Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Full patch notes for Rubicon 1.1. Nothing listed for rapid launchers except this:
• Adding Shaqil's modified Rapid Heavy Missile Launcher to the market.
http://community.eveonline.com/news/patch-notes/patch-notes-for-rubicon-1.1
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Probably an oversight... What was interesting is that they changed the drone aggression mechanics such that they won't auto-aggress suspect players. Would sure be nice if missile users could get these kind of improvements...

Ironically, an example of this scaling of light weapons into cruisers would be guns like the "quad light beam laser", "Dual 150mm railgun", and "dual 180mm autocannon". CCP implied that it was going there, but didn't actually follow through with it. Perhaps these weapon systems were holdovers from the initial inception of medium weapons in the game? It would make sense that they threw around the idea, had it planned out, and axed at the last minute, but kept rapid lights as the only holdover to that because of how missile systems work vs turret application. It would be interesting to see if they fixed that for each of the turrets, wouldn't it? I think it would be nice because it would also fix the issues so many people have with quad lights...

So few people use quad lights currently that if you changed them to actually have small turret tracking & sig radius, front loaded dps & a cooldown/reload, they would probably increase in popularity, not decrease.

Wasn't saying we should do burst reload for anything at all, it's not useful for anything other than fleet, along with the pages and pages of problems people have listed with it. As far as I see it, it's just CCP trying to make do with an extra weapon type that originally could have been (was going to?) be expanded for all weapon classes.

But seriously, follow me on this. Here's an idea I'll put out for food for thought:

1. Make all current 'dual' weapons doubled versions of their listed caliber size, including quad lights, since they're 'dual' versions of the dual light beam laser. The balance would be set up along the lines of the "ranged" weapons of the aforementioned Dual 150mm rails, dual 250s, and all the other listed small-calibur 'dual' weapons, although some exceptions might have to be made for dual 180s in regards to damage application, considering how strong ACs are already at tracking smaller targets. Arty would retain its role of uber-alpha.

2. This follows that they all have undersized ammunition, and generally how the damage setup would flesh out would be at basic just double the damage mult or firing rate of the single small weapon or medium weapon that's doubled on the weapon size above it.

3. Factor this in with their ORIGINAL iteration of adding rapid heavies to the game, WITHOUT doing burst weaponry and you actually have a fairly "balanced" pvp field. Couple this with a 10-20 second reload timer excepting lasers, obv (again, double guns) and you have viable turret counterparts for rapid lights and rapid heavies. Properly integrating it would be following the same schema with letting certain sets of ships within a given class get bonuses to x undersized caliber weapon, and others without just as you have with rapid lights. Couple that with combining heavies/hams and cruise/torps into "medium and large missiles" and you have a clean balance that would look akin to this:

Caracal
10% bonus to medium and rapid light missile velocity, 5% bonus to medium and rapid light missile firing rate

Omen
10% bonus to medium and rapid energy turret capacitor use, 5% bonus to medium and rapid energy turret firing rate

Bonus allocation more or less would be geared towards "attack" variants of cruisers, some bc's, battleships get bonuses to undersized rapid weapon systems (apoc and raven for battleships, respectively). You'd see battleships like the raven and especially the apoc be good at this, since they get very good bonuses to damage projection. Certainly, this would be balanced by capacitor issues, easy-access TD jamming, and proper bonus allocation to ships, but it would, realistically, be the way to solve the issue of having undersized caliber missiles. It would level the playing field more appropriately then this uber-nerf to missiles this thread is covering.

The stuff to support this idea is already IN the game; you'd only need minor tweaks like upsizing large pulse lasers (just goes to mega pulse laser, tachyon pulse laser, lengthen the rate of fire and increase dmg mult), and maybe nerfing autocannons a bit to compensate.

I'm not necessarily advocating this as the 'right' way to balance and fix everything, just as an interesting alternative with its own batch of flaws and strengths.

Wouldn't it be nice, then, if in addition to going back to the old system of rapid lights and rapid heavies, they did the same things for the guns? Logically it would make sense for them to do that since they're basically just two small-caliber guns put together. It would follow, then, that they would be used as turret versions of rapid lights or heavies; high-dps versions of weapons from the weight class beneath them for hitting smaller things.

Part of the reason why CCP is on this whole 'burst weapon' shtick in the first place is because of RLML and RHML are the only particular weapon for the role they have. It really would not be much of a stretch for them to 'balance' that with the old mechanic by redoing these dual weapons to function in a similar fashion, just not having them or the missiles for that matter do the silly 'burst' thing. Undersized caliber weapons have the potential for this built into their very existence; it would make more sense for them to be as such rather than their current iteration.

I do see this as a major problem, and I'm guessing it's why CCP never took it up seriously. Perhaps they could balance the dps a bit to make it usable in that sense; balancing it closer to the original dps, but have the same tracking, range, sig, etc. of the smalls? Even if the dps isn't reflected of 'double' the small caliber, having the undersized ammo for better tracking and whatnot does seem like an appropriate way to balance it out, since the issue REMAINS that there aren't any turret alternatives to the launchers in question.

Any ideas of how to make this work? I'd rather not see rapid launchers get sidelined because they don't have any alternatives...

Yes, the way you make this work for guns is the same as for cruisers - stop trying to make frigate-murdering cruiser weapons. Make the destroyers stronger. They are bonused for light weapons and are designed for killing frigates. If you make cruisers the go-to anti-frigate weapon you obsolete this already-niche ship class.

Clean slate… "Adapt or die" seems to be the motto of the day, so I thought I'd relay some initial feedback on the RLML changes. I didn't check all the launchers, but T2s and Faction received +2 ammunition while the Arbalest Prototype launchers benefited the most with +3 ammunition. This is a +18.75% damage increase vs. 11.1% with the T2s, so combined with the cheaper cost and lower skill requirements this should open up some interesting possibilities. Interestingly enough, that 5-second reload reduction is noticeable. On paper it doesn't appear that way, but there it is.

It's my belief that one final buff will be in order, along the lines of a +1 ammunition increase for T1 launchers, +2 for Faction and T2 and a further -5 second reload reduction to bring it down to 30 seconds. I think 30 seconds is going to be the magic number that takes this weapon system from "niche" or "fringe" to "mainstream".

CCP Rise, +1 on the improvements.

The only reason to fit other weapon types would be the overly long reload time that came with them.. I sort of hinted at something like this in the original thread and got called stupid by some of the turret users in the thread
Their reasoning; something along the lines of, why would you have a turret weapon that has a 40 second reload - it would not work..
Funny but i believe that is the same thing we have been saying about RLML and RHML but it seems to be acceptable for a launcher to have an absurd reload but not a turret.


Personally I would not like to see dual 150S changed, they work quite well as is on my Arazu..

Ok, I'm going to contradict myself here, maybe Recons could be a ship type to benefit from a burst weapon. Scan, get a warpin, decloak, light cyno, apply burst damage while awaiting blops to do their thing.
Handy if your targeting small gangs where the burst damage can start to deal with tackle before the rest of your fleet arrives.

I think like Catherine Laartii, the current dual weapon turrets, modified to use small and medium ammo accordingly would not make them OP but combined with the front loading burst application of damage, make them a viable weapon for shooting smaller targets.
Reduced ammunition capacity, improved tracking and last but by no means least, a 20 second reload (same as rlml, rhml should have).
Dual 180mm AutoCannon should also receive an optimal range bonus to keep it inline with other turrets in that class.

If we are to have Burst weapons in the game, spread the love and give them to all

Seriously, forget about it - it's silly. You can't have best of both worlds at the same time :)