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I'm more concerned about them changing the minmatar explosive weapon bonus. The reload bonus sounds alright, cuts down on the extra sp sink in RR for each weapon.

While I think too many partons have undersold the value of the rapid reload (which is excessively powerful bonus and thousands of more dps per minute but thats just a terrible scenario) far too many have made the argument on how lame the bonus was without any clear intentions of either providing a better bonus nor clearly defining the issue at hand that the rail rifle itself among one of four weapons to potentially benefit is what one would call a 'perfect' weapon.

Thus appropriately any % x bonus to the rail rifle would and should be meet with nearly equal amounts of wtf or lame.

I am afraid that for the caldari rail rifle and magsec to be better harmonized with an assault suit skill worthy for the assault would be to significantly raise their charge times to the point it becomes an inconvenience to most operators; make it a very uncomfortable weapon to use in cqc, or even in its extended range but not make it too high of a charge that one cannot get the first shot out before he dies to a threat he prepared against first.

Gallente bonus is another bag of beams I am afraid.

I would say that that those that claim that reload means nothing should reevaluate their playstyle with that suit as find a another that suits their style better. Your not playing to the strengths of the suit, you want the suit to play to yours. And when too many are doing that, then balancing become almost impossible.

You already answered that. The Caldari are a long/range hit and fade playstyle. Play to that playstyle, staying at range, kiting the enemy from there then rapid reload becomes very important. It enables a constant level of DPS from range.

If your rushing into cqc using a rail gun, when it's designed to be best used at range then that is not playing to it playing style and part of the reason the RR is considered OP at the moment. Because it can work well at both range and cqc is why it's replaced the AR as the go to light weapon choice.

The hip fire and dispersion bonus for the Gallante Assault is perfect for how the AR should operate, short to midrange, within the cities. Rapid reload is perfect for the longer range RR as it minimises the time an enemy has to rush you so they can bring their weapons to its optimal range. Particularly when the rail weapons have smaller ammo clips to burn through.

With a longer TTK the Shield suit play style of ducking behind cover for a moment to allow your shields to regenerate will be a lot more viable, and the bonus will also allow you to reload every time you do so without as much fear of getting caught out in the middle of a reload cycle by an enemy flanking you.

You need to look at all the changes together.

Essentially a Caldari Assault suit with a Rail Rifle, played the way the Caldari Assault suit was designed to be played, will always have ammo in the magazine.

With Caldari Assault to 5 and Reload to 5:

The Bolt Pistol will reload in 1.35 seconds. That is only about 3 times the normal delay between shots (ROF is 0.4) Damage per shot ranges from 135 to 148.5.

Not to mention what it will do to the Tactical Sniper Rifle.

The Magsec SMG will reload in 1.6 seconds, which is not half bad either.

Can you think of a bonus that could be applied to Rail weapons that would be equivalent to the other bonuses other than reload speed? I mean without changed all the bonuses to something completely different?

I like this solution, if the charge time on the Rail Rifle is increased slightly. The bonus would make it so that Caldari Assault could use the Rail Rifle effectively in CQC, but other suits would have to pair it with a CQC sidearm. I assume this bonus would effect the Charged Sniper Rifle as well.