Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I was referring to his module and weapon system balancing. I have no gripe as of yet with his ship-balancing skills. I am treating that as two separate items. My apologies if you were confused due to my lack of clarity as to what exactly I was referring to. However, it does raise questions of how he managed to balance the ships. As the process is very similar...

1) Analyze present situation
2) determine what if any problems exist
3) brainstorm on possible solutions
4) Test solutions
5) analyze test results, adjust solutions or return to #3 if results are not meeting balancing goal
6) Open testing to larger test group and repeat 4-5
7) Finalize changes after feedback from users

Maybe you should consider studying this for a day or three before continuing to shiptoast all over this thread. It's getting extremely bothersome.

With that out of the way, let me break it down for you in a way that I'm (almost) sure you can understand.

Weapons are composed of two parts: The weapon itself and the ammunition that it fires. (Civilian weapons are exempt from this for obvious reasons.) Since both the weapon and the ammunition have their own properties that affect the damage you can do and the range you can do it at, both parts of the overall weapon system must be considered when discussing balance.

For our example, we'll arbitrarily pick a Light Electron Blaster I. I haven't heard anyone complaining lately that it's overpowered, so we can reasonably assume it's a suitably balanced choice for what I'm about to do with it. This example will work equally well for Rocket Launchers or HMLs or Railguns or XL Beam Lasers, so stop preparing to complain and follow along instead.

We take our Light Electron Blaster I and we strap it onto, I dunno, a Velator. Seems like a fairly logical thing to strap it onto, so there you go. We load it up with hybrid ammo, let's say antimatter since everyone seems to love using it. Loaded with Antimatter, our little Light Electron Blaster I deals reasonable damage for what it is but the ammo doesn't reach very far. Now let's load it with Tungsten instead. Our Light Electron Blaster I now deals much less damage but the ammo reaches much farther.

Remember that in all of this, the weapon itself has remained completely unchanged and it's still fitted to the same Velator as it started with. You can see for yourself pretty easily how different ammunition can completely change the properties of the weapon it's loaded into. Let's continue.

Removing the Tungsten ammo, let's take our Light Electron Blaster and instead load it with a brand new experimental ammo that has just recently been developed by the slightly-demented researchers of Capricious Endeavours, Ltd. This is a small-size hybrid ammo that gives +200% optimal, +400% falloff, deals 30,000 HP damage across all four damage types, has a base shield damage of 100,000 and a base armor damage of 500,000, has 200% negative capacitor drain when fired (Yes, that means firing it causes your capacitor to regenerate faster) and increases both tracking speed and rate of fire by 400% because of ... I think they said computer-interfaced bio-nanites or something. Anyway, there's the ammo.

We load this into our Light Electron Blaster I and suddenly we have a total badass on our hands. It's difficult to adequately describe the amount of carnage you'll be able to cause, but I think it might just be open season on dreads, carriers and titans.

The gun didn't change. It's still the same Light Electron Blaster I that almost nobody ever uses. The Velator didn't change either. All we did was take a relatively common and low-powered ship/gun combo and stuff hilariously OP ammo into it.

Understand now?

Rapid Light Missile Launchers are not overpowered. The Light Missiles they fire ARE. If you give Light Missiles the same heavy nerf that Heavy Missiles got, nobody will like Rapid Lights for anything either.

Cant believe I just wasted 8 days training RLML to 5...

The main reason this has removed any point of using these weapons is that in order to change damage type it will take a full 40's...

Anyone who has flown a missile ship in any worthwhile fight will notice that it is very much necessary to get your damage type right... else it will just be wasted dps.

example:
1. Fighting T2 gallente ship and you have kinetic loaded...
2. You realize that they can tank more then double the KIN damage then say EM
3. 3 Choices
Change ammo and wait the 40's
Keep doing very little damage
RUN!!
As you can see here there is no difference between option 1 and 2 with the new system.
It would be almost suicide to change damage type...too much happens in 40 sec...

For this reason it is impossible to compare an ASB with an RML's... maybe if the asb could take different charges that would change your resistances but lol thank god that dose'nt happen.

So the problem that this causes is:
1. You cannot fight in as many situations as you could before
a) Only fight if the thing you are fighting has a weakness to the damage type you have loaded and only if you can kill it
before you have to reload
b) No more then 1 ship...for the same damage type reason
2. Fights change quickly and you cannot adapt so therefor you will die

TL;DR
Cant change damage during fight => Death

Would this be a good time to point out that the change was posted 8 days ago? (too soon?)

This would make an interesting new mechanic for both solo and gang PVP. Instead of staying on the field for a slug fest a gang of ships can warp in volley everything in one shot and try to warp off before they get caught. FCs can apply this like a modern artillery strike to say break an effective logistics chain and swing the fight back in their favor. This could also make the rapid heavies great for stealth bombers and their role in the game.

Maybe but I am not crossing my fingers...since I would point to the HML changes in Retribution that were also heavy-handed. Mitigated slightly but still made the weapon system almost worthless.

3. Rise will lose this ancillary war and we will get our old RLML back, perhaps with light missiles being slightly nerfed... lets hope for 3-5%... I think that would be more than fair.

EDIT:
4. They will do their best to fix HML and HAM ASAP and rebalanced missiles will be delivered for Rubicon 1.1. I have high hopes in CCP, dunno about you guys.

Yes, current iteration for RLML and RHML followed by rebalancing for all missile systems in 1.1.

Honestly wow, soo stupid. Just had to quote myself. That's how I feel. Honestly, I don't even know why I play this game, its obvious its dying out, and going no where because the developpers are stupid and make dumb mistakes like this all the time. where the heck is this CCSM or whatever its called, shouldn't you run things with them before making stupid idea's like this, or are they all a bunch or ******** "yes" men or something ?>

One day till patch!