That's exactly what I wrote in my notes not 2 hours ago.

Please don't, I always found it to be such a counter-intuitive mechanic on the laser rifle, don't do it to the rail rifle. If changes are needed, I would suggest looking at DPS.

RR: Nerf this things damage and range and ill be happy
CR: keep this thing the same. IDK why people are complaining about it
ScR: Perfectly fine, maybe decrease overheat build up by a bit.
LR: Nerf this things feedback damage, its just too much and increase the damage on the ADV and PRO so its not the similar to the STD LR. For example STD: 17.00HP ADV: 20.00 or 23.00 and PRO: 23.00 or 26.00. This thing needs to be the king of range (other than the Sniper) games. Maybe some tweaks to the scope of LR and ScR
AR: All good due to the Bravo buff

This would be a pretty good change to the Rifles IMO

why does everyone compare the rail rifle to the laser rifle?

the laser rifle is a support weapon. the rail rifle is a primary weapon.

the sniper rifle is a support weapon. its long range. if i ran around with a tactical sniper rifle and started popping dudes under 100m would people cry and ask that its bullets magically do less damage at closer ranges?

someone explain to me how a chunk of solid matter fire with with as much kinetic energy and velocity as needed to reach the range as the rail rifle, wouldnt punch straight through anyone at close range.

tell me how, a bullet does less damage close up than it does at range? can anyone sure me a weapon, any weapon at all that fires a projectile of any sort that does less damage up close and more damage at range?

we're talking about a bullet gaining kinetic energy while in flight lol

EDIT:

making the RR less effective up close remove the only primary weapon the caldari have from general use.

what other light weapon would we have for use at under 50m?

the amarr have the Scr. you guys plan on giving us some other weapon? buffing the magsec? what?

if you want to make the RR less effective at closer ranges, then i should be hearing some ideas about making it even more effective at longer ranges. 100m optimal range? 120, 130 effective range? do we want to go there?

2nd EDIT:

flip the RR range profile. effective range 0-25m optimal range 26-100m

and decrease the charge up time on the magsec to .25 and .20 for the bolt pistol

you sound like an armor tanker

That's exactly what I wrote in my notes not 2 hours ago.

Thanks for the feedback, but we are not touching Rifles in the short term. Our data and forums are in agreement that rifles have never been as balanced as they are currently. If that changes, we will come to the forums for feedback. Right now, there are many things we want to tweak and fix that have higher priority.

That's exactly what I wrote in my notes not 2 hours ago.

Please don't, I always found it to be such a counter-intuitive mechanic on the laser rifle, don't do it to the rail rifle. If changes are needed, I would suggest looking at DPS.

Ok...rail rifles. Again.

This is a tough discussion and I admittedly come at it from pretty dedicated RR user perspective. I am, however, interested everyone enjoying a balanced game.

Let's a take a quick look at the RR from the perspective of someone that uses it or the assault variant fairly exclusively.

1) Lowest DPS of racial rifles. That's pretty legit when compared to the range...no major issues with that. That said, with the DPS at this point it's pretty close to not being useful at longer rangers as its very easy to duck out of the way or get behind cover before taking terminal damage.

2) Charge time. This is oft argued back and forth with little positive headway. Many say the charge time is so negligible that it doesn't matter, people flutter the trigger, or pre-fire takes care of everything. My general response is that if it's such non-factor then remove it from the weapon or you could have a similar charge time penalty that you get on rail turrets when you "game" the spool time. I would also point out that this is the only major weapon drawback that doesn't have an SP sink or Racial Role bonus to offset it.

3) Hip fire vs ADS. One thing that hasn't been touched yet is the hip fire; this might help quite a bit if the hip fire was toned done noticeable. You can just about weave between shots with the low RoF and a cut in hip fire accuracy might be just the thing in order.

4) Mag size and reload time. These really are secondary factors but not something to overlook either. Lowest reload time and mag capacity for racial LW but you can offset these combat efficiency gaps with the weapons skill SP sinks. Again...shortcoming that can be mitigated with SP which is a basic positive theme.

5) Comparison to Laser Rifle. The Laser Rifle isn't counted as a basic racial rifle as far as I can tell so the direct comparisons may be a bit off. The similar range profiles is what generally draw the comparisons and conceptually the increasing damage overtime with a laser works very well. I would also concur with one of the earlier posters that "you can melt heavies" as I've witnessed some good LR users do just that. There is no real logical way to adjust a kinetic penetrator's damage profile to having less impact closer than it does at longer range and frankly there are other things to tweak outside of that.

6) Caldari Weapons kit bag. This kinda goes at the heart of it to me...if you make the RR too niche (and my opinion is that it can very easily drift that way) is that you leave a racial line without any kind of general purpose weapon. The short answer its that it doesn't make sense to do that without some built in off-set. Lot's of folks rightly point out that the Cal method relies on dealing damage at range...no issue with that; the thing people forget is to take an objective in game or conceptually from a lore stand point you still have to close the tactical gap and you shouldn't be too gimped. A CalLogi actually trying to run a support set up you can quickly be at a level of disadvantage that is a bit much.

My proposal to that is to actually make the ARR (or perhaps the MagSec) the viable option in mid-range combat and keep relevance in shorter combat ranges. For the ARR noticably cut the range down, keep RoF, and consider cutting the charge time a bit. I recommend changing the Operation skill to reducing the spool time and dropping the recoil reduction.

your graph does not account for weapon drawbacks. for example the scr overheats and the ar doesnt. this means that DPS over 10 seconds will be vastly different. The tactical Scrambler rifle is a high alpha burst weapon capable of heavy accurate fire for 2-3 seconds before it overheats, causing a significant movement penalty and locking. This means that nerfing it's DPS is unviable as it is only a "paper" figure. The gun can not be fired at maximum DPS unless you tap fast enough, a feat in itself. Therefore the graph does not accurately represent the scrambler rifle.

The Scrambler Rifle overheat is an already broken mechanic.
In the case of the Assault it is pointless.

In terms of the Tactical, it simply allows the user to beat the opponent in any choice they prefer.
You can Burst and Achieve massive amounts of DPS, that kills your opponemts in a rather unfair amount of time.
Or you can simply maintain the overheat and get them when they reload.

The overheat function should only allow for one of these techniques, not both in the same rifle.

LOL

"You can burst and kill them, crippling yourself and god forbid they are armour tanking"
is someone forgetting the 20% reduction to armour? Oh yes, lets see... melt shields, die on armour, hmmm

"You can maintain the overheat"
Right, because it's not like they're shooting at us ... RiiiIIiight? I'll just do 58 dmg per shot to armour, at a slower rate than a rail rifle, until they die eventually, who cares about me? i'm invincible.

Please think game not paper

Kage...I partially agree.

It is a counter-intuitive mechanic, no question with that.

My concern is that if you lower the DPS even further (it's already the lowest of the standard rifles) it quickly gets unable to kill at range either.

The path is very narrow to make the RR acceptable to those who get killed by it often and making it pretty useless.

I'm not even sure if the RR even needs a nerf at all, though if it does then I think something like more kick and spread while NOT aiming down sight could also be an alternative.

The charge time is considered negligible because of
1) The already short time of RR reload
2) The Caldari Assault Bonus

Whe these stack the reload which often comprises other weapons, does not comprimise the RR, instead the charge time does.
Ot requires skill to when and where to stop amd start firing, but in short the RR works best when fired continously.

You will notice in my graph the caldari will most definitely have general purpose weapons. The DPS of the Breach RR is only mildly lower than its current (but it gets a range increase) it out DPS's the Assault Rifles at about 50m , excluding changes to accuracy, but it also has a shorter range version in the ARR.

This is the problem with the current state of rifles they only 'feel' balanced because we only use a few select rifles.

As someone who has Proto Amarr Assault and Viziam Laser Rifle... the laser is not a support weapon. I melt heavies with the damn thing . The reason why people compare the two weapons is because they have the greatest range of rifles (other than the sniper rifle, which is not a combat weapon). The Laser is balanced as it has to deal damage over time, and wastes ammunition when doing so, and has a hefty amount of feadback damage when it overheats. The rail rifle doesn't have a penalty for using it when it does such stupendous damage at any range.

To explain why the rail rifle does more damage over range than up close: As the projectile travels a greater distance, it gains more kinetic force and velocity that is not achieved when first fired (for whatever reason scientifically); however, it does eventually lose force over a certain distance (the effective to absolute range).

The HMG is supposed to be able to shred you. Heavies are the staple of defense and should require more effort to take down. If heavies could chase you down easily and jump heights higher than their kneecaps, then we could talk.

not possible. projectiles start losing kinetic energy the moment theyre fired. friction against the air cause the projectile to lose kinetic energy of time and distance. gravity would cause an increase in kinetic energy, but only up to a certain point where again the air would keep it from gaining anymore kinetic energy. even if you fire the weapon in the space where theres a vacuum, you wouldnt gain anymore more kinetic energy than when you first fire the weapon. without the air theres no friction and so it would maintain its kinetic energy until it collided with something.

scientifically its impossible that a weapon gain kinetic energy unless some outside force is applied, such as gravity.

Monkey...a few points:

1) I believe the reload time on the Rail Rifle is the longest of any light weapon...you say it's already "short".

2) The Cal Assault bonus again has nothing to do with charge time so I'm confused at why you bring it up in that context.

3) The graphs - Tthere is no such thing as a "Breach" Rail Rifle; took me a minute to cypher through that and I'm really not seeing where you got the DPS value for the RR on the first graph (or perhaps I'm just having difficult time reading it). It also appears to me that your graph may not be accounting for the DPS degradation from the charge mechanic.

As you will see in the graph (assuming falloff is linear), this is taken care of.
The Assault Rifles still out DPS the Breach Rifles for a decent amount of time.

In the Balanced version (assuming projectile profile is changed to match explosive) The minmatar and Amarr are ALWAYS the best race per variant when taking on Armour or Shield only tanked suits respectively.

While the gallante and caldari work best when the ratio of tank is closer to 50%
Burst weapons only start outclassing assaults when used upon the correct tank type and a decent profiency level.

Since the Difference in range and DPS between races is negligible, popularity is swayed less by which has the best DPS/pm value and which one suits the player best.

Furthermore it suits the lore better without turning it into spreadsheets and auto-fire

Thanks for the reply , but the rail gun projectile is not really physical, it's a electromagnetic round fired through a series of rails on the rifle (hence the name). Is there anything that could affect the increase of velocity and/or kinetic damage over a set distance? Maybe a magnetic attraction to dropsuits? Let's say that the projectile is already traveling at a great speed, so up close the magnetic attraction has no additive to damage, but at a distance, if accurate, can potentially increase damage output.
Thoughts?

To be honest, I think the rail rifle is better served as a tactical rifle instead of a breach. Caldari are all about making each shot count, and the tactical rifle does that perfectly. It also has a charge up on it already. All we have to do is change the charge to be like the charge sniper rifle. Give it more range than it has now, perhaps out to 90m. Give it more damage so that it can kill a medium suit in about 3-4 shots.

It turns it into a mini sniper rifle almost, forcing you to pick your shots and try and keep your range advantage, while its counter is getting in close, where the other rifles deal higher DPs and have an easier time landing hits in close quarters.

Because as the reload time gets shorter, the charge time remains constant.

Charge + TTE + Reload == TTE + Reload

The charge basically move the DPS loss from reloading to the front. If you see what I mean, therefore shortening the caldari reload offsets the drawbacks of the charge.

The Breach Rail Rifle and the Rail Rifle are the same thing, it is categorised as a breach weapon, as the combat is a burst amd the scrambler a tac. It's just easier to refer to it as a breach to show it is meant to be long range.