Ships & Modules

I've had an account before this one, but like this one, skilled almost entirely in missile and drone combat. Been playing off and on since late 2009, but an embarrassing confession. Though I was able to figure out missile range and accuracy before even the tooltips were around (easy as hell), I have only vague clues on how gunnery module accuracy works.

The other night, my friend finally got into a Vagabond, and was using Quake M ammo. Zooming around at 933m/s (AB fit), and with his optimal range on 720mm Arty cannons was 7.2 km. However, even orbiting at 10km, he missed almost all of his shots. He's got level 4 Motion Prediction. The target he was shooting at was a basic Sanshas Cruiser, so that rules out "oh, frigate so it was too small", leading me to wonder, was it his speed?

When switching to EMP M, and orbiting at 15-20 km, he was able to land over 1000 a shot, fairly regularly, not missing, and had no misses with Tremor at it's optimal, but that's expected. The cruiser was travelling between 291-311 m/s according to overview info, and the Vagabond was at 933m/s.

So a few questions. We are taught in the tutorial to orbit at optimal, which clearly sucks with Quake? Are you supposed to orbit between your optimal and falloff? He's flown an arty Loki, Autocannon Loki, Mach, Stabber, various frigates... never had issues even when using Quake ammo in said Arty Loki until this Vagabond, which leads me to wanting more information, especially since I'd like to get into Lasers for Incursions within the coming months.

Tracking Speed:
What are the 'goal' tracking speeds for Medium and Large guns. Drone tracking speed seems great (Ogres boasting around .3 off the top of my head), and Missiles hit regardless of how close the enemy gets, so long as they are in range. (They just hit for less if the target is fast and/or boasting a small sig radius.)

Then I hear phrases like "fly under the optimal" and I remember a terrible experience I had long ago when trying out a Harbinger vs a Frigate. My tank wasn't breaking, I hit the frigate once every 20-ish shots, with Multifrequency crystals, and I was too derpy at the time to bring drones. Eventually, I got someone to come help kill the scramming frig, but I was stuck for nearly an hour trying to kill it before help showed up. I've since learned: Buff the hell out of your tracking speed and/or slow the foe, blap them before they get too close, and bring drones. But I ask, if a target your size or under (or maybe even over?) is below your optimal range, orbiting, are they that much harder to hit?

Mechanics of Falloff:
I notice a lot of ships get falloff bonuses, rather than optimal. My base understanding of gunnery tells me I want to be at optimal, so more optimal would be good? How fast does DPS drop in Falloff percentages? I imagine something like if over 80% of your falloff range, the target's going to shrug off a fair bit of damage?

Finally, aware again that speed and sig radius make a huge impact on accuracy, as well as target disruptors. I should note the Sansha cruiser was sometimes using a tracking disruptor, so we moved onto a Drone cruiser and got the same result as when the Sansha cruiser was not disrupting. So that was my embarrassing admission of an area where I should -not- have ignorance, being I have some interest in pvp and Laser/Hybrid ships.

Vagabond = autocannons. Pve I tend to fly somewhere within half of my falloff. Ratting I turn my mwd off and orbit at about 4500m. If I were to leave an ab running and I wasn't getting good hits I'd move my orbit out until I did (bs rats won't hit a Vaga orbiting 4500 @ 400+m/s, although maybe in a mission the other ships can move out to hit you fine).

Good thing to do is put the angular velocity up on your overview (or whatever it is that reads out rads/sec) and keep it under your tracking.

With Matar I don't use long range for pve. Get in, speed tank, fly in falloff, use higher dps ac's. If I have to use artillery, I go longer range and kite stuff. But that's lower dps.

With mini ships if it gets a falloff bonus, use ac's; optimal bonus, use artillery. Ac's I orbit, artillery I kite/keep at x range (and try and keep that transversal low).

Get an Ishtar. It'll probably do the best isk/hr out of all the hac's. If you want to play with guns and a Vaga though I'm sure it can do what you want it to do (an Ishtar will do it easier). I do all my pve in vaga's and sleipnirs without much problem, only real concerns I ever have are neut towers/lots of webbing frigs (that's more of a concern for the Vaga). The Sleipnir tanks/dps better, but in a situation with potential pvp the Vaga has more options (an Ishtar will probably still have an easier time with this too). Tanking a Vaga is very active; if you're up against rats with long range weapons you need to get into the space of the BS's and under their guns while killing off frigs/cruisers, if the rats use shorter range weaponry it's a matter of kiting away until they all get seperated and then kill them off in range will out of ranging the bigger BS guns. An Ishtar, again, can kill off everything much simpler, probably quicker, and deal with a surprise pvp situation (probably) with more ease. Sleipnirs I wouldn't train for now, the training involves too much over the benifit sit gets over a 'cane.

Yea..... Ishtars.....

Best guns... Are no guns. Drones, and Drone boats in general are really strong right now.

As for turrets, I would say that any Scorch+Pulse combination is a good place to start. Large autocannons with a fall off bonus are also really nice. Small balsers, and large blasters (when fitted to certain Ships) Can also be very effective.

Small / Med Autocannons / arty are in a pretty bad place. Along with MED blasters + Beams.

Alright. If your friend wants to run artillery, and especially artillery on fast ships which orbit their target at speed, he should always make a note of his tracking speed, and add angular velocity to his overview. These two numbers compare fairly directly, and so if you try to shoot things over your tracking speed, you are going to have a bad time.