Markku Laaksonen wrote:

Kinetic Bonus - This is an interesting point about ships with kinetic bonuses. You don't switch that often. The bonus takes away from decision making. The decision is 'to shoot kinetic or not to shoot kinetic.' With a kinetic bonus that can net you +25% damage, the decision is always to shoot kinetic.



The Caracal, Bellicose and Scythe Fleet Issue are not kinetic bonused. You switch ALL THE TIME.

There are some people here who quite like the idea. Most likely they don't intend to use the system but they like it nevertheless.

I've switched over to HAMs while I train guns. How's everyone else faring?

I noticed that the gunnery stuff seems to train a lot quicker.

When you compare the SP investments to the effectiveness, there is really no reason to train Missiles anymore. You are better off with Lasers, Hybrids, Projectiles or even drones. I highly doubt anyone that has skills and experience in all five systems will disagree.

Edit: The only advantage missiles still have is that they are easier to use than turrets for newbies. Since you don't have to worry about the optimal-falloff ranges. However, that really don't matter. Since the damage application is garbage.

So is there any chance we could get an update on this CCP? There have been lots of very informative posts in this thread highlighting some of the problems facing missiles (heavies in particular), and it seems like tackling these is the only real way to effectively balance rapids - it's hard to introduce a new mechanic into a system that for lots of people just isn't working as it should.

Would be nice to hear some feedback anyway - not least because I'm trying to work out whether the smart move is to switch to training drones or not...

The update I'm fully expecting is to the effect of "GǪwhile we were initially concerned with the 40-second reload/ammunition swap time, players seem to have adapted and are now utilizing the rapid launchers in numerous new tactical scenariosGǪ therefore, we have decided to leave rapid launchers for now and continue evaluating them."

YeahGǪ not holding my breath.

Sounds like you're revisiting the 2008 HAM Drake discussion, with about the same degree of skill.

Full-tackle HAM Drake has 76k EHP before overload. It does 298 DPS to your stationary Rifter and 165 DPS if it uses an overloaded AB (duh drones). The range comment is inane. Yes, you're not going to tackle an interceptor, but plenty of stuff is slow enough to get tackled, particularly if it's using an AB, and most of those turret ships will want to get close to apply their DPS anyway.

What players don't seem to realize is that you get more armor resistances and passive tank through armor setups than you do with shield setups, often requiring more slots for comparably less tank. So it's easy to say "dual-web" except more often than not you've only got one slot to point or web - let alone dual webs and a point. And then there's the whole damage application aspect, which sees armor setups using their rigs and slave implants to improve tank while shield ships are relegated to running rigors and flares because they don't even have a spare slot for a target painter.

A passive low-slot Ballistic Enhancer that offered 20% explosion velocity, 10% explosion radius and 10% missile velocity (or some combination thereof) would probably balance things out nicely - maybe even offsetting the original heavy missile and Drake nerfs. It's not like missile-based hulls have a wealth of low slots to really make this offensive, and stacking penalties would be in effect just as they are for Tracking Enhancers. I could see many Caldari ships running a Ballistic Enhancer in place of a third or fourth Ballistic Control instead - so it's not like this won't come with a tradeoff, either.

The main issue is that instead of slowly making improvements to missiles it's been a steady series of nerfs while continuing to ignore the fundamental problems. As I've previously stated, it's not hard to fix missiles: you just need to have the actual desire to do so.

Range bonuses make sense on projectile weapons that, somehow, travel at the speed of voking light. Not on missiles.

Missiles don't work for me.

No your right, I've been training gunnery and drone skills, and I plan to buy a Min/Gall pvp character to use as my main if I ever get enough ISK, but it leaves a bitter taste because I wanted to play as Caldari and fly our ships, but not at the expense of having a poor line up to chose from. I'm not giving up on missiles altogether, it was hinted earlier in the thread they might look at Heavy missiles again. Missile ships will always be easy to use in pve missions, and in frigs we have the Hawk and Condor which are good for pvp. It just annoys me that Caldari are already the weakest race, we get the short end of the stick and still manage to be the target of more nerfs, is ccp run by some role playing manchild with a vendetta or wth is going on?

p.s. we don't even get bonuses on the best pirate ships, people need to complain or nothing will ever get fixed, and we are paying customers so we have a right to complain if we're not happy.

Hey guys. As I'm sure you know, we're keeping an eye on how people are using the new Rapid Launchers, watching how people adapt to the new strengths and weaknesses of them and keeping a close eye on the metrics surrounding them. We're also getting some good experience flying with them on our own player characters in a live environment. Rest assured that we're not ignoring these modules.

As a quick tidbit of metrics for you: Over the last week the number of characters using RLMLs each day was 6.5% lower than the pre-Rubicon average. We were actually expecting the decrease to be a bit more significant at this point, and this easily falls within acceptable ranges.

Thanks as always for the continued feedback!

I'm going to add some more words to this fairly bizarre thread!

Hey Bouh its been a while. You still haven't taken me up on my offer of testing my Thorax vs any Frigate you'd like to bring on SISI. Strange that.

3. irrelevant, and it's all rock paper scissors. you get no kills in a condor because everyone knows it's grossly overpowered so they never engage.

a 'dedicated' tackler does 0 dps

I find this also comical. I would have assumed we could all agree that cruisers with medium weapons should all be able to apply *similar* damage to each other and have similar range of tank/speed/damage trade-offs.

Seems that is not the case in some people's eyes.

Are you a non-native English speaker by any chance? His post seems perfectly straight-forward to me, he's saying that missiles and turrets should have stats in a comparable range with nothing massively outclassing the other, but that "some people" (Bouh and 40sec for example) are opposed to this on a design basis.

It's like the old Winmatar issues before tiericide. "You don't get it, Minmatar are SUPPOSED to be super fast and agile, that's their specialty. Caldari ships specialize at being complete ****, that's why they're so efficient at being worthless"

So long as the devs have this ingrained belief that missiles must be **** when engaging smaller targets, no amount of graphs showing turret and drone superiority is going to make them change that.

The previous adjustment I made gave HAMs a 60-100% buff against smaller ships (only), and about 10-20% against cruiser-size vessels. I don't think it was that well-received...