Player Features and Ideas Discussion

One can always dream...

Rapid Drone Assist?

Maybe you should actually read the list before dismissing it as irrelevant. It doesn't include drones at all. Also structure kills are a tiny minority of the total kills in this game. *Snip* Please refrain from personal attacks. ISD Ezwal

HAMs, light missiles, and rockets are decent in PVP. Everything else sucks. Period.

HAMs are better than HMLs, but damage application still sucks against anything smaller than a cruiser. Unless you're outfitted with rigors, target painters or webs - you might as well be throwing rocks.


Yes, because it's so easy to target swarms of them under drone assist at maximum range.

If by "decent" you mean "suck less", then we're in agreement.
The only missile systems that don't suck at this point are light and cruise missiles.

RLML use/configuration tips...

• Faction launchers = 19 ammunition (+1) over T2s (and ROF is faster than max T2)
• Light Missiles V = extra +5% damage (more important than T2/specialization)
• Zainou 'Snapshot' Light Missiles implants = +3/+5 damage (definite must)
• A pair of Caldari Navy Ballistic Controllers gives you the same damage as three T2 ballistic controllers (minus the ROF from the third one, which you really don't need anyway). This reduces CPU requirements and frees up a slot, and you can offset the ROF loss if so desired with a Zainou 'Deadeye' Rapud Launch RL-1003 or 1005 implant.
• Medium Warhead Calefaction Catalyst II gives you +15% raw damage, which even though stacking penalized still gives you +8.5% overall damage. Perfect for T2 hulls as it leaves enough for a rigor or hydraulic.
• Rigors, rigors and rigors. Both T2 and T1 rigors trump T2 flares, so not that light missiles necessarily need them (they still benefit, obviously) - but two T1 flares are only marginally better than a single T1 rigor. This is part of the missile mechanics, but the short version is that when rigors have maxed out the target signature they then reduce the effects of target velocity; flares do not.

I'll add more if I can think of any.

Adapt and overcome. RLMLs have the potential to be a tremendous deterrent against the roving frigate gangs that seem more prevalent now with the warp speed changes. As I said, these are role-specific at this point. My sole purpose with testing them was to see if I could get a decent return on my investment (mainly to see if any of the skill training could be salvaged). Not only did I achieve this, but to my surprise I recouped the entire cost of the Faction launchers in a single evening session.

I have removed a rule breaking post and those quoting it.

The rules:
4. Personal attacks are prohibited.

Commonly known as flaming, personal attacks are posts that are designed to personally berate or insult another forum user. Posts of this nature are not beneficial to the community spirit that CCP promote and as such they will not be tolerated.

34. Posting of kill reports outside of the Crime & Punishment forum channel is prohibited.

More often than not, posts of this nature are made with inflammatory intent and are designed to promote trolling and flaming. Therefore, the posting of links to kill reports from any third party site, or the direct copy-pasting of kill reports from in game is prohibited on all forum channels of the EVE Online Forums, with the exception of the Crime & Punishment Channel.
Specific rules regarding the omission of pilot names apply in this instance. Further details can be found in the rules stickies in the Crime & Punishment forum channel.

Snow Balls are fun, Fireworks add a little colour and do nearly as much damage as a Ham Cerberus to a frigate (without webs, TP and rigors)

Bomber runs are actually pretty good at this, as long as the bomber fleet FC is half competent.

With Light missile specialization 4, missile support skills all 5, a load of 24 missiles would give you 1 min of damage application before having to reload.
I think this would be reasonable, along with a reduced reload time of say 25 seconds.
Slight changes overall but would mean you would have the option of engaging the odd T1 cruiser in your T2 Assault cruiser.

As requested you would preferebly hear the respect of Power and Fun regarding the Rapid missile launchers.

As many people have layed out before, the main problem with both the power AND fun of Missiles in general is with the abysmal state of the Heavy Missile. When the Heavy missile changes were posted, this was unfortunatly done in a multi topic forum post, both with buffeing some missiles, nerfing ships and other stuff. This made debateing individual aspects of those announced changes virtually impossible.

Pre heavy missile change the Heavy Missile was used predominantly in Battlecruiser sized fleets in regards to caldari pilots. The Drake was areguably the best allround ship, hitting for decent range, and beeing able to survive a lot. Yet never did anyone claim they would use the Drake as the best damage output ship. Just the overal best choice. This was emphasized by the easyness to train for it. For these reasons it was still fun to use Drakes, cause they had the power to be able to do most things without a lot of training.

As pilot skill however goes up, the drake becomes less and less attractive it did have some serious flaws, wich ment that specialized fleets could easily destroy drake blobs. The higher the skill points the pilot had the less you would see him in a drake.

Then became an overal good battlecruiser balance pass. The drake suddenly wasn't the best overall choice of Battlecruisers anymore, many are suddenly good in there roles and are preforming on par or better as drakes. The ferox, with the Hybrid gun changes became a viable option and because the power level of the battlecruisers evened out, it became more fun to fly any of them.

However, in the Heavy missiles post a few people already forseen what was going to happen. People would soon find out that Heavy Missiles were going to be a bad choice against almost any target. Its inherent statistics already suggested that. After the patch it was the ONLY weaponsystem that wasn't able to hit the similar sized vessals for 100% damage if conditions were perfect. Comparable immovable targets at optimal range medium sized guns vs Heavy missiles, the guns would hit for 100% of their damage and Heavy missiles wouldn't. Because of this, a lot of people announced and foresaw that most people would switch to Rapid Light missile launchers, especially on those ships that supported bonuses for both.

People already knew what was going to happen, the power level of the Heavy missile was so much dropped, that in average scenarios the Rapid Light missile just did more DPS then the Heavy Missile.

At the same time the Light missile received a 10% damage bonus overal for all its missiles. With a 21% damage application nerf to the Heavy missile, and a 10% bonus to the Light missile, people were eager to test out the Rapid Light missile launcher. And guess what. The fact that you could actually hit your targets for meaning full amounts made it fun to use. Not because the system was overpowered but because The other options had severe setbacks. Ham Missiles have range and damage application problems, combined with still a strange and undesirable fitting problem makes those except on specialized ships like the sacrilege a poor choice. Heavy Missiles, in the past always chosen because the Ham missiles had these problems, suddenly also had Major damage application problems, however against large (Battleship and up) they still perform reasonably. And then we had the now damaged buffed Rapid Light missile launchers.

With the cruisers beeing rebalanced the Rapid Light missile launchers became even more popular. You could fit larger tanks on the cruiserships that used Rapid lights then on many of the gun based ships, the damage application was often better anyway and with no real alternative choice for medium launchers made those launchers popular, dear i even say it fun to use.

Where previously the most scary sight of a frigate pilot would be a Vagabond, rapier or Cynabal, now suddenly Caracals and Bellicoses were also things to be scared about. For Missile based pilots who for years had troubles finding an ACCEPTED, and USEFULL weapon / ship combination against frigates, without themselves beeing in them Fun began.

And then the Whineing of the Frigate pilots, now suddenly claiming Rapid lights were overpowered. Face it, The only thing that happend was a 10% increase in damage for light missiles. Rapid Lights overpowered? Reverse the 10% increase and no one could claim there overpowered right?

Unfortunatly no. Because people actually now have used them and know how they can make Rapid lights work, even reversing the 10% increase won't stop the major use of the weapon system. Not because the system is actually overpowered, but because there still isn't any viable other option. HAMS still a verry unfavorable damage application to range to fittings problem, and the heavy missile just a abysmal damage application.

The fact that youve only seen a slight drop in the use of Rapid Light missile launchers, is NOT because the changes are accepted, Its NOT because its power is now in line with other systems, and is NOT because its now fun to use those systems. It is because of all things considered, its still the only weaponsystem for ships that size that have any resemblance of good damage projection.

So, what can be done to improve the fun factor of the Rapid launchers, a few ideas have already been said.

Rebalance Missiles a a whole, with a special emphasis on the following
Lights might slightly be to strong (although i personally don't agree to this)
Heavy missiles suffer in damage application
Ham Missiles suffer in module fitting requirements.

Add more Modules that alter Missiles, their behavior, and there damage applications.
A missile part for Tracking computers
A missile part for Tracking Enhancers
A Module that addresses reload times for Rapid Missiles (i would suggest rigs)