Brutor Trash
Republic University
Minmatar Republic
0
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Posted - 2014.03.05 03:21:00 -
[2] - Quote
Dalikah wrote:
Just to reply to your latest post Rise:
The 40s reload timer:
Do you really feel like a 40s period of not being able to effectively defend yourself against tackle is not a deal-breaker, when an Interceptor is going to be able to pass 2 systems and tackle you in this amount of time with Rubicon? And why would one ever invest 2-300m ISK into a HAC that can do nothing but warp in, kill a few Frigates and is then either useless for 40s or forced off? The same problem comes with the inability to switch ammo efficently, an Enyo can appear basically out of nowhere within seconds, render your kinetic missiles useless and force a reload - good luck kiting long enough to reload and kill an MWD-bonused AF.
Also, yes, RLML deal a whole lot of damage to MWDing T1-frigs, and a reasonable amount to AFs, but have you ever actually looked at a DPS graph against a properly fitted Interceptor backed up by the Rubicon changes? A current 3x BCU Cerberus does 90 DPS to a Malediction using faction missiles, which means it would take almost 40 seconds (or 30s with precision) to kill it . That sounds reasonable and well balanced, why does it have to change?
Yes, nice, it will take less time with the ROF changes, but you-&re not going to kill more than 1-2 before you have to reload, which is nothing but a bad joke (this also assumes no links, no heat and ignores the greatly reduced range through the Ceptor-&s high speed). And this is just about the Cerberus, the by far highest-DPS RLML platform - others like Caracal and Fleet Scythe would suffer even more.
You also state that the front-loaded DPS and ridiculous reload will bring "new kinds of decision making" and "spikes of tension", which basically translates to more tactical gameplay.
This is simply completely false. Missiles in general already tend to offer slightly less tactical and piloting options than turret ships in return for a more reliable dps output, just because the whole mechanics around transversal and maneuvers to force people into taking more damage from your weapons do not really exist in missile based combat. Instead, you have the immunity to tracking disruption, resistance to ECM and damps via FoFs as well as (semi-)fully selectable damagetypes - your changes would make all of those bar the td-immunity more or less obsolete in the heat of a fight. This leaves us with a very dull and stale weapon system, that basically only allows 1 tactic: choose ammo, warp in, try to gank the lowest ehp ship(s), burn off/warp off/die. This offers no diversity, no ability to react to changing circumstances in a reasonable amount of time (i.e. new incoming tackle, need of max (fury) dps, etc), simply no interesting nor challenging gameplay.
If you really feel like RLML are slightly overpowered in their current state (I don-&t see people shooting monuments over RLML so they can-&t be ridiculously strong and need a nerf into the ground, like you proposed here), then reduce their damage application and volley by a little, then see how things go.
I appreciate the fact that you want to try out new ideas and concepts, and the basic idea of front-loaded dps or swarm-missiles surely has potential, but it-&s nothing to bring up 1.5 weeks before the patch goes live, nor something to replace "normal" launchers with - throw them onto Singularity along with tweaks to the "normal" RLML, give people time to test them out. gather data, adjust accordingly and consider a further rebalancing of RLML with Rubicon 1.1 (the changes in powergrid need already are a bit of nerf for now, aren-&t they).
You even basically admitted yourself that making such drastic changes to a popular weapon does bring a lot of problems with it if not part of the future entire module/weapon tiericide and rebalancing - so please take yourself some time and think about your ideas again.
In fact, with the shifts of the Eve meta towards Cruisers/HACs and away from battlecruisers, reverting the nerf to HML application might be an interesting move on Singularity to see how people react and adapt, and then look at RLML again and ask yourself if they really are/were too strong, or the other medium sized missile systems too weak.
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