Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Although Eve IS spreadsheets in space, I really do not use a calculator when flying.

As far as math side goes, rad/s and deg/s are essentailly same thing modified by a constant (180/pi). Deg/s uses a bigger number, thus it is easier to read on screen. Someone here proposed a milliradians/s, which is also fine. Why would I need to read 0.012 if I can just read 12. Unnecessary digits add an unnecessary level of complexity, which is what CCP is trying to avoid. You don't see 14,216 meters on your overview. You see 14.2km.

Back to OP topic, I believe a better method of explaing tracking "in-game" is needed. It is disappointing how many people got it wrong.

Again, OP math is right. Turret signature is a value in turrets properities and has absolutely nothing to do with missile damage or lock times or chance of being probed out. The only thing it affects in game is the tracking formula. It is a constant denominator in one of the terms. The OP wishes to merge it with another constant(tracking speed) and make the equation simpler to understand. The math is ok.

I've read the OP and it doesn't seem like he's simplifying anything. But neither implementation seems superior to the other. Both implementations are a bit mysterious to a new player. Both implementations require maths and a bit of game experience to understand. Gameplay is exactly the same in both implementations. Meaning that no change should happen. If a change isn't beneficial there's no point having a change.

As you stated it doesn't change the system, so I'm not sure how it gets better understood. Also, the most common misconceptions regarding the relation ship of signature and tracking aren't resolved with this. If anything it seems they would be strengthened since those who don't understand now still likely won't and thus the "sig res:sig rad is a separate chance to hit" crowd will just go on citing gun sizes as the reason rather than having the sig res itself to point at.

TL;DR: Changing a number to a constant won't suddenly make people understand math or bother to learn the formula in the first place any more than now.

1) Fair enough
2) And against what would you compare sig radius?? And how would you know when and by how much is reducing sig radius enough to drop you below a certain threshold? You wouldn't. Currently the ratio between Turret Scan res and target sig radius IS what describes whether your guns track at the listed rate, or less, or more. Remove the turret scan res and then sig radius just becomes an odd number, for which people would need another relative number to receive any useful information.
3) This just repeats 2), and is the cornerstone behind Turret Scan res. That's what the so called arbitrary number describes - how well it tracks in regards to the size of the target.


By removing Turret Scan res and absorbing its value into another variable, tracking in this case, cos its the only one that makes sense, you'd remove a sense of scale between tracking and angular velocity. You'd have to increase the tracking number by some form of a constant. Then to compute whether you track well or not, you'd need to divide by your/your enemy's angular. I find it much easier to compare 0.5 to 0.2 than whatever alterations you make to raw magnitude of tracking to the unchanged angular velocity value. Because you can't reasonably change the latter - it has physical meaning that you'd throw out of the window if you tamper with it.

About the only useful change proposed in this thread so far was the change from radians to degrees in order to up the magnitude of numbers on the overview as numbers to 2-3 decimal points can be confusing. If anything else, flatout display the ratio between your tracking to your enemy's angular velocity. Both values are available as is and this would save the assailant another step.

The math aint wrong and the math isn't what people have an issue about. The whole equation is just 2 ratios, one of which is likely to be constant in a fight all together. But all given parameters are there for a reason. Unlike what the OP dismisses, Turret Scan Res is there to compare how well the said gun performs against targets of varying size.

For 8 pages, it's not that people are bad at math, but more like the OP is largely defensive on securing a change he proposed which holds no practical advantages. You will just replace one issue with another. Adding insult to injury, further participants join in the circlejerk to brag about how everyone is bad at math and they themselves are not. However, so far, no one has actually shown a record of practical numbers and the difference between current computing strategy (as in how'd you do this real time) and the strategy under the proposed changes. Why didn't you think that leading a change with this wouldn't be far more convincing that arguing about the validity of an equation? At the end of the day whether the manipulation of the equation is valid or not isn't what the user cares about; instead - how does one apply it.

Turret signature resolution is not just a multiplier in an equation, it's a way to balance different classes of turrets and prevent extreme tracking scenarios.

Everything that I've seen in favor of your idea would have every gun get a new, re-balanced tracking stat, ignore the turret signature resolution while keeping the target's signature radius, and apply the same tracking equally to all targets. (If I'm incorrect here, please tell me so.) On paper, and at first glance, you are correct. Nothing seems to change.

There are two very key things you overlooked.

First, under the current system, only part of the tracking term is subject to effects from things like tracking computers, ammo type, tracking disruptors, etc. While the signature radius of the target can obviously be modified (target painters, MWDs, warfare links, etc.), there is currently no way to modify the signature resolution of a turret. It's static. It's constant. It's a buffer of sorts to keep their stats from going completely out of whack. Which leads me to my next point.

Second, turret signature resolution is way of saying that no, that 425mm railgun should not be able to hit that moving frigate quite so easily at 100km, even if my tracking says I should be able to while still ensuring that my light electron blaster will hit that battleship that I'm orbiting at 250m. At close to zero ranges, tracking needs to go up exponentially in order to have any chance to hit. Since giving them that much tracking would grossly overpower them at longer ranges, there needs to be another way to do it. CCP has acknowledged that tracking does not scale well, with either range or turret size. Trying to balance tracking so that close range weapons can track well enough to hit while not allowing long range weapons to over-track at long ranges is non-trivial. The signature resolution of a turret plays a key role in maintaining that balance. Try applying some of your re-balancing to to more extreme ranges (near zero, 100km+) and I guarantee you that you'll see unusual behavior.

Regardless of whether this is a good idea or not, it produces demonstrably different results than the current mechanic when you consider tracking bonuses/penalties, and would likely lead to broken performance at extremes of range and/or tracking. This means that your underlying assumption (that turret performance wouldn't change) is flawed.

Ergo, this idea is flawed and should not be implemented.

QED.

EDIT: The issue with tracking at close ranges is a large part of the reason why webs used to be 90% instead of 60%. Blasters used to need targets to be going that slow at ranges under 10km in order to hit anything, even oversized targets.

Simply making a statement without backing it up doesn't lend much strength to your statement. What part of this statement is wrong?



Also, alleged lack of comprehension on my part aside, do you disagree with the content of my post or no?

Again, simply making a statement without backing it up doesn't lend much strength to your statement. What is wrong and why? Are there ways to modify turret signature resolution that I'm not aware of? Does holding part of the tracking term constant not limit the impact of external effects to turret performance? Does tracking not scale exponentially with decreasing range? Which of these statements is wrong?



You keep bringing up algebra as proof. Do yourself a favor and work out the numbers for these scenarios:

Frigate blaster damage applied to a battleship while orbiting at 200m, both with the current system and yours.

Frigate blaster damage applied to a frigate while orbiting at 200m, both with the current system and yours.

Battleship railgun damage applied to a frigate while orbiting at 200km, both with the current system and yours.

Battleship railgun damage applied to a battleship while orbiting at 200km, both with the current system and yours.

Have all ranges and speeds be the same, and the re-adjusted tracking for turrets must be the same for both uses. I think you'll be surprised by the results.


"Ergo" and "QED" are not asinine, they are standard language when making a logical argument. Apologies if you took offense, none was meant.

I wasn't referring to the 1/r relationship of transverse velocity, I was referring to the exponential nature of the chance-to-hit equation, which is 0.5^X * 0.5^ Y, where X and Y are the tracking and range terms, respectively. In order to maintain a constant chance-to-hit, X has to vary as 1/r, therefore chance to hit is proportional to 0.5^(1/r), which is an exponential relationship.


Statements like this are the reason I left theoretical physics. ;^)

...erases whiteboard...

...re-reads OP...

...erases whiteboard again...

...re-reads OP again...

After going back and re-reading the OP a few times, it would appear that I did misread something. I retract my previous disagreement, and believe that everything would work exactly as you said it would. I stand by all of my previous statements, but I feel that some of them are, obviously, no longer applicable.

As a matter of personal opinion, I still dislike the proposal. While you may find the signature resolution statistic of turrets confusing, I always found it helpful knowing that my target's signature radius did play a role and having that value as sort of a guide. But I won't argue matters of opinion.

Cheers, and thanks for your patience.

Actually it's not a multiplier at all, and it is not useful at all in balancing turrets.

You and several others are under the impression that signature resolution affects turret tracking. It does not.

Signature resolution is an arbitrary value that the rest of the equation is built around.

The equation is balanced to the desired values in partnership with the arbitrary value(s). Any and all possible arbitrary values work correctly and will not affect the outcome provided the tracking multipliers on the individual weapons are balanced to give them the correct amount of tracking.

It is difficult to explain it, but if my last explanation was helpful then perhaps the original poster might consider adding it to the original post. No credit necessary.