Player Features and Ideas Discussion

An interesting little bit about turret balance is that while tracking speed plays a heavy factor into which size guns within a given class (example would be quad light beam lasers vs heavy beam lasers), sig radius doesn't come into it despite being larger or smaller weapons.

What do you think would be the advantages and disadvantages about reducing turret sig radius on smaller-caliber weapons in the game? I could see it benefitting 3-tiered weapons like beam lasers and railguns, and would give people more reasons to fit them as the lower sig would allow for better damage application against smaller targets, especially on the medium and large levels. Thoughts?

Why not both?

Example would be Heavy beams would go to 150m, and quad lights would go down to 100m. Two-tiered guns could split it so Focused Pulses in this example would be 115m and Heavy Pulse would be 135m sig.

Its not really that obscure of a change for most people. It would actually be a good comparison between RLML/RHML and turrets. RLML are frigate sized missiles on a larger hull. Why cant the smallest tier turret have slightly better sig resolution? The biggest frigate ac is 200mm. But dual 180s track worse, which are 20mm smaller. Their base tracking could be worse, but sig resolution should be lower.

I think this could be interesting, but base tracking might need to be nerfed slighty to compensate.

Also, how does increasing a target's sig not help sig resolution? If a mwd frig/dessie has a sig of 310, and we add a TP, increasing sig over 400m. Then, assuming my tracking can keep up, my BS sized weapons should apply well to a frig. In fact they do.

Ive flown bait tornados fit with dual 425s and killed plenty of frigates. Paired with TP and falloff bonus on hull, i can apply to mwd frigs fairly well. Even kill them at 2-5km by using transversal (webs/tp). So yes boosting a targets sig does affect how well you track it.

Reducing turret signature resolution IS the same thing as increasing tracking. So this would be kinda pointless, you could just improve the tracking and it'd have more feedback to the player. The impact of resolution is rather obscure to the casual layman.

The merit that a ships signature radius has is that it makes you harder to hit without you having to go faster. Going faster means you screw up your own tracking, because angular speed is relative. Whilst sig radius is absolute. Hence changing sig radius makes sense.

To be completely fair, I have most often used missiles and small turrets for the majority of my pvp activities; I understand how missile damage application works very well, but I'm not as familiar with how it worked with guns, especially on the larger scale. I had assumed it was somewhat similar to missiles, but getting walloped by sniper battleships and ABCs is a thing, soo....

I will admit my knowledge is lacking a bit in that department, but I do know it would be a good thing. Also Aria, didn't you just contradict yourself? You said tracking and sig radius are the same, but you said just after that that sig radius deals with absolute damage modifiers instead of tracking speed. Can you please clarify?

Ahh ok that clears things up a bit, especially with how sniper boats work. I will stick by my assessment with the lowered sig since the turrets that benefit in this instance would have shorter base ranges anyway, which falls in line what you've explained.

There was a thread a while back that suggested to remove signature resolution of guns entirely and truncate the value into tracking.
As in , a 0.5rad/s tracking small gun (40 res) would become 20rad/s with resolution of 1.

The problem with changing signature resolution of guns is that it acts as a normaliser - comparing 0.5rad/s tracking to 0.4 and 0.6 angular speed is easy, its faster and slower respectively.

But comparing 20 to 0.4 and 0.6 is difficult. The magnitude is larger but you can't tell which is slower or faster.

Ergo, don't touch turret sig resolution. What would be a good idea is to add to the new opportunity system and describe how big guns against small targets affect the tracking, numerically. Which is mildly trivial (Large turrets are on average 3 times slower against medium and 10 times slower against small targets than the tracking implies).

Yes, already exists but only for missiles.

See signature.

http://www.hostile.dk/files/eve/eve-tracking101.swf

That is indeed the case, doesn't mean these lower tier Battleship & (Battle)cruiser turrets can't be differentiated in the same way as Rapid Missile Launchers are, and it brings built-in defense against being Tracking Disrupted.

The sub-2.5 km deadzones against cruisers and upto 10 km against frigates/destroyers, on turret Battleships that can easily be created and exploited are hilarious - Eve tracking doesn't account for the dynamic signature radius, which the targets do experience as a function of range in the real world, or any logical system.

At all V skills and on unbonused hull,

A Mega Pulse laser II has 400 m Signature resolution and 0.042 Tracking.
A Heavy Pulse laser II has 125 m Signature resolution and 0.102 Tracking, or 3.2 times better Sig res and 2.42 times better tracking.

It it arguable whether the potential paper DPS and extra range offsets for that, but as the history has shown - against T2 and T3 cruisers it doesn't. Battleship weapons with default 300 metre (125 * 2.42), or 350 m (125 * 2.81, which is the average between these two ratios) Signature resolutions would have been far more balanced and reasonable.

Accounting for the speeds that the smaller ships can achieve - dead in the water.

Then there's the point of drone Battleships - unbonused Ogre II have have 0.54 Tracking and 400 m Sig res, and as the targets generally try to flee, or otherwise maneuver - the drones are always tracking optimally, and are completely independent of the host ship's range, speed, or direction.

The Light blue bar in the chart in my signature is drone PvP damage, Orange is Energy turrets, Yellow - Projectiles, Dark blue - Hybrids.

Welcome to Cruisers & Drones Online.

Pretty sure the premise of the question is flawed. Signature Resolution, though it is static, is still important in the turret damage formula.