I heard from another player today that Reload stance does not affect lances. After some testing, they did not appear to fire any faster when in Reload stance, so I think he was correct. This is very confusing for me, but after studying the tooltip for Reload stance I think I'm even more confused now. The part of the tooltip for Reload stance that refers to weapons reads:

-Weapons and maneuver skills reload speed +25%
-Standard weapons rate of fire +40%

First of all, I think it's very confusing that Lances are not considered "weapons". The Reload tooltip should absolutely specify that it does not apply to Lance weapons (or at least whatever part of it doesn't apply, if some of it does).

So what exactly is the difference between rate of fire and reload speed? I only see each weapon has a "reload time" value, so I assume if the weapon is not a lance that this value is reduced by either 25% or 40% (not sure which is intended).

Can anyone help me to understand all this?

The tooltip is, very bad.

The 25% weapon part refers to abilities with the weapon tag that appear at the bottom bar.

E. G. Starpulse has its cooldown reduced by 25% in reload. If you look at Starpulse, it has the text 'weapon' under it similar to how the other buttons are labeled 'command' or 'boarding actions.'

Other weapons affected are torpedoes and possibly Nova Cannons.

The 40% reload refers to all macro basic weapon systems on ships. Weapons that don't have specific ability buttons and are not Lances.

@cowgomoo Ahhh that makes a lot more sense. Thank you! It's poorly written tooltips like this that make a game much harder to learn for new players.

They noted the lances not being affected by reload in the patch notes but didn't update the tool tip.

Lances are not standard weapons...not that anyone would know this from just reading that

Lance are standard weapon that's why before, reload stance effected lances but due to multiplayer balancing they nerf it so it only effects macro weapon now but forgot to update the tooltips.

It never affected lances, not even in the closed betas

This was from their launch day notes.

"Reload stance candency bonus now only applies to macro weapons"

This may be why a lot of people had issues, since this states that the bonus did apply to more than macro weapons. Which should be lances.