EVE Online Weapons Guide

 EVE Online Weapons Guide (8) 
Ammunition

Missiles are quite different from the turret weapons. When launched, a missile tracks its target and maneuvers to hit it. Every missile has a Velocity, Flight Time, and Agility rating. Velocity is how fast it moves, flight time is how long it can fly, and agility is how well it can adjust its heading to follow a target. Velocity multiplied flight time together make the effective range of the missile. If a missile flies at 1000 meters per second, and has a maximum flight time of 25 seconds, then its maximum range is 25,000 meters (25km). Agility is simply how well it stays on target. If a person can maneuver around the missile for long enough, it runs out of fuel and does nothing to them, so agility helps with faster targets. Pilots can also warp out of the area before a missile reaches them, but there are ways around this as well (see Medium Power Slots below).

All missiles do a single damage type, but usually do a whole lot of it. So, you might have a missile that does huge thermal damage, but it only does thermal damage. You can also swap missiles in a launcher in the same way as swapping ammunition in a turret.

There are many types of missile types, and I'll briefly explain each. Not all missiles are for doing damage, either. Some have special purposes, so let's look at them in more detail:

Rockets

Rockets are like the sub-machine gun of the missile world. They are short ranged, and the better rockets have a very fast flight speed. They don't do as much damage per rocket, but the launchers are all fast firing (rockets have their own launcher type).