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What Diomedes said above me. It's the fact that missiles can actually be outran by the target they are trying to hit.

It's why the missile system as a whole needs a revamp because velocity plays a dual role when it comes to applying your damage. First, can you even score a hit at all or will you missile time out before it reaches them. Note that you don't need to move faster than the missile to avoid being hit, you just have to be able to keep up the difference in speed up long enough that it can't close the gap in the missile's flight time. Second, % of damage done combined with sig radius. If your missile reaches the target at all, you can find yourself hitting for less than 5% very easily if they are moving quickly or are small. Light missiles are pretty much the only missile of choice that doesn't take as hard of a hit in this department atm.

Those above reasons are why I get so agitated when people try to say "missiles always do damage" because it's blatant ignorance. The math behind missiles and how they fly through space needs a complete revamp. Otherwise missiles will always be too good or too bad for their desired hull/target. As it stands it's just a clusterfuck to try and balance as is with hulls of all types moving at such a wide variance of speeds and sig radii. It's why i suggested looking at mass, something that has a relatively small degree of variance between hulls of the same classification.

I see the rapid lights discussion is diverse and constructive, but like nothing on the rapid heavy nerf? Is that cause there's consensus on the matter? Personally that part is the most confusing change. Is the some meta I don't know about where rapid heavies are op or is the reasoning to only bring the system in line with rapid lights?

Please don't make RHML's even more limiting. You're limiting fitting options with these proposed changes, not improving them. It's nice to have a viable RHML fit with the barghest but these changes would nerf that and means that nobody would use it. Furthermore some of us like ratting as well as PvP, and it's nice to be able to field a variety of fittings and not constantly being nerfed due to changes that only consider the PvP aspect of the game. Think also that you're nerfing the defensive ability of the barghest against smaller attackers with this change. There are other aspects of this which seem to have been overlooked. Please reconsider these changes as the "buff" you're mentioning doesn't really make up for these changes, more is being lost than added.

I read most of this thread but Suitonia really crushed it out of the park with this one. The grid really is a big issue because the reason you see so many Caracals being used is because they get great application and a really heavy tank compared with any other ship in the attack cruiser line and a lot of that has to do with the fact that a T2 rapid light launcher uses only 77 grid. The two with the next least grid usage among cruiser weapons are:

Dual 180mm Auctocannon II: 88 grid
Quad Light Beam Laser II: 89 grid

Consider that these other two low grid users frequently under perform and so are rarely used especially the quad laser and yet both will take more out of your fit than rapid lights. Consider increasing the grid usage on rapid lights to the 90 - 100 grid range please and this is completely irrespective of other changes (even focused medium pulse laser IIs take 125 grid). Sure, the ships that fit rapid lights tend to have less grid on average but not 40% less than average. How often do you see 180 autocannons or electron blasters being used without multiple reps or oversized ASBs? Ships fitting rapid lights sacrifice nothing in their fits because the fittings are so low on them. The point is that when fitting other weapon types to save on grid your downgraded weapons IS the sacrifice, for rapid lights this is not the case as they are the preferred weapon anyway.

On another note, I like that you are at least looking at HMLs but their problem isn't really their damage it's the very poor application they get against small fast ships, which let's be honest, is going to be a situation that comes up often in pvp. Part of the reason people lean to rapid lights in the first place is that unlike HMLs or HAMs damage application is a non-issue. In the case of kiting fits especially crash boosters are not really going to be an option for HMLs because rolling that speed penalty is a really big deal, so don't expect those fits to swap over to heavies with these proposed changes, they'll either stay rapid lights or change ships. Missiles are not like turrets where you can at least try to fly in a way that will drop transversal and allow you to land hits on small ships. I'd even accept a small nerf to the damage of HMLs if it meant they could get mediocre damage application to small fast ships.

^^ fixed it valk

In practice it seems to me that grid is the limiting factor. Rapid lights don't take a huge amount of CPU either though. A pretty standard Caracal fit can run with rapid lights, MWD, double T2 extender, 2 hardners, damage control and 3 T2 BCUs all without even using so much as a rig slot for fittings, no other attack cruiser comes close to getting away with that. Even using all those BCUs and only the MWD being meta it all fits, this is what I mean by zero sacrifices.

It doesn't help either that light missiles apply so well that none of the Caracal's mids need to be used to help with damage application by use of webs or target painters or missile computers, even if you have to fit your own tackle you can go with a single hardner and a long point and you're golden.

This is why from where I'm standing the low fittings on the rapid lights is a really big part of the problem.

EDIT: For comparison's sake if you replace the rapid lights with HMLs the fit is over by around 7-8% on both CPU and grid. Even then the Caracal gets over 30k EHP by the time you've made it all fit, though I didn't optimize that so it could well be possible to do better. At least one way or another it'll be less than the 40k+ it gets with rapid lights.

You've got this totally backwards. For years, devs have been breaking things that didn't need to be "fixed", one patch at a time. You've bought into the idea that somehow this game needs to be "balanced" over and over again, ad infinitum - a never-ending process.

Do you really need me to give you a list of ships and weapons system that literally are never used anymore?

please stop talking out of ur ass... twice the ehp lol where u get that bs info from?

First of all, I didn't say twice the EHP, Suitonia did, and I take it he was being hyperbolic to some extent but he's not entirely off base either. Even fitting attack cruisers for EHP, a job you would typically use a combat cruiser for, a Caracal fit with the following has ~35.2k EHP:

High:
Rapid light missile launcher II x5

Mids:
50MN Y-T Microwarp Drive
Warp disruptor II
Adaptive Invulnerability field II
Large Shield Extender II x2

Low:
Damage Control II
Ballistic Control Unit II x3

Rigs:
Medium Anti-EM screen reinforcer I
Medium core defense field extender I x2

If you drop the warp disruptor II for a second invuln (which fits entirely without issue) the EHP jumps to ~43.9k and the warp disruptor fit is quite useable as is. At no point is anything given up for the sake of fittings nor are any fitting mods required for this fit, larger launchers cause fitting problems but are not desired anyway. EDIT: You can also swap out the MWD for any variation of MWD you like with either the dual hardner or the disruptor fit without issue.

The next best I can do with a semi-practical fit attack cruiser is an Omen with the following and it has ~35k EHP:

High:
Focused medium pulse laser II x5

Mids:
50MN Y-T Microwarp Drive
Faint Epsilon Warp Scrambler I
Fleeting Web I

Lows:
1600mm Rolled Tungsten plate I
Damage Control II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrand II x2
Heatsink II x2

Rigs:
Medium Ancillary Current Router I
Medium Trimark Armor Pump I x2

You better have good fittings for this Omen as well as it has less than 3 CPU to spare and I've had to claw back every single point of CPU I can to make it fit plus a fitting rig is required and you're still not getting best range by fitting heavy pulses or if you are insane and fly this thing with beams it's quads or it's R.I.P. powergrid (and CPU but not as badly).

Similar fits (T1 rigs, no implants and T2 or lower meta modules) for Thorax with armor gets 34.8k with electrons and ACR, OR with shields you can get 34.6k with double extender hardner and ions and an ineffective and impractical fit.

The Stabber...well, if you want EHP on that you're going to sacrifice everything for it and it will still be inferior to a Caracal by a wide margin.

The rapid light Caracal is the standout favorite among attack cruisers for a reason, it's fit gives the most EHP by a small amount with an effective pvp fit or by a large margin in a fleet all without sacrificing anything. Other attack cruisers can only be competitive in some areas with the Caracal by sacrificing in others or have to become completely impractical. The low fittings on rapid light missile launchers is the source of this problem. Finally here's why Suitonia is not entirely off base; because generally speaking, you're not going to want to brawl with attack cruisers and the Omen for example will generally perform better by using it's relatively high base speed to kite and fit with heavy pulses though it is outclassed by the Navy Omen in this role for a laser platform. These cruisers fit more practically to kite and serve as anti-support will have vastly inferior EHP to the Caracal which gets everything it wants at once. Even factoring in likely HP gains from AARs or ASBs, the raw EHP of the Caracal will shine though and the Stabber trying to fit ASBs will still be crippled by it's fitting constraints.

Balanced game design means there are no truly favored ships. They all have equal advantage.

Of course, the nature of doctrinal fleet command these days, which certainly has its merits, means that something will get favored by default.
And since this game is designed to have built-in counters, the most appealing ships to meet all your organizations needs will get used.

CCP just tries to ensure that all ships eventually have their day in the sun. They have done this to varying degree since launch.

Players who can't adapt to this may leave the game, but it is really best for a game with so many ship types and options.

Being able to adapt to a changing game environment has been a hallmark of this game, and that should be the case.