Ships & Modules

TL;DR: Splitting turrets in two groups (or more) will increase your DPS when killing multiple targets one after the other (i.e. focus fire on one target at all times). This is because of less overflow damage when the target dies. DPS boost is as high as +4% to +26% in many situations. The extreme case give 1540% DPS! A Tachyon boat killing targets in three full volleys will se an increase in DPS with +9% besting the most expensive implants ingame.

There is no downside to splitting turrets in two, except one more spot occupied in HUD, but you have to learn how to press two buttons simultaneously.

Fleet warfare see this comment.

The theory
Popular fitting tools such as pyfa will give you a DPS rating for your guns. Most players know that this is not the DPS you will do in a fight though; since it assumes perfect conditions (being in optimal range with perfect tracking) and also that you shoot forever on a target that never dies.

When a target dies, your volley had more (or equal) damage potential than the target had HP. This means that there is overflow damage never applied to the target decreasing your DPS from the theoretical maximum. It turns out that this overflow damage is ≈50% of the volley damage in average if you shoot at a random distribution of targets.

The mechanics
When shooting with grouped guns, all gun damage is combined into a single volley and applied on target in one go as confirmed by Greyscale. But if you split your guns in two groups, there will be two separate, and smaller, volleys applied to the target.

Tranquility (the EVE server) operates in discrete units of time called ticks. These ticks are one second long and often assumed to be the highest time resolution possible in EVE. Even if you click one button after another (e.g. MWD+Cloak) if they are executed in the same tick they happen simultaneously.

But that is not entirely true because within each tick actions are in fact evaluated sequentially. If you fire two guns on one target and the target dies from the first gun, the second gun does not even cycle (because there is no target) and can be activated again immediately, or rather the next server tick. This is the mechanic we can use to increase our DPS by splitting our guns in two (or more) groups.

The math
In these calculations we will assume continuous shooting on a random distribution of of sequential targets with a total volley size that is smaller than half the targets original HP. We also assume all weapon groups to be identical. We make a difference between the volley damage from a single group (VolleyGroup) and all guns combined (VolleyTotal) and calculates the overflow damage.

VolleyTotal = VolleyGroup*Groups
Overflow = 0.5* VolleyGroup

If we know the number of volleys (N) we need to deliver to kill our target we can calculate our VolleyEfficiency:

VolleyEfficiency = (N* VolleyTotal –Overflow) / (N* VolleyTotal)

We know that there is a short delay before we can reactivate our (≈50%) free guns we sometimes get (≈50% of the time) when the target dies and we can use this server TickPenalty (minimum 1 sec) to calculate an effective Rate Of Fire (eROF). After that it is easy to calculate our DPS.

eROF = ROF+TickPenalty/N*0.5*0.5
DPS = VolleyEfficiency*VolleyTotal / eROF

Examples
In this table VolleyTotal damage is set to 1 for convenience (you can multiply the estimated DPS with whatever volley damage your guns d to get an estimate of yours). Server TickPenalty is minimum 1 sec but to compensate for increased complexity in activating all guns correctly we use a TickPenalty of 1 sec for two groups, 2 sec for four groups and 3 sec for eight Groups. Gun ROF is 7 seconds and targets die in three volleys. The most dramatic effect is between one group and splitting guns in two groups which gives +9% DPS. Splitting guns to eight groups give you +13%.

Weapon
Groups                    1       2        4        8

TickPenalty              0       1        2        3

Overflow              .500   .250   .125   .063
VolleyEfficiency   .833   .917   .958   .979
eROF                  7.00   7.08   7.17   7.25
DPS                    .119   .129   .134   .135

DPS%               100% 109% 112% 113%


Below are some calculations for DPS increase compared to only one group of guns for different gun rate of fire (ROF) of 5s, 10s, and 15s and when shooting targets that die in 2, 4 or 6 volleys (N) . It shows that the DPS increase is highest (+16%-26%) when you are two-shooting your targets (but see also fun facts below) with slow weapons. However, even with 5 sec ROF you get +6% DPS by splitting your guns in two groups while killing targets in 4 volleys.

Percent DPS compared to having all weapons in one group for guns with different rate of fire (ROF) and vollies needed to kill target (N).

                   Number of weapon groups
ROF     N             2             4             8

5           2       114%      119%      120%
5           4       106%      108%      108%
5           6       104%      105%      105%

10         2       115%      122%      124%
10         4       106%      109%      110%
10         6       104%      106%      107%

15         2       116%      123%      126%
15         4       107%      110%      111%
15         6       104%      106%      107%


Fun fact
An Arty Tornado will take 123 seconds to kill 8 stationary shuttles with all weapons in one single group doing 51 DPS. Ungrouping the guns reduce the time to apply this damage to 8 seconds boosting DPS 1540%!

Forum fact: They really don't want you to post tables on these forums.

This should be a rather intuitive result for anyone who has alpha'd off a series of targets.

Personally, I like grouping my weapons into a total of four groups, one for each finger on the left hand (except for the thumb).

This tactic is most effective against numernous small targets, but in fleet fights against robust targets I would suggest an alternative. Group your weapons into 3/4 and 1/4 of DPS, apply 3/4 to primary target. Have everyone in fleet with same overview and require the locking of top 7 targets and tell your fleet to free fire the 1/4 dps with personnel responsible for positions within the top seven.

Most Logi pilots use broadcasts to begin targeting for reps. If they are watchlist logi pilots it can be significantly more difficult because they will be gauging the damage for reps.

Sounds complicated? How it would play out: Top seven targets are locked, primary is locked all fleet members engage primary with 3/4, the remaining 6 locked targets are engaged with 1/4 dps of each ship assigned to it, so say a 20 man fleet, each remaining target has approximately 3 people on it with 1/4 dps. Players spam the broadcast button seeing they are locked, and divide logi attention. If it works and you get the first couple of kills, you gain the inititative and hamper their DPS enough to continue the detruction regardless.

-DT

Thanks for this. It's horrendously obvious and horrendously easy to overlook, I know I have.

This doesnt work for missiles.

With missiles you can divide in how many groups you want: the travel time will decide your real dps.

It's opposite for missiles against NPCs. http://community.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1369392

Each group of missiles has a chance of triggering an NPC defender. Launching six individual missiles results in six NPC defender checks. Launching a single group of six missiles results in just one NPC defender check. Thus grouped missiles suffer less from defenders if they're grouped. However...

...there are some NPCs who get a missile damage multiplier that's high enough to kill multiple missiles with one defender. In those cases, you'll do more damage by ungrouping your missiles. See post #19 in the linked thread above.

Everything you say is true... this works when operating in new areas, inexperienced fleets or inexperienced logi pilots. As stated it plays out in the first stages of an engagement, if you do not get a kill in the first 30 seconds and gain the momentum, focus fire.

-DT

^ This.

Once the missile expert, always the missile expert, eh? :)