage of the targets overall haul.

Any one or more of these buffs will make it a useful weapon. Until then I cant recommend it being used, because placing any other weapon (even a small pulse/multi turret) on a ship will do more damage then this missile.

 

[Stevolab72]

I think a good buff would be the corrosive damage goes through the shields after impact. You don't get the impact damage on the hull but the corrosion damage. Like the effect thermal cascade. I also agree that any one of the buffs mentioned would be great to improve this cool looking weapon.

 

[Screemonster]

I was gonna use them to annoy people on my cyto but considering that I can just smack them with an ordinary dumbfire for the same damage and get that damage now they're kinda useless. If their effect went through shields and lasted longer (or even indefinitely, like scout missiles) they'd be a fantastically irritating shieldtank-counter, requiring the use of decontamination limpets if you don't want to burn them off via overheating (which generally means hitting silent running and thus turning your shields off) or dock at a station.

Even if the caustic was on the same level as a scout missile, the damage wouldn't be so huge as to be a serious threat of sending someone to the rebuy screen unless they're flying the most paper of paper hulls (in which case a solid PA hit would kill them just as fast), but it'd still be something for less combat-focused players to carry and make otherwise untouchable prismatic shieldtanks hurt a bit after an encounter.

Think "yeah, sure, you'll win the fight if you attack me - but you'll still regret it". Give traders porcupine quills.

 

[CMDR Yates]

Yeah, I was thinking of getting one as a screw you to any skilled PvPer who might try to murder me, like the dye bags that explode when hijackers break into a Securicor truck. I probably can't kill them, but I can land at least one hit with these and force them to have to clean off their hull after killing me, maybe even force them to repair between ganking runs.

Then I realized they don't breach shields!

I had intuitively believed they would, since IIRC the Thargoid ones do, and it seemed like the low DPS was intended as a trade-off for that.