Let me know what you think and keep in mind that numbers may be adjusted slightly as we continue to test.
Thanks

All those crying about their precious 'solo' RLML Cerbs & Tengus aren't kidding anyone. It's like the HM drakes & tengus before, they will usually be in a small gang, built to use multiple links, and harvest t1 noob frigate killmails (and then cherry-picking the remaining defanged gang), all the while claiming ~elite smallgang pvp~ and never having to think about diminishing their own damage application via transversal.

I enjoy flying Caracals into frigate gangs and shredding them quickly. This change will significantly increase the speed at which I can do that, and provided I am not bad and get tackled, kiting around during the reload, or bailing after the charges are done won't be terrible.

For those saying this is change bad because it means RLML ships cant deal enough damage to same size ships, isn't this kind of the idea? It's a frigate sized charge.

I believe that's the crux of the matter, that all Rapid missile systems break the fundamental Eve balancing traits of fragility of plaform vs effectiveness of applying dps. Destroyers get 8 guns, but are relatively fat & slow. BCs get more turrets than cruisers, but again are less mobile and take more damage. Even tier3/A BC are fragile on paper for their potential dps.
"rapid" weapons are obviously about packing 8 or more effective, bonused smaller weapon systems onto a more durable ship. If they can't just remove rapid lights outright, then rapid heavies (and dare I say rapid cruises for capital ships) will need such a serious change to be balanced, to be a fair tradeoff consideration.

All those crying about their precious 'solo' RLML Cerbs & Tengus aren't kidding anyone. It's like the HM drakes & tengus before, they will usually be in a small gang, built to use multiple links, and harvest t1 noob frigate killmails (and then cherry-picking the remaining defanged gang), all the while claiming ~elite smallgang pvp~ and never having to think about diminishing their own damage application via transversal.
Edit: page1 replies have already nailed it, that these weapons systems aren't for a fleet's main dps, they're support. Compose your fleets at least, you crybabies.

The reload timer mechanic itself cleary isn't a problem for acceptance, people lapped up the ASB and its timer when it was OP, and now it still has tradeoffs that are very reasonable. Likewise I'm sure people will work out to do 2 or more sets of rapid launchers and manage them should these changes happen.

I thus quite like the idea of the burst & reload dps, letting these 'support' fits do that just as effectively as ever(if not far more so), but then facing a real tradeoff when tankier BCs, BSs, or 1 or 2 smart logi can simply deaggro from them if on a gate/station/POS, or force them off through greater sustained combat effectiveness. If you wanted to burn through cruiser, BCs and larger targets, you should have to bring medium & large weapon systems to get the job done with comparable numbers.

The only real point I still want to raise is light missiles in general, and on the Talwar specifically. They're everywhere, minimal-cost-meta fitted, and have a disgusting range & volley for their isk & SP cost. I like new players having something they get basic fleet experience in, but this mindless anchoring & missile spam just reeks of drakes of old. Maybe their fitting, or light missile's range/volley needs a look at? They are a frigate-scale weapon after all.

I think that this is a deeply misguided approach to solving what is basically a non-problem. You claim that RLMLs are "almost always the right choice", which I think is a pretty ridiculous assertion. There are two good cruiser-sized missile options at the moment, RLMs and HAMs. They both have their strengths and weaknesses, and they both see a lot of use in pvp. HMLs aren't much good, but that's nothing to do with the strength of RLMs, it's because HMLs are colossal turdpiles that are outperformed by just about every alternative, including the various long-range medium turrets, the other medium missile types, scorch M, and typing bad words in local. Breaking all of the current RLML use cases won't magically make HMLs more attractive, it'll just consign a currently useful weapon system to the scrapheap.

By the way, Rise, I saw that little trick you did there using Fury-type T2 kinetic missiles on kinetic-bonused hulls to artificially inflate the DPS numbers. How about some numbers with T1 thermal missiles?

Would love if you expanded a bit.

You're not nearly as clever as you think you are.

People who are actually good at this game wouldn't shoot T1 thermal missiles from T2 launchers on a kinetic bonused hull. Hope this helps.

No desire to be clever. I actually thought it was pretty obvious, but nobody had mentioned it yet so I decided I would.

No desire to be clever. I actually thought it was pretty obvious, but nobody had mentioned it yet so I decided I would.

People who are actually good at this game wouldn't shoot T1 thermal missiles from T2 launchers on a kinetic bonused hull. Hope this helps.

Summary: Burst DPS increases by 53.8%, prolonged DPS decreases by about 9.9%.

And now the Goon CSMS are coming on an insulting people instead of addressing the issue.

Yayness. Thread officially now made of win.

This made me scared for a second and then I realized you used the RHML charge amount instead of the RLML. So instead of 23 charges it should be 18 which will lower the DPS a bit more.

This is a terrible idea.

1) Having a lot of downtime is just bad gameplay design. In a gang, you might stay on the field to provide point and webs, but if you are solo, you basically are going to kill 1-2 targets and warp out. And then nobody gets to do anything for the next 40s while you reload. It promotes non-interactive gameplay.

2) Its not intuitive. Its yet another thing that vets know that noobs dont.

3) Its not that people use rapid lights because they are really good. We use them because the other medium missile systems are utter trash. I would love to be able to use heavy missiles again, but there is just no reason since they are currently the worst weapon system in the entire game for anything but giant blobs.

4) There is no alternative. You can use normal shield boosters instead of ancillary boosters. You can use normal armor reps instead of ancillary reps. There are good reasons to choose each. For medium missile launchers, there isnt any alternative to rapid lights. Heavy missiles are too slow, do too little damage for the fitting, and apply too poorly. Heavy assaults are too short range, and apply even more poorly.

5) While roaming, its can be very difficult to make a 40s reload when going gate to gate. This will just slow gangs down, with no real reason to do so.

Making this change will basically just end the use of missile ships in small gangs. People will just go to other ships, instead of dealing with the possibility of being tackled and having to wait for close to a minute to return fire.

If you want people to choose heavy missiles, then make heavy missiles be something besides a trash tier weapons system.

Links make HAMs ****. It's true. HAMs have a very high DRF so any ship that has a speed of 160% of its signature radius or higher takes reduced damage from CN HAMs on an almost 1:1 basis. When links simultaneously provide a speed increase and a sig radius reduction, any missiles bigger than RLMs become garbage. Links mean RLMs are vastly superior to all other missiles on basically all other non-webbed targets. (even some battleships) RLMs also outdamage HAMs on most cruisers with a single web applied and will actually outdamage HAMs on the really low-sig cruisers (scythe fleet) even if they have two webs applied.

A linked ABing Machariel takes half damage from CN HAMs. A freaking battleship, but links mean you're doing half damage with a cruiser-sized weapon. That's with no mass/agility mods, no snakes or speed implants, and no overheating. Overheating the AB on the Mach drops HAM DPS down to 38.16%.

This is a terrible idea.

1) Having a lot of downtime is just bad gameplay design. In a gang, you might stay on the field to provide point and webs, but if you are solo, you basically are going to kill 1-2 targets and warp out. And then nobody gets to do anything for the next 40s while you reload. It promotes non-interactive gameplay.

2) Its not intuitive. Its yet another thing that vets know that noobs dont.

3) Its not that people use rapid lights because they are really good. We use them because the other medium missile systems are utter trash. I would love to be able to use heavy missiles again, but there is just no reason since they are currently the worst weapon system in the entire game for anything but giant blobs.

4) There is no alternative. You can use normal shield boosters instead of ancillary boosters. You can use normal armor reps instead of ancillary reps. There are good reasons to choose each. For medium missile launchers, there isnt any alternative to rapid lights. Heavy missiles are too slow, do too little damage for the fitting, and apply too poorly. Heavy assaults are too short range, and apply even more poorly.

5) While roaming, its can be very difficult to make a 40s reload when going gate to gate. This will just slow gangs down, with no real reason to do so.

Making this change will basically just end the use of missile ships in small gangs. People will just go to other ships, instead of dealing with the possibility of being tackled and having to wait for close to a minute to return fire.

If you want people to choose heavy missiles, then make heavy missiles be something besides a trash tier weapons system.

1) Having a lot of downtime is just bad gameplay design. In a gang, you might stay on the field to provide point and webs, but if you are solo, you basically are going to kill 1-2 targets and warp out. And then nobody gets to do anything for the next 40s while you reload. It promotes non-interactive gameplay.

2) Its not intuitive. Its yet another thing that vets know that noobs dont.

3) Its not that people use rapid lights because they are really good. We use them because the other medium missile systems are utter trash. I would love to be able to use heavy missiles again, but there is just no reason since they are currently the worst weapon system in the entire game for anything but giant blobs.

4) There is no alternative. You can use normal shield boosters instead of ancillary boosters. You can use normal armor reps instead of ancillary reps. There are good reasons to choose each. For medium missile launchers, there isnt any alternative to rapid lights. Heavy missiles are too slow, do too little damage for the fitting, and apply too poorly. Heavy assaults are too short range, and apply even more poorly.

5) While roaming, its can be very difficult to make a 40s reload when going gate to gate. This will just slow gangs down, with no real reason to do so.

Making this change will basically just end the use of missile ships in small gangs. People will just go to other ships, instead of dealing with the possibility of being tackled and having to wait for close to a minute to return fire.

If you want people to choose heavy missiles, then make heavy missiles be something besides a trash tier weapons system.

The idea that missiles won't get used in small scale pvp because of this change is bizarre considering people use missiles of all three types quite a lot already and this change has no effect on the other two types.

For a start, this is more of a "links are stupid OP" issue than a problem with HAMs per se. More to the point, however, HAMs are close range weapons so anything you're shooting with them should be hard tackled already. In more realistic situations, their damage application is absolutely fine for the kinds of fights that you'd want to use them in. You wouldn't fit RLMs on a sacrilege or a brawling missile legion, even if their bonuses applied to light missiles because in the situations where those ships excel, the drawbacks of HAMs are easily mitigated and their strengths in terms of raw DPS become much more valuable than the superior application of RLMs.

1) Actual downtime is bad. Having to make decisions about how to manage timers is central to EVE and quite a few other games as well.

2) Having modules in a category not all work the same is pretty standard, and this isn't nearly as punishing of a mechanic before you understand it as several others.

3) People do use rapid lights because they're really good, they also use heavy missiles a lot despite your opinion that they are utter trash.

4) Just because you don't want to use HML or HAMs doesn't mean they don't exist. I don't like using normal shield boosters but that doesn't mean I can say there's no alternative to ASBs.

5) Gangs can decide if they are willing to wait an extra 5-10 seconds sometimes on some gates. I think module repair is a much more likely culprit in this example.

The idea that missiles won't get used in small scale pvp because of this change is bizarre considering people use missiles of all three types quite a lot already and this change has no effect on the other two types.

5) Gangs can decide if they are willing to wait an extra 5-10 seconds sometimes on some gates. I think module repair is a much more likely culprit in this example.