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Low damage mystery
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Slan Audeles
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#1 - 2014-08-18 13:38:20 UTC

I ran into something interesting and I was wondering if you guys may have any theories on what is going on. The basic question is this: "Does eve scale the damage output down if your skill in the weapon system and ship is too "low"? I don't mean linearly as you would expect, but some sort of "under skilled penalty". I took a couple of days and trained to Large projectiles 1 and Minmatar battleship 1 and threw a fit together for a Maelstrom and went out with some friends to try it out in some level 4 missions. Now I know my dps would not be great. I just wanted to feel out how it "felt" to use projectiles. How it felt to brawl with a ship rather than sniping missiles and lasers at 50K. Ok, here is what is weird. My volleys with autocannons at optimal against battleships were hitting for like 25-38 instead of 1000 plus. I mean I was tickling them. I imagine in a week or two when both large projectile and Minmatar battleship are at 4 this will change, but I can't understand why I was hitting for so low. It does not add up. For example we did Serpentis "Worlds Collide" and when on the Serpentis side I used Phased Plasma against a Core Admiral at 12K out and was hitting for 24 each volley. My drones were doing more per hit and I had to scroll back to figure out which was my battleship damage.

Any theories on this?

Here was my hastily assembled fit:

[Maelstrom, Test Maelstrom]
Damage Control II
Gyrostabilizer II
Gyrostabilizer II
Tracking Enhancer II
Tracking Enhancer II

Experimental 100MN Afterburner I
Large Shield Booster II
Shield Boost Amplifier I
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Shield Boost Amplifier I

800mm Heavy 'Scout' Repeating Cannon I, Phased Plasma L
800mm Heavy 'Scout' Repeating Cannon I, Phased Plasma L
800mm Heavy 'Scout' Repeating Cannon I, Phased Plasma L
800mm Heavy 'Scout' Repeating Cannon I, Phased Plasma L
800mm Heavy 'Scout' Repeating Cannon I, Phased Plasma L
800mm Heavy 'Scout' Repeating Cannon I, Phased Plasma L
800mm Heavy 'Scout' Repeating Cannon I, Phased Plasma L
800mm Heavy 'Scout' Repeating Cannon I, Phased Plasma L

Large Capacitor Control Circuit I
Large Capacitor Control Circuit I
Large Capacitor Control Circuit I

Hobgoblin II x5
Hammerhead II x5
ChromeStriker
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#2 - 2014-08-18 15:19:12 UTC
Its called transversal.

No Worries
Slan Audeles
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#3 - 2014-08-18 15:24:58 UTC
well... I tried burning away, burning to and no matter what their relative velocity or speed relative to me it made little difference. I am familiar with hybrid and laser turrets and transversal. And against a battleship 12k away... its not like I was missing.
Kosetzu
The Black Crow Bandits
Northern Coalition.
#4 - 2014-08-18 15:48:34 UTC
1. Projectiles are falloff weapons. Stay at optimal and you will usually miss because of transversal etc.
2. Use the correct damage type against the enemies you face to maximize damage.
3. Train up the gunnery SUPPORT skills that increase optimal/falloff, tracking, rate of fire and damage.
Barton Breau
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#5 - 2014-08-18 15:59:04 UTC
While the damage is still low, it looks like you had a streak of just one gun hitting, yes, you will miss at a bs 12km away with guns with 2.4-3.6km optimal, with falloff being basically double penalized with tracking.
Jacob Holland
Weyland-Vulcan Industries
#6 - 2014-08-18 17:31:34 UTC
You may expect a linear progression of damage by skills but in reality, because the various skill modifiers are multiplicative, it is not. +5% of 150% is a larger increase than +5% of 100%.
There is no "underskill" penalty on anything but rigs in EVE (if you're underskilled you simply cannot online the module or board the ship).

From the damage you're causing I would guess than you're missing a lot in gunnery support skills as well as the Large Projectiles, some of the damage loss will be from operating in falloff (if you're actually eliminating tracking from the issue) but...

Also consider that you're doing Thermal damage as a Primary. Phased Plasma is a good basic munition for PvE because most things have Thermal as their second lowest resist - this is not the case for Angels or EoM...
Nonetheless if you are shooting Guristas (for example) your pure Kinetic missiles will have hit the lowest resist whereas the high Thermal PP will be hitting the second lowest which may be significantly higher (I can't check at the moment but I believe that the general region is 10% between the two but some of the elite cruisers, for example, are higher IIRC).
Slan Audeles
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#7 - 2014-08-18 17:51:34 UTC
Thanks for the response. My support skills are not great:

Gunnery : 5
Controlled Bursts:4
Motion Prediction: 4
Sharpshooter: 4
Surgical Strike: 3
Trajectory Analysis: 3
Large projectile turret : 3

But I do have 2xTE and am using auto-cannons. And was using PP against Serpentis, not Guristas. So when EFT puts my volleys around 2K with my stats and against the same ship I have to wonder about hitting for 23.

But basically I think my question is answered. There is no known bug or scaling that would account for this. So it was a combination of bad luck and low skills.

I guess I will just skill up a lot more and try again. Its worth a 2 week experiment to see if I like Minmatar BS for missions, which everyone else seems to love.
stoicfaux
#8 - 2014-08-18 18:22:01 UTC
Looks like a bug.

With 0 skills, against a Core Admiral orbiting you at 12km[1] distance at 140m/s you should have been doing almost 200DPS minus 56% thermal resists = ~88 DPS. Or 88 * 6.4s rof = ~560 damage volleys.

Clear cache, re-log.


[1] Core Admirals orbit at 51km. So it should have been moving away from you which would have reduced transversal, but would have only added another ~10 DPS.

Pon Farr Memorial: once every 7 years, all the carebears in high-sec must PvP or they will be temp-banned.
Slan Audeles
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#9 - 2014-08-19 12:31:51 UTC

It may have been a bug. I took the ship out again last night and was hitting for what we would expect. Although my skills have come up a but with 3 in Large Projectile Turrets and 2 in Minmatar battleships.
Val'Dore
PlanetCorp InterStellar
#10 - 2014-08-19 13:29:34 UTC
Are your guns grouped? You may have the group bug that only fires one of them.

Star Jump Drive A new way to traverse the galaxy.

I invented Tiericide
Jacob Holland
Weyland-Vulcan Industries
#11 - 2014-08-19 17:52:41 UTC
Glad to see things are working more as you expected now.

Slan Audeles wrote:
And was using PP against Serpentis, not Guristas.


This persists doesn't it...
Serpentis are also weakest to Kinetic. Hybrid ammo doesn't do more Thermal if it's fired from a Gallente Railgun than from a Caldari one.
Lady Naween
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#12 - 2014-08-20 03:20:27 UTC
Jacob Holland wrote:
Glad to see things are working more as you expected now.

Slan Audeles wrote:
And was using PP against Serpentis, not Guristas.


This persists doesn't it...
Serpentis are also weakest to Kinetic. Hybrid ammo doesn't do more Thermal if it's fired from a Gallente Railgun than from a Caldari one.



they are? damn i been using inferno missiles on them this whole time.. *shrugs* learn something new
Zhilia Mann
Tide Way Out Productions
#13 - 2014-08-20 03:39:56 UTC
Lady Naween wrote:
they are? damn i been using inferno missiles on them this whole time.. *shrugs* learn something new


There's a major exception for the Phi Overseer. Otherwise, yes, Serps are weakest to kin.
Valleria Darkmoon
Imperial Academy
Amarr Empire
#14 - 2014-08-20 04:19:56 UTC  |  Edited by: Valleria Darkmoon
Slan Audeles wrote:
Thanks for the response. My support skills are not great:
Gunnery : 5
Controlled Bursts:4
Motion Prediction: 4
Sharpshooter: 4
Surgical Strike: 3
Trajectory Analysis: 3
Large projectile turret : 3

If you are primarily using projectiles then make sure you train Large Projectile Turret, Trajectory Analysis and Surgical Strike before Sharpshooter. Controlled bursts does not need to be trained at all for projectiles and so unless you use other weapons don't put any more SP into that until you start branching out to lasers or hybrids. If you fit for Artillery, Sharpshooter will serve you well but ACs get drastically more benefit from Trajectory Analysis then they do from Sharpshooter.

Your Motion Prediction being at 4 should be OK for the moment and would be more important for missioning with artillery rather than ACs, but you'll definitely want to train that up too once you have the others to 4. I would suggest making sure you get T2 large guns after your support skills and battleship are at 4 but before you start putting them up to 5s. Advanced Weapon Upgrades is another skill you will want for fitting battleships optimally. A 3 week train to reduce the PG requirement for your weapons by 2% may feel like wasted time but once I finally got around to it there were so many fits that you can upgrade fairly significantly while now using up about 99.5% of your grid instead of having to downgrade something for fittings and that goes for all ship classes not just battleships. Again don't touch Controlled Bursts at all unless you use other weapons.

Reality has an almost infinite capacity to resist oversimplification.