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EVE New Citizens Q&A

 
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missions and guns I'm confused
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Nalelmir Ahashion
Industrial Management and Engineering
Mouth Trumpet Cavalry
#1 - 2013-07-30 20:25:39 UTC
I read a lot about pve and which ships are most easy or effective for pve and such but...

most opinions I read about were that caldari with long range missiles is easy mod and that missiles got to pick damage types and such.

But today I was amazed...

we did some nice fleet of:
1. me - drake T2 mods \ t1 weapons
2. friend 1 - Raven - t2 mods \ t1 weapons
3. frined 3 - Harbinger navy issue t1 mods \ t2 pulse

now on first few missions (l4s) we all did pretty good. but then player 2 with the raven had to go so player 3 switched to navy apocalypse with tachyon (t1 fit) and I was just amazed...

we got this mission: http://eve-survival.org/wikka.php?wakka=IntercepttheSaboteurs4gu and as you can see it was space bunnies cartel which from what I've read amarr weapon should suck against...

then we go into main pocker and bang! my buddy with T1 tachyon apocalypse just sit there in 60-80 km range insta poping frigs (which even with medium missiles I need few barrages to kill) and tank the entire room like a boss while insta poping almost anything smaller then battleship and melt battleships down like nothing!

so as with missiles I need to wait for them to travel and get an issue with smaller target I was pretty amazed to see this from a ship combo which on paper (from what I've read I'm still newbie) should suck badly.

so what did I miss? :X
Nitrah
Adhocracy Incorporated
Adhocracy
#2 - 2013-07-30 21:07:24 UTC
If he let those frigates get close, they would be completely immune to his guns. Your missiles do the same dmg regardless
Nalelmir Ahashion
Industrial Management and Engineering
Mouth Trumpet Cavalry
#3 - 2013-07-30 21:24:31 UTC
you got a point but the time it took him to wipe out 3 groups with insta popping I killed barley 4-5 cruisers...
Gizznitt Malikite
Agony Unleashed
Agony Empire
#4 - 2013-07-30 21:50:54 UTC  |  Edited by: Gizznitt Malikite
Guns apply damage differently.

A turret has a ammo type with a base damage. The turret then adds a damage modifier to the ammos base damage. Ship bonuses, module & rig bonuses, and player skills also may add damage modifiers to the base damage. All these added up (with appropriate stacking penalties applied) gives you the gun's "standard damage".

Turrets also have a "chance to hit". Essentially, the server generates a random number between 0 and 1. This number is compared to your chance of a successful hit, which is based on the formula: 0.5 ^ ( How well do you track a target term + is the target in range term).

If your random number is greater than your chance to hit formula, you miss and do no damage.
If you hit, you deal damage = Standard Damage * ( 0.5 + your randomly generated number).

If the target is within your guns optimal range, the range term = 0. If the target is easily tracked (as ships at range usually are), the tracking term is 0 too. This means you always hit, dealing standard damage on average. Since a BS's weapon system has a fairly big alpha strike, this results in NPC frigates simply insta-popping one after the other after the other.

In contrast, missiles damage delivery is quite different. These, too, have ships modifiers, skill modifiers, ship fitting modifiers, etc that are used to calculated the "standard damage". However, the damage a target receives is not chance based. If it is in range, it WILL take damage from your missiles. The damage it applies is = standard damage * min( 1, Sig term, Sig & Speed term). If the size of your missiles (explosion radius) is large compared the the size of your target, the Sig term is small. For a drake, firing normal missiles (say 125 m explosion radius) at a frigate (40 m ship radius), the immobile frigate will take 40/125 = 30% of your standard missile damage each volley. The Sig&Speed term is more complicated, but if the frigate is moving faster than your missiles explosion velocity (125 m/s), it can also take even less damage.

TL; DR;

When comparing a Raven to a Turret BS, they may both have similar DPS numbers. However, a raven will NEVER apply it's full alpha to small targets because of how the missile damage formula works. A Turret BS can, which results in them impressively instapopping frigates and cruisers, when properly engaging targets that are easily tracked.
Nalelmir Ahashion
Industrial Management and Engineering
Mouth Trumpet Cavalry
#5 - 2013-07-30 22:14:07 UTC
thank you very much for the educated explanation.
Tau Cabalander
Retirement Retreat
Working Stiffs
#6 - 2013-07-31 02:57:19 UTC  |  Edited by: Tau Cabalander
My favorite ship for popping frigates is a Legion; it has a subsystem for very fast target locking, and Scorch crystals have great range. However, it really does suck compared to other ships on anything else.

You will find in EVE there is no best at everything. Pick a tool that is right for the job at hand.

For what it is worth, I run missions in:

* Raven Navy Issue (cruise missiles)
* Tengu (heavy missiles)
* Legion (pulse lasers)
* Rattlesnake (drones)
* Hurricane (artillery)
* Harpy (blasters) - level 1 to 3, and I use the Hurricane on the one level 3 mission with web and neut towers.

The Harpy is probably my favorite, but it largely depends on my mood, as well as the mission I receive. [I run missions for amusement, not because I need the ISK.]

The Tengu and Legion are easy-mode, but they are sub-optimal for many missions. The best all-around is probably my Rattlesnake (drone boat), though it requires much attention to drone health. The Raven Navy Issue is a DPS beast, but it has trouble with small targets like cruisers, and is rather slow to move between distant acceleration gates.
Katran Luftschreck
Royal Ammatar Engineering Corps
#7 - 2013-07-31 04:28:31 UTC  |  Edited by: Katran Luftschreck
Nalelmir Ahashion wrote:
then we go into main pocker and bang! my buddy with T1 tachyon apocalypse just sit there in 60-80 km range insta poping frigs (which even with medium missiles I need few barrages to kill) and tank the entire room like a boss while insta poping almost anything smaller then battleship and melt battleships down like nothing!

so as with missiles I need to wait for them to travel and get an issue with smaller target I was pretty amazed to see this from a ship combo which on paper (from what I've read I'm still newbie) should suck badly.

so what did I miss? :X


You missed the part about big missiles doing diddly against frigates. Without going into too much math, if the target is smaller than the missile then the missile does less damage. A fast, well tanked frigate can actually soak more cruise missiles than a slow moving battleship, because the frigate is going to take diddly for damage from them - while the battleship is going to take the full force every time.

Rocket - Drone/Frigate
Light - Destroyer/Cruiser
Heavy - Cruiser/Battlecruiser
Cruise/Torpedo - Battlecruiser/Battleship

Regular turrets, natch, do the same damage regardless of target size. Ah, but caveat! A smaller, faster target is less likely to get hit at all by the larger guns. Which brings us back to the advantage of missiles - they never miss.

http://youtu.be/t0q2F8NsYQ0
James Morgan
Pod Republic
#8 - 2013-07-31 08:00:41 UTC
A proper skilled Raven will do more damage on BS/BC rats than a Tachyon Navy Apoc. The Apoc on the other hand would be able to insta pop frigates/cruiser at range.

Since you guys are running mission together, you should fit target painters(atleast meta4 ones) on drake and raven. 1 TP on drake and 2 on raven will help you raise your dps against most of the rats. Also use drones for frigates.
Verity Sovereign
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#9 - 2013-07-31 17:31:07 UTC
Essentially, when calculating the amount of damage done, the ratios of weapon sig res/target sig radius and target angular velocity/weapon tracking speed are multiplied.

The way it works, is that if a small frigate with a tiny sig res has 0 or very nearly 0 angular velocity, the battleship guns will hit it for full damage.
NPC AI is pretty dumb, they fly in a straight line to the player, and their angular velocity is often some value like 0.00001 when they are approaching.
Essentially, at long range, turrets do full damage to small frigs, at close range, they do zero damage to small frigs (unless the target is heavily webbed/target painted and the BS guns are tracking speed boosted/ the BS manuevers to minimize traversal, as with a MWD or such).

Missiles, meanwhile, do reduced but non-zero damage to frigs at any range within their maximum range -> so its less effective DPS, but its DPS you can count on, whereas a turret BS must pop those frigs before they get close, or it will never be able to use its gun to pop those frigs (exceptions such as a vindi with dual 90% webs and blasters notwithstanding), the applied gun DPS drops to 0.

Those lasers were dealing EM and thermal.
Thermal is pretty good against Guristas.
So, it shouldn't lose too much DPS, but still, a navy Mega doing more Kin than Th would take down the larger ships faster than that navy Apoc that does more EM than Th against enemies that are weakest to Kin, and still pretty weak against Th.

For the small ships it doesn't really matter if they were alpha'd with 3x the needed Damage, or 1.5x the needed damage.


Now get a faction+T2 fit, max skilling nightmare or Paladin to mission with you.... then see the results.

Then... a vindi (although a rail vindi doesn't have such impressive DPS as when fit with blasters),
Turret boats are just more fun
Paul Panala
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#10 - 2013-07-31 22:04:58 UTC
Missile damage is primarily effected by ship size. If you shot large missiles at a small ship you only do a fraction of the damage. Guns are more effected by angular speed, they can't hit ships that are orbiting you faster than their tracking speed. Guns have an advantage here because small ships far away still have a very low angular speed, so they do a higher percentage of damage than a missile.

Skills also play a huge part in how much damage you can apply to undersized ships. Your friend with T2 weapons clearly has a lot more skill points than you do and probably has his gunnery support skills trained to 4 or 5.
Klymer
Hedion University
Amarr Empire
#11 - 2013-07-31 22:14:12 UTC
heh since it was against Guristas sounds like you lucked out with little to no jamming in that one. Next time you may not be so lucky and then you'll see how useless a turret ship can really be when it's completely jammed. A missile boat on the other hand only has to switch to auto targeting missiles to continue doing a decent amount of damage and not have to worry about drones saving it before they get targeted and destroyed by the rats.
Verity Sovereign
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#12 - 2013-08-01 08:08:05 UTC
but since you can't target fofs.. even in a missile boat, when you are scrammed, you may still not be able to effectively clear the scrams or the DPS when jammed

Its an improvement for sure, but its not like missile boats are barely affected.

Also, with 3 people doing a mission, turret boats are fine, the NPCs will focus jams, and you might temporarily lose 1/3 of your fleet DPS, bu the jams will get cleared fast
Lost Greybeard
Drunken Yordles
#13 - 2013-08-01 08:30:58 UTC
Tachs balance having somewhat unreliable application and no selectable damage type by having bloody ridiculous quantities of Oomph. So, yeah, that's a viable build. With the previously mentioned advantage of having a much lower dependence on sig radius of the target compared to missiles, so in a group you just line up on whatever's on your buddy (thus having small angular velocity from your POV) and blow the crap out of them.

Solo, you'll have more problems, and will likely need drones to take care of smaller boats.
Jose Black
Royal Amarr Institute
Amarr Empire
#14 - 2013-08-01 11:58:50 UTC
First the Drake was never known for being a hard hitting ship in PVE. Secondly it is a battlecruiser. I would not expect a battlecruiser to have as much damage output as a much larger and pricier battleship, especially not at the same huge range.

Laser boats do still perform worse than other available options against "space bunnies". Invite someone flying a Sentry-(Navy)-Dominix and you'll see how it outperforms the Navy-Apoc.