EVE New Citizens Q&A

Oh and angular velocity. I've figured out what transversal is and how to use that info in a fight but why is angular important and how do I best employ that info?

Thanx in advance

Spiraling in is used when flying a smaller ship to close distance on a ship with turrets which are larger than your ship, while maintaining reasonably high transversal. If you fly straight toward another ship, then you have 0 transversal and their larger guns will pummel you because they have no tracking issues.

You do this by piloting manually. Point your camera directly at the target, and then double-click in space halfway between the center of your screen (the target) and the edge of your screen. Repeat and readjust until you get near your preferred orbit distance, then just orbit.

Do note this is a moot point vs. missile ships since missiles don't track - instead you want to keep your speed as high as possible at all times. You can also use this technique to somewhat mitigate incoming damage from long-range weapons like railguns and artillery, even vs. ships with guns matching your ship's size, as their tracking is poor.

Dunno wtf spiraling is supposed to be, unless you're referring to approaching someone with a series of orbits of decreasing radius (well, de facto, you generally achieve the effect manually), which is just a way to keep your angular up while you're approaching them.

Angular velocity is the rate at which guns/sensors/whatever on a fixed point have to swivel to stay pointed at you. If you draw a vector from ship A to ship B, take the highest speed vector within the normal plane (referred to as "transversal velocity" in game), and divide it by the distance between A and B you'll get a rate of angle change in the obvious units (radians/time, in this case usually expressed in radians/sec). A turret on ship A has to be able to turn at least that fast to be able to hit ship B, and as B's angular velocity approaches the tracking limit of A's turret it will miss more frequently.

Note that since the servers don't assume ship B is banking perfectly to lower their calculation cost, ship A will typically have an angular velocity from ship B's perspective as well, even if A "isn't moving" according to the game grid. Note also that the calculation is also simplified to usually use the game's grid as a reference instead of actually using your ship's orientation (basically ignored by the game in general, actually) so don't expect it to match your hand calculations of relative reference frame exactly.

The short version of how you use this in combat is to keep your angular velocity high enough that your enemy can't hit you and low enough that you can still hit them, generally called "getting under the guns" since shortening the distance between you and the enemy and orbiting them is the easiest way to push this number high. It's especially popular with tackle ships since propulsion jamming isn't subject to angular concerns so you don't have to worry about losing your own weapons. Expect your opponent to counter by using drones or missiles (less subject to angular issues), an energy vampire/neutralizer (no angular miss factors at all), or their own propulsion jamming to slow/incapacitate you for a death-stroke.

Transversal velocity / distance, I assume you mean.

Zig and zag.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvfhVXbMgc8

Fast forward to about 7:20 for just spiraling but the whole video is worth watching.