Ships & Modules

It's ... 24% effective. It does exactly what it says. What are you looking for here?

24% effective at what? it obviously isnt a 24% reduction of incoming damage, its a 24% reduction of signature radius, which only really means something if you are moving while being shot at. What I am looking for here is how effective at reducing incoming damage it is if all other variables are not accounted for (so no webifiers, etc) It is obviously the same as having a reverse target painter, but few people use them because they arent THAT good.

Now what Liang said was more helpful.

Bonuses help ships geared towards these bonuses:

Sig reduction bonus on a fast interceptor / close orbiting AB frig or other ships that bet on out-tracking your guns or mitigating dmg from your missiles is ofc great.

It can help you make hard to prob ships way harder to prob or nearly unprobable without perfect skills and/or implants.

It won't make a fat-ass BC or cruiser to sig-tank.
It won't make a stationary target to sig-tank.

Will make good sig tankers much better, just like a tengu with active shield bonuses will make already tanky ships super tanky, a legion will make already uber-buffer armor tanks insane, etc etc.

Use bonuses to work on your strengths, instead of patching your weaknesses. Jack of all trades, master of none they say, and links are there for the masters. Of one trade.

I wouldn't say 99% safe, but yes, you will be very hard to probe. Even harder to kill if you blitz missions and generally maintain awareness about yourself and your surroundings.

You don't need a full lg-virtue set if you have perfect skills and are flying a probe bonused ship. You might need three or two, can't remember which.

Oh hey, actual experience here!

The evasive maneuvering sig radius reduction will help you avoid damage, and will make your enemies take longer to lock you. For example, if you hit an MWD the sig of a BC goes to 1800m. With an evasive maneuvering module online, it is down at 1200m. This may be the half second you need to get off gate without being tackled.

Second effect comes into play mostly at range. Liang is right that, generally speaking, when you are tackled at close range by a HAC, your BC will be toast because 24% less sig doesn't matter when the HAC can track you perfectly with medium sized guns. So you can't fit a boosting Loki with the evasive link and go in to brawl with HACs like a bawss.

You can, however, take a 100MN AB Tengu with an already crazily low sig radius for its speed, and chop 24% off that. Then add your rapid maneuvering gang link to make it go 35% faster, and you have a deadly combination of uber-fast and low-sig. This makes missiles, particularly, basically useless against you. Then you get the interdiction link and a faction dissy and kite the canes with good tracking at 40km, outside their effective ranges, at speeds too fast for arty canes to track, and make a hefty YoutTube video. Then some guy will make a "nerf tengu" poast. Job done.

Another use, again at range, is the sniper fleets (which, eg, Liang hasn't encountered). These are generally 10++ Nagas, a couple of Huginns, a Lachesis and a Claymore. Or off-grid Loki, depending. Your DPS sits at 120km, your Lachesis and Huginns come in to 70km; with the three skirmish links running, whatever can hit you (Tornados, oracles, Nagas) does much less DPS because of the evasive maneuvering link. Your Lachesis gets point at 80km, your huginns TP the primary and web the crap out of anything which tries for tackle.

I have seen a 10 naga fleet evaporate a 60 man Drake blob and the FC gave the Admiral Beatty line "something seems to be wrong with our bloody ships" because while we could hit the Huginns, we couldn't actually do any DPS. That was the effect of the evasive maneuvering gang link.

TL;DR - its not for every situation, but it DOES help

noob Draek no reinj!

It's a big help, certainly - especially when you combine it with Halo implants.

Sig Radius math looks like this:
Guns: Tracking * (target sig radius / gun sig resolution)
Missiles: Explosion velocity * (target sig radius / explosion radius)

So being 24% smaller makes you 24% better at speed tanking, its really that simple in theory. Tho if you are bad at keeping speed / angular velocity up then it doesnt do much at all.

With the proper setup, you can get a Loki down to the signature of a medium-large frigate, but still have T3 resists and a 1600mm plate. The fit I saw was dualprop, so you need the EHP to get in close with the MWD, but once you're under the guns with your AB on, you'd be damn difficult to get rid of, especially for anything with large guns.