Warfare & Tactics

If you have trouble understanding what Taoist is trying to help you understand, this offer a good illustration:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WT8VqVcLDqc&feature=related

It's for the same reason that people think that gate cloak lasts 30 seconds - to the point of ISDs telling me to stop spreading disinformation to the contrary in Rookie Help, or else they'd gag me. It's Wensley's fault! It's the fault of Wensley's Rifter Guide!

Angles and Approach:

Another way to explain Angular velocity, in gross oversimplification for us who don't enjoy math, is to look upon it as the combination of transversal and radial.

Consider accuracy in a game where you control your own tracking in a top-down view (artillery in WoT serve a very good example) and you will realize that transversal (shifting distance) will affect you some but when combined with radial in a pincer approach you will see how it cuts through your angle of attack and "doubles" the relative velocity (ie., your aim will pop to a football-field much quicker than if he either have a straight approach or maintain his distance in orbit). Playing a fast tank there essentially have the same tactical approach as playing a fast ship here.

Another way to look at it is when you're fighting at point blank in EVE. As you pass by your opponents side elliptically you will have a very high angular, yet when you turn over the hair-pin all of the turret rotation stop as well until you cut over his angle. Consider that opposed to a circular orbit where you maintain the same rotation rate at all times.

A third simple example is to extend your arm straight forward (as a punch) and consider something passing on the outside of it. In a straight approach it's easy for you to just extend your elbow and move your fist to your chest. In a rotation it's easy to just follow with your arm out to your sides. If something approaches you from an outside angle-in your elbow will collapse into your chest .


Transversals and Kiting:

If there is something i'd like to add, then i'd say that the Agony video may undervalue transversal a bit. You get the impression that it matters very little from his Merlin-BS approach, but that BS seem to land some lucky hits (even if that also is a good representation of chance-based accuracy). Transversal in itself against a larger static target is usually quite sufficient. The real reason you want to teach beginning players angulars is because a good player who kite (note: for the OP) will limit that transversal by going in the same direction as you do - and as such raise his accuracy on you.

That's the corner stones of kiting: Diminish transversal and position yourself for disengagement. A kiting setup will typically position itself around the fringe of tackle range, so he can move in and out of tackle at his own control. Against a smaller faster ship you seek to kite them off the main body, drop transversal and pop them so you can later control range on your opponents. Dive in and out of tackle, as you control the range by being faster (having eliminated faster threats).

Today the LR tackling Recons (Rapier, Arazu etc.) have become so popular that kiting has by and large shifted into mobile sniping. In the past the 24km of a Tech II Point (warp disruptor) or large Neut used to signal the average kiting distance. Today that has grown to somewhere around 50-60km assuming varying tackling Recon distances (meta of module, gang bonuses etc.). That's why oldschool kiting (or nano) setups have become rare and are mainly relegated to gang sizes where it's uncommon to see multiple Recons.

The profileration of alpha (or high volley damage in other ways) have also limited the value of kiting as a tactical approach, since you can't disengage, or raise mitigation over time by building distance, if you don't have time to react to the threat.

A good way to understand the origins of kiting can be found by simply drawing a chart for yourself over all the relevant modules and their distances on various ships with bonuses in the game. That is a very good mental picture to preserve to understand the safety of various distances and killzones. You will see alot of modules cross over at certain breakpoint distances and you will see that the closer you get the more modules stack up. Closer is obviously more dangerous.