Basically:
It's difficult to hit collectors with them! Things should not be difficult to hit collectors with!

I'd like to see the current weapons with contact fuses given 3-5m proximity fuses to make them worth anything. Really, they're difficult and unrewarding to work with in a PvE context and pretty much impossible in PvP if the player is anywhere within 30 feet of their keyboard.

This seriously needs to be fixed. [Stamp of Fucking Approval]

Yeah the contact fuse sucks. Missiles have to roll a savings throw against lag to see whether or not they hit their target.

Getting them to detonate on anything smaller than a Trident is a bitch.

This will also help the newbs build up large weapon XP given that the only large port they have access to is a waste of grid usage.

+1

Another solution:
-Increase a lot its maneuvrability. And reduce slightly its damage to keep balance.

Alloh, that won't solve anything. They'll hit dead on and still miss sometimes.

True, but upping the speed/maneuverability would certainly not hurt anything.

Give them a prox fuse first. If that doesn't make it enough for them to be at least something more than pretty lights, then I'm on board for increasing speed and maneuverability as well.

Explaining:
Why the missiles fails, RP?
-Low maneuverability makes easy even for collectors to avoid it by inches.

So, one of 3 alternatives would solve the problem, while all them creates a monster:
-Increase maneuverability - more elegant, IMO
-Increase speed
-Add ProxFuse

The last two upgrades already exists in other missiles, so I prefer the first.

And I expect that such a basic and cheap weapon to have a faillure rate at least 25%.

But... intead of buffing, why not create anoter, improved version, slightly better performing and highers requirements, like 1/1/1/-/- ?

Because they are completely worthless addons at this point. In addition, as stated above, increase maneuverability isn't going to do much good if the missile has to roll a natural twenty to hit anything.

Alloh, you may have missed it the first time, but it should not be hard to hit collectors with anything. Ever.

Edit: To be clearer. Adding new, improved addons while keeping worthless ones doesn't fix anything. It just creates more cruft and makes figuring out which weapons work and which don't that much harder for a new player.

I don't know what you guys are complaining about. I'm was in game just now pwning collectors with stingrays in my rev. They work great for a newbie missile. You just have to use it right. It flies like crap, so you have to be pointed more or less at the target, not trying to shoot people who are behind you and such. They also tend not to work so well if you're too close to the target - they don't have enough time to adjust their course. If you stand off a bit and fire them, they'll curve a bit and fly right into the collector.

Using them against moving ships is less reliable of course, but they still work well enough as a newbie weapon if you aim properly and keep enough distance for it to hit (or aim extra carefully while up close).

Contact missles can only hit immobile targets, imo they really do need a very small proxfuse like 2~5m

imo the yellowjacket should fly at 95m/s and have an extra 2 ammo and the firefly should be removed from the game entirely.

stingrays do a shitton of damage and should maybe be nerfed a bit in that aspect.

"Contact missles can only hit immobile targets"

No, they can hit moving targets if you don't suck. They're unreliable, yes, but they do work some of the time, which is all a newbie needs.

The missiles (maybe except swarms) do need a bit of fine tuning. +1