Player Features and Ideas Discussion

:Edit: I've updated this post with the 2.1 versions of this proposal. Major changes are underlined and can be found described in this post. Some big sets of responses to questions about the original proposal can be found here and here.:

Google doc with numbers for the affected missiles.

Hello everyone! we've got another F&I balance thread for you all, covering tentative plans for missiles in the Winter expansion plus a hurricane fittings nerf that doesn't really need it's own thread.

I'd like to start off by reminding people that everything in these F&I threads is open to changes, however there are some significant balance issues being dealt with here that will need to be solved in one way or another. There are also some details that remain to be ironed out but we wanted to get these ideas out to you all as early as possible.

I'll start off with the orphan announcement. In the Attack Cruiser thread we also announced changes to medium gun fittings. We're going to be changing the hurricane at the same time but I wanted that thread to stay dedicated to the specific cruiser balance instead of getting derailed so we're moving that here.
Since we planning to reduce the powergrid needs of all medium artillery by 10% across the board, we are also planning to subtract 225 PG from the Hurricane, leaving it with a base powergrid of 1125.
The upshot is that fitting a full rack of 720s with a MWD and LSE and full mids and lows will require a RCUII and either an ACR or PG implant. Also fitting a standard shield autocane with neuts and LSE will require dropping a few guns down to 220mm.
The hurricane will likely receive significantly more changes when we get to battlecruisers in the balance pass, but this is designed as a compensation for the drop in Arty PG and to help alleviate the problem of Arty ships having so much free PG when they use autocannons.

The meat of this thread however is about missiles. There's a number of missile changes we have planned for the Winter, including the already announced buff to light missiles, a buff to unguided missiles especially HAMs, a nerf to heavy missile range and damage to put them in line with other long range cruiser weapons, a rework of all T2 missiles so they become usable.

All Missiles
Increase missile acceleration so that real range is much closer to the client assumed range of flighttime*speed against a stationary target. This means a slight range buff for all missiles, and missiles will act in a way that is more intuitive to newer players.

Short Range Missiles
Change the Guided Missile Precision skill, as well as all associated implants and rigs to affect all subcap missiles
Reduce HAM launcher PG requirements by 10%

Light Missiles
-Decrease all Light Missile Launcher fitting requirements by 2pg and 4cpu
-Explosion radius reduced from 50 to 40
-Damage increased by 10% (rounded to closest digit)
-Affects all variant light missiles, including FOF.

Heavy Missiles
-Base flight time reduced by 35%
-Base velocity increased by 14.66%
-In total, base range reduced by ~25%
-Damage decreased by 10% (rounded to closest digit)
-Explosion radius increased by 12%
-Affects all variant Heavy missiles, including FOF.

Tech Two Missiles
-Remove ship penalties from tech two missiles (ship velocity and signature radius)
-Precision: Increase bonuses to explosion velocity to +20%, increase damage to match T1 missiles
-Fury: Increase damage bonus to +35%, reduce flight time to 75% of T1, unify penalties to explosion radius (+72%) and velocity (-16%) across the sizes
-Javelin: Just remove ship penalties
-Rage: Increase damage bonus to +35%, Unify flight time to match T1, unify velocity penalty (-16.7%), unify penalty to explosion velocity (-14%), increase penalty to explosion radius (+72%)

Tracking/Range Mods and Ewar
Tracking mod and disruptor changes moved out of this release until the first set of changes settles a bit

Feedback Response #1 Below:

I will ask everyone to please keep your feedback and your interactions with each other civil. Remember that this is the Features and Ideas forum, not the wild untamed expanse of General Discussion or the brutal gladiatorial pit of CAOD. This is the section of the forums where intellectual equals meet in mutual admiration to calmly and rationally discuss potential changes to the game, muse casually about overnight interest rates, and sip tea with our pinky extended.
Feedback is always more useful when it includes details about the problems you foresee from a specific change.

• "I don't agree with change X because I believe it will have effect Y for reasons A, B and C" is excellent and very persuasive feedback and I thank the large numbers of you who have provided this kind of feedback so far.
• "DIE IN A FIRE" is an example of significantly less useful feedback. It doesn't tell us which changes you object to, or what the reasons for your position are. In fact it even makes it hard to tell whether you actually object to the content of the change or are just experiencing an unusually strong craving for S'mores.

I'm going to cover a few of the themes I'm seeing in the feedback so far in a Q&A format. I don't have any adjustments to the proposal to announce at this time, but there are a few tweaks I'm mulling over at the moment.

[list][*]...

My pilgrim approves of this.

Did you? How many more times will you be podded before this takes effect?

Due to the powergrid reduction of lasers as well, do you think the harbinger requires a pg nerf as well?

The "less shields more gank" thing was a discussion at a previous CSM summit, not a finalized design.

Posting in a Fozzie thread. Love Fozzie long time.

RIP Drake blob.

Edit: NM, the note was about TDs not TCs, all seems right.

-Damage decreased by 20% (rounded to closest digit)

Just noticed this! Holy crap CCP, 20% nerf to damage and 25% nerf to range?!

Nerf drakes erryday!

Mother of god.