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Titan changes - update

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CCP Greyscale
C C P
C C P Alliance
#441 - 2012-03-30 20:31:01 UTC  |  Edited by: CCP Greyscale
CynoNet Two wrote:

You told me at the weekend you didn't want to put any damage cap on turrets because it would 'make them too much like missiles', and now you're talking about turning all XL turrets into projectiles - relying on falloff for damage.

Can we go back and revisit dropping ewar immunity? While not perfect, EW is the logical solution to this issue provided supercaps don't recieve too high a bonus to warp core strength. The issue was not so much that coordinating EW is too hard, but that coordinating EW alongside coordinating 50+ points of tackle was impossible.
With a warp core strength in the region of 5-10 it becomes viable to need fewer ships holding down titans while more ships focus on EW. It also means that temporary loss of EW does not immediately compromise the tackle.

Remove EW immunity,
Set max targets to 3,
Keep the -50% tracking change.


Everything is projectiles - doesn't the thing you're suggesting get us into roughly the same place, though?
[edit] Wait... that was the other guy, never mind :/ Yeah, it does risk doing that if we have to push it to extremes, although we could also mitigate that by altering the graph shape for different weapons... probably ends up being too unintuitive to be really viable, but the current falloff system isn't exactly a shining model of clarity.

Removing EW immunity - sell it to me hard Smile

Cid Tazer wrote:


Unfortunately not having the time to run the numbers myself, but are you satisfied with how the tracking formula disregards signature resolution as transversal approaches 0?

It appears to me on initial inspection that as transversal approaches 0, the turret to target signature ratio has less and less influence on the to hit chance. Would it make more sense to add it as a range modifier so that the turret -> target sig resolution ratio would be modifier on range as opposed to transversal speed?


Off the bat, my biggest concern with that is that it means you don't know what the effective range of your weapon is. It's already not totally intuitive what you can and can't track speed-wise, and I'm not immediately convinced that adding another variable dimension to this problem is a good idea. Clearly we have issues with the current system when we're dealing with low-transversal situations, though.
CCP Greyscale
C C P
C C P Alliance
#442 - 2012-03-30 20:31:17 UTC
steave435 wrote:
CCP Greyscale wrote:
CynoNet Two wrote:
CCP Greyscale wrote:
I see what you're getting at, I think. Can this not be mitigated by just adjusting the falloff formula*, alongside potentially adjusting the general balance between optimal and falloff

*As in, the attribute "falloff" that currently exists on turrets etc, not sig-based damage reductions

How would this affect anything within optimal range? Blasters and Pulses would still be capable of alpha'ing anything within 70km with ease before their falloff even kicks in.


Hence the bit about potentially adjusting the current balance between optimal and falloff. We already have a mechanic to make you hit less at long range; if that's not working, I'd prefer to fix that mechanic rather than introduce another one alongside it. If we don't like that you can do 70k optimal on pulses, we have the technology to just reduce that number to a range that we do like, and kick the falloff up to compensate. If we don't like the way damage drops off as a result, we can adjust the falloff formula to do whatever we want it to do Smile

But doesn't that take you back to having to change an entire mechanic, which will then significantly affect the balance of all other ships as well? And if you're gonna start messing with that, then changing the falloff formula to fix a tracking problem rather then changing the tracking formula doesn't make sense.

In addition to that, if it's just the falloff formula being changed, then it's going to reduce damage at range by roughly the same amount against ALL types of ships, including capitals, not only sub-caps

If you do have time to re-work the formulas, what I'd like to see is separating tracking from the guns signature.
Run a script to divide the tracking of every gun by its current sig res, and then set the variable for the guns signature in the tracking formula to a constant 1. Since signature is simply a modifier, this will have absolutely no effect what so ever
For example, a BS sized gun with 400 sig shooting at a frigate with a sig of 40
Today, the BS has a tracking of 400x, but since the guns signature is 10 times higher then the friagtes, its tracking get reduced to 10% of its base value. 400x * 10% = 40x
With this change, its tracking would only be x base, but since the guns signature is considered to be 1, it gets multiplied by the target ships signature, in this case 40. x * 40 = 40x

So why make a change that has absolutely no effect?
Well, 2 reasons really
1. It makes it easier to understand and more intuitive. Currently, a newbie will assume that the gun with the highest tracking track the best, without realizing that the signature radius can change that completely
2. It frees up the signature stat to be used for something else.

So, what could it be used for?
To give guns that need it a maximum damage potential against smaller ships. A new step would be added in the damage taken formula, comparing the sig res of the gun with the sig of the target. If the target is larger, do nothing, but if the target is smaller, reduce the damage taken by the ratio of the 2 signatures. For example
An Avatar is firing at a Tempest. The XL lasers that the Avatar is using has a sig res of 1000, and the Tempest has a signature of 340, so the sig ratio is 340/1000 = 0.34. Modify the damage the Tempest would normally have taken by that value
However, the Tempest firing at the Avatar would have a 400 sig gun firing at a almost 16 000 sig target, so since the target is larger then the gun, it does normal damage
Result: Even if the Avatar hits, it's doing 66% less damage to the Tempest then it would normally do, but firing at the appropriate sized target still does the same damage as it does now

But this would change the sub capital balance as well...
Not necessarily. Have the script that adjust the tracking to the new values also reduce the sig res of all non-XL turrets to 1
Since it is no longer considered in the tracking formula and there are no ships with a signature of less then 1, they will track exactly like they do now and there are no targets that they'd get a damage penalty against

Why is this good?
1. It's a balancing tool. Currently, it's very hard to balance tracking since it's almost impossible to get a tracking value that allows the big ship to hit the small ship sometimes, without also having that hit result in the smaller ship dying almost instantly. This mechanic makes it possible to have the tracking formula decide what types of ships you can hit at all, and you can be pretty generous with that since you also have a second formula to decide how much damage is taken when a hit actually occur.
2. It opens up for new ship roles. For example, you can have 1 BS with low tracking and low sig res. It will be able to hit BS and maybe BCs for full damage, but can't do anything to cruisers, and then you can have an another BS with high tracking and high sig res that can hit anything but will do very little damage to anything smaller then a BS. You'd then have to choose between a BS that can fight only BC and BS and a BS that can fight anything, but is less effective against any given target.


Note to self: re-read this on Monday.
Nova Fox
Novafox Shipyards
#443 - 2012-03-30 21:24:41 UTC  |  Edited by: Nova Fox
Would having a dynamic signature resolution help with the situation?

Currently there doesnt seem to be a dynamic that changes the area where shots are placed in at optimal as far as I am aware not even skills or implants or rigs let alone modules.

I purpose the faster you swing the sniper weapons outside thier default around the larger the resolution as you are sacificing stability to get shots in the general area.

Inversly stabilizing the sniper weapons to have slower tracking might increase thier chance to hit within the area but makes them less likley to hit closer and speedier targets.

As for the shotgun weapons make it so that streching out thier distance would have similar effects. The further you try to make them reach out the less accurate they are.

However make them closer ranged and it will make it a surgical weapon.

Implimentation should stick with modules for now. Long term include skills and ammo into the factor.

Dust 514's CPM 1 Iron Wolf Saber Eve mail me about Dust 514 issues.

Tsalaroth
Brutor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#444 - 2012-03-30 21:32:47 UTC
CCP Greyscale wrote:
Note to self: re-read this on Monday.


It's a darned good idea!
I'm Down
Macabre Votum
Northern Coalition.
#445 - 2012-03-30 21:33:55 UTC  |  Edited by: I'm Down
CCP Greyscale wrote:
I'm Down wrote:
CCP Greyscale wrote:

I'm Down wrote:

Mate, this does not work. You can't fix the problem with a tweak to a broken system, you need to fix the system. The reason we can find ways to exploit the system is because it's not built correctly. I can already come up with a way to abuse this system simply because it's not addressing the issue at hand, which is range affecting tracking.

I'd love to have a live chat with you sometime because discussing this on the forums in not very effective. But needless to say, buffing DD and / or trying to work the game within the current tracking mechanics are both horrible ideas for numerous reasons. You just need to grit your teeth and actually fix the core problem.

Also let me point you to this very old post now that was aimed at the first round of titan changes and balance, got huge positive player feedback including the CSM chair, and actually addresses the problem of stacking supers on grid to counter the one natural counter... dreads.

http://community.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1014819

Although, I would make sure that the cap requirement is above 40% to prevent jump in and DD instantly attempts.
I would also make sure that siege dreads got a reduction in effects, but unsieged dreads were vulnerable.

Makes the DD near impossible to stack, penalizes huge super numbers to support a titan who chooses to DD, and acutally makes the titan more of a supportive role in fights.

And it actually ushers in the age of new tech 3 modules and ships.


Ok, hit me with the abuse cases then Smile We don't have time to "fix the system" right now, but we want to tone titans down ASAP. If tweaks can hold us over for a while, I'll take tweaks.


The issue with tweaking falloff is that you don't adress the tracking. If I can find the link later, I'll post it, but about 2 years ago in an IT alliance vs MM/NC fight, Sala Cameron got somewhere near 110 kill mails and almost all of them were singular damage by his titan. He wasn't even using close range weapons... He was using a Ragna with Artilleries.

ALL he used was tracking computers and damage mods in the fight. No painters, no webs. He understood that the tracking formula as it is now puts so little emphasis on sig of a ship compared to it's transversal velocity, that he simply waited til their orbit alignment dropped their trans. velocity down to nearly 0. In eve combat, this happens all the time unless you have 1 fixed object to orbit that is the only object you are being shot by.

Scale titan fights up to 20 + and you will always have at least half the titans that can find this magic moment to blap with. When you have tons of targets to chose from of all ranges of skill, you're easily going to be able to reduce an enemy's fleet power quickly. Toss in web effects, and you make their margin of error drastically smaller.

The issue is that at range, the tracking drastically increases and the sig never changes. Greater difference in gun sig to ship sig at range means a greately reduced need to for the defending pilot to have a perfect orbital path and a much much smaller window for those titan pilots to find that hole where traversal velocity drops close enough to 0 where it overwhelms the sig.

So if you affect the gun sig as range increases and then reduce titan tracking.... both in cooperation actually make titans useless against support under most circumstances.


This is the same reason why pulse ships are so popular in game today. If you take away drakes and tengus, you'll probably see Amarr as one of the primary fleet concepts in 0.0. This is due to their high tracking + high range giving them some silly amount of hit potential on any ship class in game because of range and range alone.

As for the DD stacking with multiple mods, you can look around page 18 of this thread for that explanation.


I see what you're getting at, I think. Can this not be mitigated by just adjusting the falloff formula*, alongside potentially adjusting the general balance between optimal and falloff?

*As in, the attribute "falloff" that currently exists on turrets etc, not sig-based damage reductions



No, falloff only affects your raw chance to hit, not ability to hit. It might lower a ships dps, but not it's ability to hit targets. When you're talking about a titan with 10-15000 dps, even at falloff, it's still able to project 7,000 dps. It does not make a pilot miss simply because his target is actively trying to avoid damage by moving and carrying a small sig.

The point is, pilots need to be punished for having 0 speed or stupid approachs. But pilots who are intentionally trying to fly well should be rewarded more. The current system doesn't allow this and provides no good options for how to avoid damage other than stay out of the reach of guns. There is no way to consistently avoid damage while in optimal or falloff, especially with blobs.

There needs to be a reward to fighting in the enemy optimal, but piloting well.
Ganthrithor
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#446 - 2012-03-30 21:47:11 UTC  |  Edited by: Ganthrithor
Regarding all this formula-manipulation: I'm bad at mathematics, but please don't do anything that would affect subcap turrets and their uses. I see that you say in your post that your changes wouldn't really change anything for subcaps, which is good. What I wouldn't want is a scenario where, for example, I can no longer blap an interceptor that is MWDing at my battleship with zero transversal.

Basically, stay away from any changes to gun hit mechanics that straight up reduce damage applied by larger guns to smaller targets. Doing this would make it too easy to fly tacklers (by, for example, turning flying interceptors into "turn on MWD, approach target" rather than the current mechanics where you need to manually pilot to keep transversal up, etc).


Regarding removing supercap EWAR immunity: I'm all for it, with a couple of provisions:

1. Supercaps get at least plus ~10 WCS. Remember that scrams count for two points. Tackling a supercap should require intention-- a random passerby shouldn't be able to do it solo, but a small gang / trap making a concerted effort should.

2. Work out some way of ensuring that POS ewar modules cant tackle supercaps, or at the very least, un-manned modules can't / won't. I don't think supercaps being unable to gank on cyno beacons would be a positive change for the game, as it would make blind jumping to beacons too safe (it's already pretty safe, since a player can blind-jump and log-off during their invulnerability timer if there are hostiles on grid).

I really like the idea of substituting EWAR vulnerability for a tracking nerf, as this would allow XL gun platforms to continue working as-is in solo / small gang / ganking scenarios (where there is no EWAR on the field) while dealing with the problem of subcap blapping in fleet scenarios (where hostiles would presumably bring the appropriate EWAR ships to a fight). Any solution that manages the blob-related problems while leaving the ships' solo capabilities intact is one I'm in favor of.
Nova Fox
Novafox Shipyards
#447 - 2012-03-30 21:48:00 UTC
The optimal vs falloff suggestion would make some winmatar rage I belive. Though its hard to measure the results before hand. Then again this may be the reel back they been needing to be more inline with everyone else.

Dust 514's CPM 1 Iron Wolf Saber Eve mail me about Dust 514 issues.

Shin Dari
Covert Brigade
#448 - 2012-03-30 21:48:49 UTC  |  Edited by: Shin Dari
CCP Greyscale wrote:
Shin Dari wrote:
Dear CCP Grayscale, could you please comment on the idea of removing XL weapons and compensating for this with a cycle boosted doomsday weapon.


Would require us to do an upgrade script to remove all the suddenly-illegal weapons on patch day, which introduces too much overhead for it to be a viable option for this release.
Why remove them? Isn't easier to have the client put any the illegal weapons offline, preventing their use.

Edit: During patch downtime put all XL weapons offline. After patch the game(client or server) should check if a module is legal before allowing it to be brought online.
Ganthrithor
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#449 - 2012-03-30 21:53:01 UTC  |  Edited by: Ganthrithor
Why would you want to emphasize doomsdays, oh god. DDs are such a god-awful mechanic in the first place.

Hey Greyscale-- have you guys looked into nerfing in-combat refitting off of SMAs at all? I really do think that it's Titans' ability to swap from a sensorboosted / tracking comp / damage mod setup to a tanking fit mid-battle that makes them overpowered in groups. When they fit for tracking they don't have that large of a tank, and could be killed fairly easily by a large subcap / normal cap fleet. Alternatively, if they fit a tanking setup, they're much harder to kill but have difficulty tracking subcaps.

I'd imagine that if Titan pilots were forced to choose between a tank and the ability to hit subcaps, you'd see far fewer tracking-Titans on the field.
Shin Dari
Covert Brigade
#450 - 2012-03-30 21:58:00 UTC
Ganthrithor wrote:
Why would you want to emphasize doomsdays, oh god. DDs are such a god-awful mechanic in the first place.
I find that the DDs are becoming balanced.

And a Titan without a DD is like a Bike without a front wheel. One might was well remove all the titans and boost the dreadnaughts.
Ganthrithor
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#451 - 2012-03-30 22:02:16 UTC  |  Edited by: Ganthrithor
Shin Dari wrote:
Ganthrithor wrote:
Why would you want to emphasize doomsdays, oh god. DDs are such a god-awful mechanic in the first place.
I find that the DDs are becoming balanced.

And a Titan without a DD is like a Bike without a front wheel. One might was well remove all the titans and boost the dreadnaughts.


They already have ~50m ehp tanks, a jump bridge they can use to fling fleets around, the best gang bonuses in the game, and a rack of giant ******* cannons that allow them to do 6-10k DPS. Do you really need a gimmicky, skill-less "pres butan, explode someone's hard-earned capship" button as well?

I really don't understand where support for DDs comes from. They were dumb mechanic when they allowed titans to one-shot fleets of subcaps, and they're still dumb now that they allow them to one-shot peoples' caps. How about sticking to weapons whose effects can be mitigated through proper piloting skills, like pretty much every other kind of offensive module in the game (with the exception of missiles, I guess).

DDs are especially ******** when you reflect on the fact that at least one of the ship classes they're designed to be used against are forced to literally immobilize themselves to fight. Even if you're not tackled and see the DD coming, you still can't warp out-- you just have to sit there and eat it.

Also, keep in mind that Titan blobs are literally so big these days that they can alpha other supercaps with their DDs pretty regularly. Why does "enter field in supercap, get one-shotted in less than 20 seconds" seem a little imbalanced to me?
Creat Posudol
German Oldies
#452 - 2012-03-30 22:09:46 UTC  |  Edited by: Creat Posudol
steave435 wrote:
[ a very long but excellent post as already quoted by CCP Greyscale on this page ]

Note 1: I'm posting this in regards to general mechanics, not just Titans, but the proposed solution would neatly fix it all in one go
Note 2: I'm pretty sure the extensiveness of this change would step far outside the "quick fix" [tm] required for titans atm, but I hope this can be implemented in the next few months at some point

That suggestion simply would fix the hard-to-comprehend nature of the intertwining of various signatures (resolution on the gun, radius on the ship) with the tracking. It would also decouple the tracking from signature, fixing the imo faulty logic resulting from the current system

How I would interpret the current system and why it doesn't make sense (to me):
If a gun has a signature of about 125m (medium hybrid) trying to hit a 50m signature target (frig) I understand this to mean that my beam/projectile/charge has an effect size/diameter of 125m, meaning it is much larger than the frig (note: that doesn't mean the gun is also that big). At least this is a possible interpretation of these numbers, even though it's not represented like this by the graphics in game. This would mean that I shouldn't be able to do full damage to a frigate with those guns, ever. Part of the shot would always miss it as the shot itself is larger than the target

Why on earth can I hit a cruiser orbiting me at distance X, traveling speed Z, but not a frigate that does the exact same thing? This is not intuitive, either the tracking of the gun can keep up (meaning turn fast enough) or it can't. It makes no sense (or very little) that this depends on the targets size. The only possible explanation for this would be that because of the small target the turret has to adjust it's angle much more precisely to the target in order to hit. Then distance should be a factor though, and it should be harder to hit if further away, not easier (due to smaller transversal)

There is also no reason why I hit a frigate with a bs (50 km away) as long as it's not moving

What the proposed rules accomplish here
Now the tracking calculates just that: how fast the gun can track. It is no longer affected by the size of the target and magically gets "heavier" when shooting at a tiny target instead of a MWDing Drake
Also you no longer either insta-pop frigs with a BS or can't hit them at all. Damage now scales down as ships gets smaller, sigradius starts to matter again. Armor tanks currently get incredibly slow and/or sluggish for adding tank. The increase in sigradius for shield tanked ships would now actually have an effect (even though mostly against larger targets). Seems about fair

I haven't run any numbers yet as to how this would affect subcap-fights, but I imagine this could give increased life to small ships. They can still get under the gun of bigger ships (even though it takes longer, but they take less damage on the 'way in'), but also are much MUCH less likely to just go *poof* in one volley due to either good or bad timing

I just love this idea! I truly hope this gets done, and soon! It might require some tweaking of values to not overpower or underpower small ships with this change, but I think it can be done, even with a reasonable amount of work
Testing will be a ***** though ^^
Andy Landen
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#453 - 2012-03-30 22:55:38 UTC  |  Edited by: Andy Landen
ilammy wrote:
The difference between capitals and subcapitals capwise is that subcaps have adequate capboosters to counter neuts.

Energy transfers work well.


ilammy wrote:
they can be neuted in siege/triage, but can't be filled up with cap by transfers while they're in the middle of the cycle.

That illustrates one of so many things broken about caps and complicating the effort to balance them. I would change that so that siege/triage still allowed RR and ET.


ilammy wrote:
And consider carriers neuting the battleships to zero in one cycle with one neut.

If cap neuts scale the way cap ETs scale, 1 cap neut kills 3419 every 48s. The domi has 6461 cap (53%). Besides, a Heavy Neut kills 600 cap. A basi has 1866 cap (32%) and a daredevil has 494 cap (+100%). BS would have to live with a cap neut just like cruisers and frigs live with Heavy neuts, which really should be called large neuts to follow naming convention.

Ganthrithor wrote:
I really don't understand where support for DDs comes from. They were dumb mechanic when they allowed titans to one-shot fleets of subcaps, and they're still dumb now that they allow them to one-shot peoples' caps.

Exactly. These were intended to be alliance war machines. Make the DD only activate against structures and they will become alliance machines once more.

"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them." Albert Einstein 

Andy Landen
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#454 - 2012-03-30 23:06:37 UTC  |  Edited by: Andy Landen
double post.

"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them." Albert Einstein 

Raivi
State War Academy
Caldari State
#455 - 2012-03-30 23:38:26 UTC  |  Edited by: Raivi
Ganthrithor wrote:
Regarding all this formula-manipulation: I'm bad at mathematics, but please don't do anything that would affect subcap turrets and their uses. I see that you say in your post that your changes wouldn't really change anything for subcaps, which is good. What I wouldn't want is a scenario where, for example, I can no longer blap an interceptor that is MWDing at my battleship with zero transversal.

Basically, stay away from any changes to gun hit mechanics that straight up reduce damage applied by larger guns to smaller targets. Doing this would make it too easy to fly tacklers (by, for example, turning flying interceptors into "turn on MWD, approach target" rather than the current mechanics where you need to manually pilot to keep transversal up, etc).


This basically reads just like someone complaining about a titan nerf. Just replace BS with titans and interceptors with BCs.

I agree that at 0 transversal everything should die, but it's much too easy for BS to hit frigates right now. Same problem as how easily titans hit BS and BCs (but smaller scale).

If you want to fight off frigate tacklers, bring some antisupport like artycanes or HACs. BS being the be-all end-all of fleets isn't the way it needs to be.
Ganthrithor
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#456 - 2012-03-30 23:46:12 UTC  |  Edited by: Ganthrithor
Raivi wrote:
Ganthrithor wrote:
Regarding all this formula-manipulation: I'm bad at mathematics, but please don't do anything that would affect subcap turrets and their uses. I see that you say in your post that your changes wouldn't really change anything for subcaps, which is good. What I wouldn't want is a scenario where, for example, I can no longer blap an interceptor that is MWDing at my battleship with zero transversal.

Basically, stay away from any changes to gun hit mechanics that straight up reduce damage applied by larger guns to smaller targets. Doing this would make it too easy to fly tacklers (by, for example, turning flying interceptors into "turn on MWD, approach target" rather than the current mechanics where you need to manually pilot to keep transversal up, etc).


This basically reads just like someone whining about a titan nerf. just replace BS with titans and interceptors with BCs.

I agree that at 0 transversal everything should die, but it's much too easy for BS to hit frigates right now. Same problem as how easily titans hit BS and BCs (but smaller scale).

If you want to fight off frigate tacklers, bring some antisupport like artycanes or HACs. BS being the be-all end-all of fleets isn't the way it needs to be.


This hasn't been my experience. I've done a fair amount of Machariel flying and currently its fairly easy to kill really bad frigate pilots, but anyone who flies properly has a very good chance of getting out (it often takes 3-5 volleys to kill a frigate-- even one at long ranges like 40-70km-- as long as it keeps its transversal up).

I've come at it from the other side as well (I've flown a lot of Sabres and Dramiels in particular), and while there are some small ship classes that are really awful to fly against BS (hello, dictors!), for the most part its extremely easy to avoid damage if you fly properly. Flying a Dramiel is dead easy, and that doesn't even have a sig-reducing MWD bonus like inties do.

E: I also had the experience a few weeks ago of trying to peel fast tackle off a friendly ship while flying a beam Oracle. At 100km with faction standard and tracking scripts loaded I was unable to land a single hit on an Ares over a period of ~2 minutes. Literally zero damage applied. And that was watching and trying to time gun volleys with moments where the target had relatively low transversal. Incidentally, the guy who got tackled was flying an automach and was also totally unable to hit the inty pilot at any point (because the pilot was competent and didn't fly straight at him).
I'm Down
Macabre Votum
Northern Coalition.
#457 - 2012-03-30 23:59:23 UTC
Ganthrithor wrote:


E: I also had the experience a few weeks ago of trying to peel fast tackle off a friendly ship while flying a beam Oracle. At 100km with faction standard and tracking scripts loaded I was unable to land a single hit on an Ares over a period of ~2 minutes. Literally zero damage applied. And that was watching and trying to time gun volleys with moments where the target had relatively low transversal. Incidentally, the guy who got tackled was flying an automach and was also totally unable to hit the inty pilot at any point (because the pilot was competent and didn't fly straight at him).


you're not flying your mach well

and you're not flying your frig against a group.. solo comparisons are not equivalent to eve combat.

Raivi and many others see that the tracking formula is broken... I can only hope that CCP also realizes this after 5 years of me campaigning hard core against it.
Ganthrithor
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#458 - 2012-03-31 00:05:27 UTC  |  Edited by: Ganthrithor
I'm Down wrote:
Ganthrithor wrote:


E: I also had the experience a few weeks ago of trying to peel fast tackle off a friendly ship while flying a beam Oracle. At 100km with faction standard and tracking scripts loaded I was unable to land a single hit on an Ares over a period of ~2 minutes. Literally zero damage applied. And that was watching and trying to time gun volleys with moments where the target had relatively low transversal. Incidentally, the guy who got tackled was flying an automach and was also totally unable to hit the inty pilot at any point (because the pilot was competent and didn't fly straight at him).


you're not flying your mach well

and you're not flying your frig against a group.. solo comparisons are not equivalent to eve combat.

Raivi and many others see that the tracking formula is broken... I can only hope that CCP also realizes this after 5 years of me campaigning hard core against it.


Actually it was Tiberizzle not flying his Mach well :3

I've flown frigates in fleet situations as well. Yes, it's more dangerous, but its not battleships that are the problem. When we were fighting IT (IIRC) in Fountain a while back I regularly flew Wolves or IN Slicers in fleet fights and tackled tons of battleships with few to no issues. The only time I ever lost a fleet tackling frigate in an actual fleet battle was when I tried to solo a Vagabond in a Slicer (which almost worked but a hostile frigate came and killed me off before I could finish him).

As a frig pilot in a fleet scenario, battleships are not the problem. T2 cruisers are a problem and Drakes are a bit of a problem (they won't do much damage to you but its consistent damage that adds up over time / as more Drakes become involved). Obviously artycanes are a problem at range, but even they can't hit you if you get in close.

EDIT: Here you go: https://killboard.goonfleet.com/km/503245

Yes, that's a frigate tanking 28k damage. If you're getting instablapped in your frigate you're doing it wrong.
Gripen
#459 - 2012-03-31 01:00:03 UTC
Ganthrithor wrote:
I've come at it from the other side as well (I've flown a lot of Sabres and Dramiels in particular), and while there are some small ship classes that are really awful to fly against BS (hello, dictors!), for the most part its extremely easy to avoid damage if you fly properly. Flying a Dramiel is dead easy, and that doesn't even have a sig-reducing MWD bonus like inties do.

When talking about tracking there is one thing you can't ignore: any competent group of ships have webbers at their disposal. And -60% speed penalty from the single web is equivalent of 150% boost to tracking for entire gang.

With all the cheap faction webs, overheating, gang bonuses, ships with web range bonuses 60-80km web is a de facto standard for most roaming gangs or fleets and you just can't say "tracking is fine" because you run into enemy who fail to web you.
I'm Down
Macabre Votum
Northern Coalition.
#460 - 2012-03-31 01:11:39 UTC
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=6683370

http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=6685039

An example of a fight where an ARTILLERY Rag blapped nearly 110 ships by himself by waiting for their speed to drop and keeping his range. A proper sig correction is needed... not a reduction in damage, but a reduction in the ability and quality of hit chances.