Player Features and Ideas Discussion

bear all or part of the weight
give assistance to

I know what support means and if you consider at best 50 seconds firing time, out of every 90 to be of much more than minor assistance, that could not be better filled by a more appropriate weapon, then ok rlml is a support weapon. Albeit only useful for half of any engagement you may be in, I can't see many small gangs opting to use rlml in preference to turrets.
Where as logi is useful for the whole engagement, is not affected by overly long reload times and can also apply DPS. In fact much the same DPS as an RLML caracal in a fight that lasts more than 2 mins.

Prior to Rubicon the RLML caracal and bellicose had a very distinct role that they did not excel in but were good at.. As you say, prior to Rubicon caracal was popular, it is no more as it is no longer capable of doing the same thing it did prior.

Where do you get the idea light missiles got their DPS doubled? They actually over 100 seconds ( close to average fight time?) do half the DPS they did prior to Rubicon.

The question about overlap between RLML and HML has been answered many many times in this thread and many other threads. The reason so many started using RLML was because of the heavy missile nerf which made them a worse option than RLML. Heavy missiles have not changed so now there is no option but to cross train

If you look at the kill boards, Caracal ranks very low on the list. Yet it has been touted as the best thing since sliced bread and suffered because of it. RLML Caracal was an adequate ship that did a specific job pretty well, it was not OP in the hands of someone with less than perfect skills and is now less than usable for those same players (me for 1). 262 DPS @ 31k for 44 seconds then none for the next 40 is not viable. With the old launcher if there were 2 or 3 frigates together I might kill 1 and have the other 2 warp off, now I might kill 1 then die to the other 2 as I am out for a 40 second reload.

They need to first fix HML so it actually has a role outside of missioning.


Except rebalancing will never be done, and in the interim missiles continue to be pushed to the back burner. And with each ship rebalance and update missile-based hulls continue to be severely unbalanced. What we need is a specific focus and push to get missile systems finally fixed in the next update. It wouldn't require anything earth shattering: just the desire and will to make a few minor tweaks.


Except they don't even excel at that. At least with the other weapon systems you're dealing 2-3/4 damage types. With missiles, if you've guessed wrong - the battle is lost before it's even begun. And unless you can extract yourself, you're finished. The issue is first and foremost the excessive reload/swap time, because it completely eliminates all your tactical options. Right now the rapid launchers are so niche that they're not even effective for a specific role; they can't even be utilized as a primary weapons system, let alone a secondary or tertiary.


Actually, he wasn't scrammed - he just had the misfortune to be the first ship that tried to engage me - and I was able to finish him off before he could align and jump out. After that, since I didn't have any point or scram - the other ships immediately started warping off as soon as they dropped into armor. So it was kind of a "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me" scenario with a rather quick learning curve. Yes, it was fairly intense. If I'd had an EM ward amplifier it would've dragged on even longer. And if I'd chosen a location where I could actually dock or jump, I could've ended the engagement within 60 seconds (picking a fight outside an undockable station was probably not the best choice, lol).

This is completely false. The "50% more DPS" statement is a myth, as it presumes you're utilizing the most effective ammunition in every engagement. Since the 40-second swap precludes any tactical changes once battle has commenced, you have a 1:4 chance of being correct; less if you hedge your bets with different damage types. As most Caldari ships get a kinetic bonus, it's also very easy for opponents to negate this. With the old RLMLs, you could swap ammo out in 10 seconds (more than enough time to influence the outcome) - so all your opponent need do now is survive the initial 50-second onslaught, point you and bat phone support.

Addendum: I really think we should start ignoring Bouh. Either he's trolling for his own entertainment or he has some seriously misguided and hard fast notions about missile mechanics. Consider this my last Bough-related response. /ignore.

FYI, Rise acknowledge the reload problem and said they were working on it.

If this is the only gripe you have against RLML, I'd say "problem solved"...

And still nobody answered the only question I asked : what should be the roles and stats of HML and RLML to not overlap on eachother ?

Because the way I see it, you are only looking for a medium missile system able to **** armies of frigates and still be competitive against cruisers (I'm slightly exagerating). You are looking to do exactly what turret ships can do (blap approching frigates with medium weapons) but with missiles and while keeping all other missiles advantages (not position related damage). Or I didn't understand something (most probably) ? But most missiles "fix" proposed here were insane buff to about all medium missile systems without any care for weapons role and balance (with good exceptions though).

As a side note, actually smart people don't only look to talk only with those who agree with them. Confrontation of ideas is actually a good thing if you are not a stubborn fanatic impervious to reason, logic or new ideas.

I understand what you mean and a part of me feels the same way.

at the moment it would be very in efficient to drop ships and move to launchers/missiles, let them finish the current non cap round. pirate, t2 and t3 ships. and then takle a good look at the problem insteat of a quick patch to stop the bleeding for now, to see the problem arise with the next round of ballance changes.

Tengu is in many ways a very expensive ship to fly and if you nerf it, people will switch to something else and stop using it. It's really as simple as that. We all know how much CCP Hammer and CCP Destroyer are incapable of fine tuning. They will nerf it by 20% as they did with Drake and you will have even more Caldari pilots feeling stupid, fooled to invest their time and SP into something that's not meant to last.

Dear CCP Rise,

Previously we have expanded on the concept of "User Metrics" to assess the acceptance and effectiveness of certain weapon systems and your intent on considering this at least in part when looking at ship/weapon system balance.

I ask that you and the community take a look at these metrics compiled from 12/1 to 12/3.

http://eve-kill.net/?a=top20


Now, it is my understanding that these are self reported metrics (I could be wrong) and so there would be an inherent bias in this statistical compilation. However, I would welcome your comments and as well, in the spirit of game balance and an open dialogue, ask what it is that you would dispute in the accuracy of these statistics?

In particular I would draw your attention to the "Rank Weapons" where we find the only missile system dead last in the Top 20 and it is the Light Missile II launcher, a frig class weapon.

Note that the RLML and RHML are nowhere to be seen as well as the ships capable of mounting these systems. Needless to say there is not a sign of HAMS or HML or any Caldari ship other than our fine frigates.

Note in the "Rank Ships" list that there is a significant outlier (Dominix) that indicates profound balance issues but the one shining light for Caldari is the Tengu. However as it's perceived weapons system (missiles) is nowhere to be seen apparently they are Rail Tengus which (apparently?) are used in Null Blob fleet doctrine per report.

Regardless, the point is that something missile was not fixed with Rubicon, it was further broken in fact if these metrics have validity. If I knew how I would search pre-Rubicon statistics and expect to find the "old" RLML high on the list if it was in need a such a dramatic nerf? My actual sense is that it was no where to be seen as compared to other light/medium weapons systems.

What exactly is being "fixed" with Rubicon? My humble user sense of things that I am left with is that RLML got nerfed because it was all we used, so it must've been too good without looking at the pathetic performance of missiles over all.

I welcome your feedback and that of any others that can shed light on these issues and how these lists are compiled as there appears to be a disconnect between ship success and weapons success that is not apparent to me.

best

ps. Maybe I have been listening to too many conspiracies theories about server issues in huge missile fights but maybe it is time to change them to a new class of weapons (the Photon Missile) that has extremely high speeds (like projectiles) to instantly apply damage but otherwise retain the explosion velocity and radius characteristics (brought into better balance) so that they can be used in large scale battles without their slow flight and numbers creating lag.

pps. List is updated regularly and can be followed throughout the month.

That is fascinating. But it also interesting given how high the Tengu use is (although it can use Blasters).

Regarding what I said about improving Heavy Missiles and nerfing the Tengu, I'm talking about tweaking the bonuses it would get with missiles. If the missiles themselves hit better - which is the fundamental issue with Heavy Missiles - then sure it makes sense that the Tengu would still be just as powerful, even with a tweak to its bonuses? So in fairness, its not a nerf that would stop their use, but just keep it where it is at.

So essentially what I'm suggesting is that Heavy Missiles are improved for all missile ships (because they are woeful at present), vs. stopping the Tengu becoming even more powerful.

This is the heart of what makes good balancing, surely?

Buoh, you might want to look through the top 20 PvP pilots ship use. Please note all those Caracal's with RLML in there.

No no... I'm joking of course

Almost all of them are using guns, and most of them are flying gallente. Given all that I and other have said to you, surely this is a crazy unfortunate coincidence surely? lol

He will reply that Capsule has a higher rank than Talos.