Caracal nerf, why?

[CCP_Swift]

@Posh_Wynoa_Spice

To me, this nerf feels more like “tone things down because they are overused” vice “tone things down because they are too strong”

I personally believe that the core issue at hand is the execution of the “rapid (size - 1) long range missile” modules, across the board.

From the rapid torps, to the rapid heavies, to the rapid lights.

Their abilities to devistate ships smaller than them with relatively high application and high burst combined with incredibly low fitting space and having maybe 20% sustained damage loss compared to the short range size missile of the class is very strong – which makes the Bhargest and Orthus incredibly oppressive vs ships one size smaller in particular. It is those modules across the board that should’ve been looked at, perhaps giving them a chunk of application penalty (exclusively in explosion velocity) and some flight speed penalties to get them near to the range of the short range missile for the ship’s size.

The Caracal being the go-to newbie ship for 90% of nullsec… sure, that is sort of a problem. But the reason for that is a lot more on the side of nullsec being lazy and copying each other for newbie doctrines, and with the main requirements being frigate weapons and a few days to Caldari Cruiser 4… it is easily one of the most accessible ships that are suitable for cruiser fleet doctrines for alpha accounts with very minimal training needs.

The nerf to the hull is both unnecessary and fails to address the main reason why it is so popular, which means that its popularity really won’t change.
This approach by CCP to assume ‘popularity in use’ as a metric to be used in lieu of the ship’s performance for balancing the strength of the ship is very flawed, and really is the core issue that needs to be brought to their attention.

Now that the patch has had a little bit of time to settle, wanted to share some info about the patch specifically related to your comments.

The main issue we were concerned about were the Rapid Lights themselves, not necessarily the hull. We had experimented with the weapon system change on other ships, and were happy with the results. The Osprey Navy Issue and Caracal were popular, but popular isn’t bad. Why we felt the need to take action is because, with the RLMLs as they were, these ships had very few tradeoffs; they got speed, engagement range, tank, and damage all at once. Fitting is about tradeoffs, and these didn’t have any. With the change to RLMLs, hulls had to select attributes to focus on instead of getting all at once.

We’re very happy with the results so far, not because the RLML platforms are less popular (they’re still quite popular), but there’s more diversity both in the meta and in how the ships are fit. Looking at all the changes holistically, the meta has more healthily shifted and added new challenges for you all to master.

I hope that addressed some of your concerns and misgivings about why these changes were made in the first place.