Ships & Modules

it is true, we could not counter raiden titans which is why raiden is firmly planted in tenal and never going to leave

I'm not worried about the dread use in PVE, but the ability to drop out of siege and get rid of the tracking penalty mean that they have a extremely limited ability to defend themselves against sub-caps. Out of siege they do about the DPS of a battleship and track way way worse anyway, so it's in no way a problem, but at least it's something, and as mentioned before, any nerf to a ship that is already as close to being pointless as the dreads are now is a BAD thing.

I agree with most things said in that post. Especially with the part that very small ships should always hit very big ships even if they themselves are so fast that they outtrack themselves. If the huge ship fills about a 60° view angle, you're just not gonna miss it!
Additionally the tracking formula doesn't take the orientation of the ships into account (which is fine, because nothing in EVE does), and the fact is that a frigate orbiting a titan will do so in a manner that doesn't technically (I mean as far as real-world-physics are concerned) require her to move the turrets at all. Imagine her orbiting clockwise, the titan will always be on her right, filling up the sky. Since the tracking in EVE is measured as the line connecting the two center points of the ships (at least as far as I know) this effect is lost, tracking in EVE is symmetrical, it isn't in reality. There should be some form of compensation for this, like a cut-off for the tracking part of the formula if the size difference of the ships (or of the sig res of the gun vs. the sig size of the target, if you want to stick to the same stats as the rest of the formula) becomes very large in that direction, basically negating any negative effect on the to-hit-chance incurred from tracking.

Also, for those who want a real-world example of gun size vs. target size: Take the guns from an actual Battleship (these things floating on water you may have heard of) trying to shoot a fighter plane from WW2. A Spitfire is about 9m long with a 12m wingspan (let's call it 10m "size"). Even the bigger guns on battleships have ammo of about 50cm, which comes out at a ratio of 1:20. This is pretty close to ratios of in-game BS vs. Frigates. Yet the (water based) BS would never even try to hit the fighter, even at a distance of a few KM where it's tracking can easily keep up with the movement. It can however hit a land or sea based target many kilometers away with astonishing (if not frightening) accuracy (a few meters depending on the distance). This effect can be reasonably compared (or attributed) to the signature resolution of the gun. It's not about the precision in and of itself, it's more about the agility which would be required to hit something much smaller, so this attribute is less about turning speed and more about how quick the direction of movement can be changed (inertia compensation, if you will).

Sure, but the MWD is, and again, that's supposed to be a balancing factor. You go very fast but you gain a huge sig radius while doing it. I understand that bubbles make speed a priority in big fights, but I'm not sure that we want to give MWDs a carte blanche here.



Either 17% or 3%, depending on which damage model we settle on.

Well, "it's ok for titans to blap MWDing ships" is a new thing today versus the previous goal of "titans not blapping any subcaps", so I just didn't want you to try and disguise it as a shieldfleet vs armorfleet balance issue. Because shield vs armor is totally irrelevant after you stack a ton of TPs or turn on a MWD.

In particular, the fact that the best turret titans -- the Avatar and the Erebus -- can fit target painters with essentially no penalty to their tank (due to armor-tanked-ness) is what makes the target painting calculation so essential when we're talking about titan balance. A dreadnought, *in addition* to the very long lock times which you are neglecting to add to titans, has to make significant choices in fitting terms (cap, tracking, sensorboosting) if they want to fit any target painters. Titans don't need cap to active-rep tank, have a larger cap pool, and have an extra midslot compared to their dreadnought versions. Target painters at full effectiveness essentially allows an Erebus or Avatar to fit an ENTIRE MID RACK of modules that do nothing but improve their tracking against subcaps (3 TCs and 2-3 TPs) in addition to the unaddressed issue of being able to use Strong Drop boosters with no penalties.

Pmchem made a mistake by focusing on Huggin TPs: the proper assumption is that these ships will be painted by supercarriers using the best TPs that exist (domination iirc). The question then becomes what ships take close to full damage so they get alphaed by a lucky shot (vs. take something like 25% ehp damage)?

I think it's a mistake to allow MWDing battleships to get alphaed: the MWD sig bloom is intended to prevent the battleship from using the MWD to speed tank. It is not intended as a random penalty. Since you can't effectively speedtank a titan (the transversal issue with blobs that is such a pain) it is not a good idea to allow titans to more severely damage MWDing ships: this is a penalty the mod wasn't designed to have. A MWD's sig bloom makes it so your mwding battleship can't speedtank guns that should hit it, it's not supposed to make it take more damage.

While I can see how you think that the shield penalties should effect passive shieldtanking battleships it's worth pointing out that the armor buffer penalties (lower velocity) are likewise entirely irrelevant for a fleet battleship. Making the shield sigradius penalty more severe while ignoring the armor velocity penalty isn't keeping things balanced: it's penalizing shieldfits. If you want to do that, that's one thing: but you're making a mistake that you're keeping it balanced by doing this.

Sure, but then you won't be able to lock anything this year. You need some sensor boosters, and you also need tracking computers. Tracking enhancers don't provide enough tracking to be significant, they're just there for the range, so you still need 6 of your lows for damage mods and tracking enchancers to get the damage and range, plus 2 sensor boosters in the mids to lock in a reasonable time, leaving you with a choice of TP or TC in the remaining 3. Even if you go with TP, they're significantly weaker then Huginn TPs.

From what Ive seen armor tanks have the ability to negate thier speed disadvantage for more speed at the cost of what shield tanks suffer from.

Why dont sheild tanks have an ability to negate thier sig radius disadvantage for at the penalty of the armor tank's penalties.

Something like a shield densifier makes the shields thicker but reduces speed and possibly sensors.

Fortunately, Greyscale knows target painters are a problem. I have faith he will save the subcaps!!