EVE New Citizens Q&A

I fly missile boats, (breacher, kestrel, condor wub) and find that fitting ewar/tank usually runs me right up against my powergrid. I never realized that subvariations between turret weapons actually have different tracking and such.

It's, again, about scenario. DPS in itself isn't really that important, it's about how much of that dps you can apply to the intended target. This has to do with tracking, angular velocity (orbiting) and target size. Against bigger targets it'll work fine to fit 200mm but against another frigate (or against drones) it might not be, depending on orbiting speeds (angular velocity).


It gets more obvious when you don't use a frigate as an example. If you fly a cruiser and fit the biggest cruiser guns it will completely miss a short orbit frigate, even if it would be webbed. So if you choose to defend better against frigates then you can choose to not fit the biggest guns but go for smaller ones instead as it will increase the chance of hitting. In and of itself that still won't be enough but if you start stacking your chances (webs, neuts, manual piloting AND smaller guns) then it might make it work.

It's the difference between an assault rifle and a CQC weapon; Assaults are great, they have more range and more stopping power but not in cramped rooms where you have to fight around corners and need to have quick reaction times. CQC lack the oomph and all that but in that scenario they just perform better.

"High damage, high range" comes at the cost of tougher fittings (lower tank and other stuff), worse tracking, more cap usage, or other assorted things. It's not a one-way choice; it's a trade-off. Sometimes fitting smaller guns is worth it if you can control the fight and break the other guy's bigger guns.


There are some design issues around ammo variety for short range guns. For example, going from Multifrequency to Standard means (ballparking, not real numbers) an increase from 3500m to 5000m range, but a 50% decrease in damage. Since that 1500m (42%) envelope gain isn't really worth the hugely reduced damage, everyone tells you to fit Multifrequency and deal with it. If you compare it to beam lasers though, that 42% gain is much larger. If you go from 13 km range (barely out of scram range) to 18.5 km, that may be a huge advantage in a fight, despite the loss in raw damage.

The same parallel applies for blasters/railguns and non-antimatter ammo, and autocannons/artillery and non-EMP/PP/Fusion ammo.

The situation of long range ammo being a bad choice isn't helped by the fact that the T2 ammos contain spectacularly good long range ammos for short range weapons (Scorch, Null, Barrage) that completely eclipse anything that long range T1 ammos can do on the same weapons at those ranges.


It's because of how the metagame works. Your ammo choices for short range weapons boil down into 3 choices:

1. T1/faction short range ammo - great damage at short range, little to no damage at long range.
2. T1/faction mid-long range ammo - poor damage at all ranges.
3. T2 long range ammo - poor damage at short range, good damage at long range.

Since range control is usually key to winning a fight, when you have range control you want to either pick option 1 or 3. Never 2.

As far as guns go, I should address your next point:


That's why you're not seeing small guns used. Destroyers have tons of fitting room compared to frigates, and they have massive tracking bonuses that make frigate-sized guns track much better. That nullifies both disadvantages of fitting bigger guns: bad fittings and bad tracking. What you're left with is guns with great range and damage, that will tear everything apart. There are very few instances where destroyers have to not fit the largest guns, and they usually involve very tanky fits, where the CPU/Powergrid is too tight to put big guns on.

If you look at frigate fits, and especially on frigates that have good non-pure-firepower roles (like being especially tanky, or fast, or having special ewar), you will more often see dual light pulse lasers or gatling pulse lasers instead of small focused pulse lasers, or 125mm/150mm autocannons instead of 200mm autocannons.

Basically

bigger guns = less tank
more tank = smaller guns

You have to find the right balance or any other you want to look for.

Thank you for your bragging, it's really useful. Much more useful than, say, explaining how and why stuff works by using examples and exaggerating a bit in order to explain the possible issues. Well done.

Eh. Not sure tbh. Neutrons are still gonna track substantially better than torm's lasers (0.47 vs 0.30, 0.35 with dual light instead of focuseds), if Atron's missing while orbiting it might just be wiser to reduce speed a bit and find that sweet spot where you can hit and he can't. If things aren't going well, Atron can still disengage easily being nimble as ****.

More so, not fitting neutrons on an atron gimps the ship's bonus to falloff, which is truly exceptionally good with null loaded neutrons.







Fair enough.

Really, the cases are a multitude. It just slowly comes to a pilot with experience.

None the less, a few pointers:
just because you're a brawler, it does not mean you HAVE to orbit @500 and be done with it. In many many MANY cases, you don't want to orbit in fact. But it all depends on your ship and your target's ship, fits bonuses and so on.

One example will make it clear.

Atron, neutrons, vs slasher with 125 or 150s, and a TD.

Speed is roughly the same. Damage greatly favors the Atron. Tracking favors the slasher. Tanks are similar.

If you orbit, you're not gonna hit anything, he will, you're gonna die. What do you want to do in this case? Make it so transversal is as low as possible. How do you that? By flying manually in a fixed direction, he's most likely gonna orbit you, and speed being the same, he won't, he will just actually follow you while receiving 200 dps in his face. If he's smart, he's gonna burn away from you and switch his TD to optimal script, trying to scram kite you, so you need to keep an eye on distance, his speed, transversal, and if you get a hint of him doing so, you change direction and approach him, and so on.

Conversely, if he starts the fight at range, with optimal TD loaded, trying to scram kite you, you OH your AB and burn straight for him to get as close as possible and melt his face. If you manage to do so, watch out, if he starts orbiting, do as told above. If you don't manage to get close, burn away from him, and try rubberbanding him into him burning again towards when he change direction to be at his preferred range.



Really, the only times a neutron blaster frig should have issues hitting stuff inside their range is against double web fits, but those are gonna be just as deadly even if you're fitting ions or electrons, actually even more so if they're scramkiting you, making you suffer even more for ions/elecs shorter range

Oh my. Someone doesn't know the guide http://www.hostile.dk/files/eve/eve-tracking101.swf

Go ahead and try the gatling pulse small laser 1, and swap optimals between -50% for multi and 0% for standard. You'll actually see that at higher transversal velocity the gatling pulse laser LOSES damage output at the optimal for multi, compared to the optimal for standard, even with the extra damage. The extra damage only works if people are moving slowly, since the loss of optimal runs into tracking speed/enemy transverse speed territory.

A 46.65% hit chance at 2.13km for 4.2 dmg/s with a 7 EM 5 therm crystal with a target of 500 transverse velocity, vs 81.71% HC, 4.02km, 4.9 dmg/s, on the same 30 Sig radius target.

With these numbers run, the standard comes out the winner not only because of more damage even with less damaging ammo, but also a higher hit percentage and much less cap use.

Now obviously if you can keep someone still in your optimal, that helps a lot and the shorter range ammo is king.