I'm not sure where the idea comes from that this plan came out of thin air in a few days has come from. Yes, it's late in the release cycle, but we spent weeks talking about how to deal with this problem and went through multiple review processes before anything showed up here, just like we do with all changes.

I also assure you that I am not ignoring negative feedback. There are absolutely a lot of people giving that in this thread. In the past when I've gotten negative feedback which is backed with well articulated arguments I don't hesitate to make changes (see industrial rebalance, electronic attack frig rebalance, battleship rebalance), but in this thread the majority of complaint is very disorganized and unhelpful, that's why I'm instead going with the positive feedback coming from the CSM, from our testing and from some posters here.

I do not support this idea at all. Ether keep the current weapon system or make this a new one.
This needs to be tested by your paying customers before this goes ahead. I don't like the idea of a weapon system becoming useless once it was working "OK" beforehand.
Would this make me use it more?
Don't know it needs to be tested. The "40 second" Reload timer is a major killer for refilling or swapping ammo.

As a primarily PvE pilot, I've greatly enjoyed flying my Caracal with RLMLs in missions, anomalies and escalations in which I have to deal with dozens of frigate-class ships with a smattering of cruiser-size targets. Anything smaller than a cruiser has trouble fitting the necessary tank, let alone fit a salvager/tractor/salvage drones; a larger ship often is not permitted, and standard mid-size weapon systems frequently cannot apply enough damage to small targets to be useful (at least, not without sacrificing a significant portion of tank, which defeats the purpose of bringing the larger hull to begin with). The cruiser using a juiced-up small weapon system is the perfect solution. I was looking forward to a similar solution for running some of the more advanced anomalies and L4 missions which focus on larger numbers of smaller elite targets; running them in a BC often is still problematic, while applying damage using cruise missiles or torpedoes is suboptimal at best. Drones can help to an extent, but still can't fully bridge the gap, especially not with the improved NPC AI. Being able to fit RHMLs to my Raven for such missions was a very appealing idea.
However, for my purposes (and yes, I realize that my playstyle does not constitute that of the larger subscription base) I feel the proposed mechanics for RMLs render them useless to me.
The biggest problem I see actually stems from missile flight time. For the sake of simplicity, let's assume a 5s cycle time on the launcher and 5k m/s velocity for the missiles. Unless you're being very careful, any target over 25km away will have at least one salvo en route when it explodes; anything over 50km, at least two salvos. With the current iteration, this isn't that big a deal, but for the new mechanics this would mean that 5-20% of your ammo capacity could easily be wasted *per target*...and then you hope you can survive the reload.
When I first found the RLMLs, I was ecstatic; I immediately tried to find similar systems for turret ships, but instead found that the "dual/quad $smallergun" turrets do not follow anything close to the same formula for being a viable means of combating numerous smaller ships from a larger hull. Is it intended that drones be the most, or perhaps even only, reasonable solution for this situation?

Sorry if this has already been discussed but as a potential feature/workaround to the long reload vs switching damage types why don't we just have a variable reload time?

You could give the new rapid launchers the same 'base' reload time as other launchers (10 seconds) and then just have an additional reload time on a per missile basis eg;

reload time = 10 + ((30 / magazine size) * used ammo))

RLML reloading with a full magazine takes 10 seconds to reload (10 + ((30 / 18) * 0)
RLML reloading with an empty magazine tokes 40 seconds to reload (10 + ((30 / 18) * 18)

RLML reloading with 10 charges in the magazine takes 23.33 seconds (10 + ((30 / 18) * 8)

This would give pilots the flexibility to change ammo mid fight without too much heartache while also allowing skilled pilots to perform 'tactical' reloads during breaks in the fighting, lending these modules to more maneuverable fights. Conversely tactics could be used against RLML users to make them waste missiles making changing ammo more painful.

Since launch, I've been continuing to monitor the effect of the rapid missile change through usage metrics, discussion with CSM, conversation with players I know who are using them and using them myself on TQ. I see that some places, especially in this thread, there's a lot of frustration still about the change in general but the majority of it is lacking any substance except for the simple claim that 40 seconds of reload isn't fun.