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EVE New Citizens Q&A

 
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Reality suspended

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Miss Spent Youth
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#1 - 2013-02-15 15:48:03 UTC
Can I ask why we have falloff I do not understand how in space you get falloff. You would either hit, or if you tracking was bad , miss. The projectiles or laser beams would keep on going until they hit something. Especially light, it does not bend except under extreme gravity like a black hole or is reflected.
So why have CCP put it in the game. What am I missing, because based on the laws as we know them space combat would not work as it does in this game so there must be some game play reason they have done it.
Grimm Griefer
Viziam
Amarr Empire
#2 - 2013-02-15 15:52:01 UTC
fluid dynamics probably.
as the ships 'fly' similar to submarines the same thing that affects t hem probably affects projectile weapons.
missiles, self destruct as you don't want to be flying around an area that you have filled with missiles lest you
damage yourself as well.
ultimately its to keep combat to visual range and not beyond visual range which would be boring as hell.
Davith en Divalone
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#3 - 2013-02-15 15:55:57 UTC
For the same reason that pawns attack diagonally and not forward, and knights can move across occupied squares. It's a game, not a simulation.
Miss Spent Youth
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#4 - 2013-02-15 16:09:10 UTC
Davith en Divalone wrote:
For the same reason that pawns attack diagonally and not forward, and knights can move across occupied squares. It's a game, not a simulation.


I understand this. however Eve markets itself on its complex systems based on science, but in this regard, "falloff", they suspend reality. I do not understand why they should. Far better to have the ordinance simply disappear when it has gone off the grid then let it fall?
Miss Spent Youth
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#5 - 2013-02-15 16:12:36 UTC
Grimm Griefer wrote:
*snip* ...ultimately its to keep combat to visual range and not beyond visual range which would be boring as hell.


But nine time out of ten you are not even looking at what is actually visible in space. The combat "visual" part take place using the overview only. I tried this last night. I stayed on map view (solar system map) and did a mission. I never once had to close the map. Click,orbit, click, orbit ad nauseum.
Signal11th
#6 - 2013-02-15 16:17:19 UTC
Miss Spent Youth wrote:
Can I ask why we have falloff I do not understand how in space you get falloff. You would either hit, or if you tracking was bad , miss. The projectiles or laser beams would keep on going until they hit something. Especially light, it does not bend except under extreme gravity like a black hole or is reflected.
So why have CCP put it in the game. What am I missing, because based on the laws as we know them space combat would not work as it does in this game so there must be some game play reason they have done it.



it's a game? if I wanted reality I would open my front door and play chav wars with the local natives.

God Said "Come Forth and receive eternal life!" I came fifth and won a toaster!
Grimm Griefer
Viziam
Amarr Empire
#7 - 2013-02-15 16:24:06 UTC
heh I never use overview, I could but I prefer my hairy eyeballs on ships not rings n ranges.
also learning to fly the ship is important for pvp, ie clicking in space to change direction, especially when approaching
enemies instead of fly straight at them.
meh the falloff things is a mystery known only to CCP, we just have to live with it
Davith en Divalone
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#8 - 2013-02-15 16:27:12 UTC
Miss Spent Youth wrote:
Davith en Divalone wrote:
For the same reason that pawns attack diagonally and not forward, and knights can move across occupied squares. It's a game, not a simulation.


I understand this. however Eve markets itself on its complex systems based on science, but in this regard, "falloff", they suspend reality. I do not understand why they should. Far better to have the ordinance simply disappear when it has gone off the grid then let it fall?


It's a linguistic metaphor that's applied to a lot of things that are not directly affected by gravity. My dictionary uses exports, sales, and light intensity as examples. A google news search for today shows the term used in headlines about piano sales and news network viewers.

I've never seen Eve as especially hard science fiction in its gameplay.
Maire Gheren
Imperial Shipment
Amarr Empire
#9 - 2013-02-15 16:27:36 UTC
"falloff" is not actually "falling". Instead, that is the range where it may or may not hit an active target that has countermeasures to keep it from being hit by random things.
A railgun shoots a dumb projectile very fast, so it may be that countermeasures need a certain small amount of time to react during which time the slug travels quite a ways, then takes effect. A projectile however is far slower, so has a short optimal, and a long falloff where the internal gadgetry in the bullet can try to tweak things to hit anyways.
Lasers have long optimals, but might be running afoul of the problem recently discovered where if you make a laser beam intense enough to do fun things with, it starts turning its energy into matter and antimatter, which 1: gets in the way of and refracts the beam and 2: recombines and makes more light that is not coherent, so collides with the laser beam light and triggers the creation of more matter. This, by the way, seems as though it would make laser beams visible from the side.
Seven Noctis
#10 - 2013-02-15 16:27:54 UTC  |  Edited by: Seven Noctis
Whoever told you that EVE was a space sim, lied. It's very complex but doesn't simulate anything. Stuff doesn't traverse space in EVE, it swims, or maybe flies through gas, but certainly not space, true story.
Kahega Amielden
Rifterlings
#11 - 2013-02-15 16:28:50 UTC
Quote:
I understand this. however Eve markets itself on its complex systems based on science, but in this regard, "falloff", they suspend reality. I do not understand why they should. Far better to have the ordinance simply disappear when it has gone off the grid then let it fall?


I have never heard of any EVE advertising that focused on realistic game mechanics. Link or it didn't happen.

Furthermore, 'falloff' does not mean that it literally falls. Falloff is accuracy falloff ie how fast accuracy degrades with range.
Orlacc
#12 - 2013-02-15 16:29:29 UTC
It is a game. Thread is old news.

"Measure Twice, Cut Once."
Lost Greybeard
Drunken Yordles
#13 - 2013-02-15 17:11:15 UTC
The full name of the effect is "ACCURACY falloff"

Essentially, your guns have a limited precision and accuracy based on ballistic spread, sensor attenuation, countermeasures, or in the case of lasers beam attenuation and railguns projectile stability failure.

The falloff factor of your gun is basically how far out from the ship your sensors and predicative algorithms can reliably land a shot, all other mechanical factors being equal. Note that signature radius is in the equation somewhere as well.

Complaining that this is unrealistic is a bit silly, as this is quite literally a real effect that real automated artillery suffers all the time, look up how gunnery in fast naval battles and dogfights works sometime if you really, really want to waste a few afternoons learning a bunch of stuff you'll never need to know.

(Additionally, one would assume that space projectiles are going to typically be designed to self-detonate or disintegrate intentionally after a certain flight time if they don't do so naturally, to do otherwise would be pretty stupid considering how much fighting we do on orbits shared with civilian stations. But that's a longer-term/longer-range issue and more a setting thing.)
Lost Greybeard
Drunken Yordles
#14 - 2013-02-15 17:13:38 UTC
Miss Spent Youth wrote:
Grimm Griefer wrote:
*snip* ...ultimately its to keep combat to visual range and not beyond visual range which would be boring as hell.


But nine time out of ten you are not even looking at what is actually visible in space. The combat "visual" part take place using the overview only. I tried this last night. I stayed on map view (solar system map) and did a mission. I never once had to close the map. Click,orbit, click, orbit ad nauseum.


Also, good luck keeping _that_ up in PvP or higher-level missions. You're going to be waking up in a lot of new clones.
Xercodo
Cruor Angelicus
#15 - 2013-02-15 17:44:07 UTC  |  Edited by: Xercodo
It's more "Effective accuracy at range" thing than it is of a bullet or laser actually "falling" towards a perceived ground.

Even in the vacuum of space and in zero G a machine gun is gonna have a bit of spray to it. In space there are stars we can't see because they aren't bright enough. Light loses energy as it travels...

Falloff is taking this into account, falloff is talking about "the distance at which accuracy/power significantly falls off from optimal"

If you check out this interactive guide to EVE tracking you'll see the graph of accuracy literally starts falling off from optimal.

The Drake is a Lie
LHA Tarawa
Pator Tech School
Minmatar Republic
#16 - 2013-02-15 18:05:59 UTC
A ... ummmm... what's the word? Logical? Mechanic may be to convert the signature of the ship from fixed size, to a radian measure.

Let's say chance of hit = max(1, tracking speed/angular velocity) * signature resolution/target signature.

Tracking Speed is how fast the gun can fine tune it's aim. It can track faster than this, but doesn't get to fine tune it's aim.
Angular velocity = tangential speed/distance.
max the ratio to 1 because you can't get a better "fine tune" than 100% fine tuned.

Signature resolution = how small of a signature the weapon is designed to hit
Signature = how large the ship appears at this distance. calculated as size of the target/distance to target.
No max since the bigger a target appears, the easier it is to hit. Fill up my entire line of sight, and it becomes literally impossible to miss.

Let's compare say I have my ship fit with small arty that are designed to hit a 100m frig with tangential velocity of 1000m orbiting at 10K meters distance. In this case, the gun would have tracking speed of 1000/10.000 = 0.1 and signature resolution of 100/10000 = 0.01. At that ideal circumstance, our gun would have a 100% chance of hitting.

Let's compare the case of this firg actually orbiting at 1K meters, 10K meters or 100K meters.


1K: meters:
Angular velocity = 1000m/sec/1000m = 1 radians
Sig = 100m/1000m = 0.1 radians
chance of hit = max(1, 0.1/1) * 0.1/.01 = 0.1*10 = 1 = 100% chance you are going to hit.
The fact that the target corssing our field of fire at 10x the designed speed means we're only able to fine-tune our shot 10%. However, it is so close to us that it is HUGE... a full 10x larger than our gun is designed to hit. Missing would be like missing the side of the barn at 10 paces.



10K:
This is the designed case.... 100% chance of hit given the gun's specs.


100K:
Angular velocity = 100,000m/sec/1000m = .01 radians
Sig = 100m/100,000m = 0.001 radians
chance of hit = max (1, 0.01/0.1) * 0.001/0.01 = 1 * 0.1 = 10% chance of a hit.
The gun has all the time in the world to aim, but it still will barely be able to hit, because the firg appears to be a tiny spec, 1/10th the size the gun is designed to hit.



So, using this "more logical" hit calculation, firgs would be harder to hit at range (too small to aim at), then they would be close in (where even a small ship appears to be huge because it is so close).



CCP wanted a situation where small ships could get close and orbit fast, and be too close and fast to hit. So, they didn't go with a logical design



While we're at it, explain the ship size to explosion size to me.... a small boom does more damage than a HUGE boom? Really? Yeah, because they wanted a situation where big booms are designed for big ships, not small ships. So a small ship getting hit by a huge boom doesn't take much damage... illogical, but creates the situation CCP wants.
LHA Tarawa
Pator Tech School
Minmatar Republic
#17 - 2013-02-15 18:18:36 UTC
Xercodo wrote:

Light loses energy as it travels...


Ummmm... no. A beam of light is not a single thing, but rather a collection of a huge number of photons.

The further you are, the fainter the light has has to do with the scatter of the photons because they are not traveling in perfectly parallel directions. Close up, pretty close to parallel photons will both hit you. Further away, the result of small differences in direction of travel magnify to the point that both photons will no longer hit you.

No matter how well you attempt to focus your laser to an infinite point (perfectly parallel photons of light), there will always be some variance in the direction of travel of individual photons. The further away, the more the photons scatter.


Think of it like shot fired out of a shot gun. With an open choke, at 0 meters, the scatter is the diameter of the muzzle. 1 meter, the pattern of shot is like the size of your hand. At 10 meters, the pattern may be a meter across. Replace the open choke with a full choke to try to get the shot packed more tightly and traveling in a more parallel direction. Well, at 0 meters, it is still the size of the muzzle. At 1 meter, it is now half the size of your hand, and at 10 meters, it is half a meter.

No matter how much you choke down the end of the barrrel, you can never get the pieces of shot to travel in perfectly parallel directions, so it will never stay the size of the end of the muzzle.
Xercodo
Cruor Angelicus
#18 - 2013-02-15 18:35:26 UTC
LHA Tarawa wrote:
Xercodo wrote:

Light loses energy as it travels...


Ummmm... no. A beam of light is not a single thing, but rather a collection of a huge number of photons.

The further you are, the fainter the light has has to do with the scatter of the photons because they are not traveling in perfectly parallel directions. Close up, pretty close to parallel photons will both hit you. Further away, the result of small differences in direction of travel magnify to the point that both photons will no longer hit you.

No matter how well you attempt to focus your laser to an infinite point (perfectly parallel photons of light), there will always be some variance in the direction of travel of individual photons. The further away, the more the photons scatter.


Think of it like shot fired out of a shot gun. With an open choke, at 0 meters, the scatter is the diameter of the muzzle. 1 meter, the pattern of shot is like the size of your hand. At 10 meters, the pattern may be a meter across. Replace the open choke with a full choke to try to get the shot packed more tightly and traveling in a more parallel direction. Well, at 0 meters, it is still the size of the muzzle. At 1 meter, it is now half the size of your hand, and at 10 meters, it is half a meter.

No matter how much you choke down the end of the barrrel, you can never get the pieces of shot to travel in perfectly parallel directions, so it will never stay the size of the end of the muzzle.


That's pretty much all I meant, I was sparing them from the mechanics of photons and saying it "loses energy".

But thanks for the explanation, it supports my claim in the way that "lasers have a tiny amount of spray like a machine gun does, on a molecular level..."

The Drake is a Lie
Miss Spent Youth
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#19 - 2013-02-15 18:45:24 UTC
But in space there is no friction so why would a shot be inaccurate?
Malcanis
Vanishing Point.
The Initiative.
#20 - 2013-02-15 18:48:07 UTC
Miss Spent Youth wrote:
Can I ask why we have falloff I do not understand how in space you get falloff. You would either hit, or if you tracking was bad , miss. The projectiles or laser beams would keep on going until they hit something. Especially light, it does not bend except under extreme gravity like a black hole or is reflected.
So why have CCP put it in the game. What am I missing, because based on the laws as we know them space combat would not work as it does in this game so there must be some game play reason they have done it.


Spin stablised projectiles not having perfect rotational symmetry?

"Just remember later that I warned against any change to jump ranges or fatigue. You earned whats coming."

Grath Telkin, 11.10.2016
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