EVE New Citizens Q&A

Hi.

I have a quick newbee question. Let say I am in a slow ship and quick enemy orbiting me clockwise. If I start to align my ship so, that it will turn clockwise as well, would it help with tracking? Cause in real life my guns would have to turn themselves less to catch the enemy...

Related: does my ship tracking consider my angular speed speed to the target? i.e: I'm orbiting a static target, is my angular speed to it compared to my turrets tracking?

My first answer would be no, since my ship is moving around the target the turrets should be always poiting to the center of the circle and therefore stopped in relation with my ship. But I've noticed that my accuracy drops heavely if I choose to orbit a target with MWD on

I was under the Impression that Eve uses a "simplified model" that doen not take course changes into account. Also the anugal velocity is a "mirror stat" which will be identical for both ships fighting.

Which means a "perfect Orbit" which would NOT have a angular velocity in "real live" does in fact have one in eve. The course changes and orientation are not taken into account at all. For the calculations only the current vectors are used

This.

Which means that you can orbit something stationary so fast that your guns are no longer able to track it.

Back to the OP: you can reduce angular velocity (and thus help your tracking) by aligning in the same direction as your target. The best way is to "Look at" the target and then double-click in the direction he's flying. But that's because the angle between your direction and his direction gets smaller, not because you are spinning in the same direction as he is. The perfect outcome of that is both of you flying in parallel at the same speed, with 0 angular velocity.

The other option is the "slingshot" manoeuvre that Lilliana talked about: by suddenly flying in the opposite direction, you can greatly increase the distance and trick the "orbit" autopilot into approaching you in a straight line, reducing angular velocity to zero. But that only works well with fast ships, as you need a certain minimum distance before the autopilot switches to "approach".

Its not that hard. However, what you do is very situational. Thus it takes a little knowledge and common sense. This is going to sound a little complicated because I'm bad at words, but once you try it a little its quite easy.

Angular velocity is transversal speed divided by distance. So you can either increase distance or decrease transversal speed to improve your tracking.

Lets talk about the case where you're trying to kill a frigate that is chasing your ship. The TLDR is you want to either pull range and make him chase you, or match his path for as long as your speed allows to get good tracking. You could substitute 'Talos vs T1 cruiser' or any other kiting ship vs a fast brawling ship where you want to maintain range while keeping good tracking.

If a frigate is chasing you to scram you, burning away from the frigate will often give you good tracking as he burns in. He either has to give up some radial velocity to keep transversal up and come in at an angle, or he has to give you good hits and risk dying before he can land tackle. If he does start to burn at an angle and you notice it, you can start burning away from the direction he is going to get some extra distance (hence time to kill him), or you can change trajectories to match him to kill transversal again and get better hits.

If a frigate is orbiting you while holding tackle you can pilot to either break his orbit then kill him as he burns back in, or you can steer into the plane of his orbit and try to move with his orbit when he is traveling in the same direction as you to extend the period of the orbit when you have good tracking.

The key is to kill him before he gets close. Once the frigate gets a scram on you his superior agility and the fact that his scram shuts down your MWD takes away a lot of your options for creating range. As he is close, even a little speed gets magnified by the small distance between you to produce very large angular velocities, so you will have a rough time tracking the dude. Frequently large ships fit some sort of 'tackle defense' to deal with frigates that come in close, such as neuts, webs, or drones.

What about applying damage to a target you're not worried about running you down? For example, when I tackle a Rupture in my Cynabal if I orbit him at 20km with my MWD on I will break my own tracking. I tend to shut down my MWD and only orbit if something is shooting at me in these cases, but make sure my ship is never moving directly towards the enemy so I can't get bumrushed in the time it takes me to turn around.

For another example, if you have tackled a Carrier (very large ship without guns) with a Talos (medium sized ship with very large guns) then you can ctrl space to stop your ship and get better tracking. Even though the carrier is very large, if you orbit very close to it your speed (and the low tracking Void ammo you should be using) will be magnified by the close distance and you will start breaking your own tracking.

Notice that in every case I never hit approach on a target I can't easily overwhelm. The reason is I want the option to pull range, and if I approach that means my ship doesn't just have to accelerate away, it has to deccelerate, stop, then accelerate away. Approaching effectively cuts your agility by a factor of 2 for when you are trying to buzz off.

Hopefully these words help get you started thinking about tracking and how it relates to manual piloting. I know things are poorly written. I think of the subject as a compilation of disparate experience instead of a theory with an overarching theme, so everything is technical and case by case. If someone comes along and writes a real guide I'd be very happy.

Thank you both for these explanations! I have read a few guides on things like these but appying them in practice is quite hard.
Still, I try to check what guns the other ship has fitted and do the spiral/sew-saw approach, I guess that´s a start.

But what I originally meant was such piloting that you only lower the transversal for your own shot - by slowing down and/or changing direction - while keeping it as high as possible during the cycling of the gun (which would make sense since I think lower transversal for you means lower transversal for your enemy as well!?).
Is this even possible? I would assume it could work with artillery-like guns (high alpha long cycling) and bigger ships.

Well, that´s what I heard, anyway, but I must admit for someone who still suffers from absolute information overload in the battle itself (checking distance, transversal, guns, heat, damage, local, d-scan and whatnot) this seems like black magic...
I am already glad I no longer forget to overheat my guns anymore (still have to work on turning overheat off in time; don´t ask )!

I once got caught in my Hurricane by one of those faction frigates, don´t remember the type but it was orbiting at the edge of disruptor range. That gave me the option to use my MWD and force the other player to move along with my movement for a while, or lose his point. The moment my shots started hitting, he knew he was in trouble, and broke disruptor range to get out.