EVE New Citizens Q&A

I just got finished with most of the tutorial missions and decided to try out a missile ship instead of the hybrids...

Complete difference in how things went, rats just evaporated. No issues where 3 or 4 shots missed completely or all 3 turrets graze for 15 dmg.

Admittedly I have been training skills to build a better tank over weapons right now, but since missiles don't seem to miss, and always hit for the same damage they seem superior even if it takes a couple of seconds for them to hit the target. At what point do guns not miss so much or do more consistent damage?

From reading some of the forums it seems guns are the preferred weapon type for most things but I am just not seeing it with my results.

Before you ask I did read up on guns some so I had set my orbit to 6000 meters when optimal was 6900, but even then I missed soo much. At one point I was completely stationary shooting a warehouse and missed it 3 times in a row and almost every shot was a graze. I feel like I must be drunk shooting to miss a big freaking building like that.

It is because of missiles using a complete different applied damage formula then the gunnery systems use in EVE.



Basically in a very simplified system:


Missiles:

Missile size vs Ship size (so shooting something that is smaller or equal size of the missile is preferred. Using oversized missiles on a smaller then designed target will greatly reduce damage)

Explosion velocity vs ship speed (If explosion is faster then target...hit. If target outruns the explosion like any hollywood superstar...reduced damage)


Guns:

Size of guns vs ship size (basically as with the missiles).

Angular velocity of a target vs turret tracking (how fast is the target orbiting you and how fast can your turrets turn around their pivot point. Angular velocity is based on just speed but also the distance to you. Someone 1 m from you walking 10km/h will make more laps around you then someone that is 10km away from you in the same timeframe).

Range from you to the target. (other then missile's easy system of boolean system for range (is it in range: Yes or No), turrets have optimal ranges and fall off ranges that dictacte if and how hard you will/can hit).




So, with guns, something can just be too far away to hit (outside your optimal / optimal+falloff) or just way to close (it is outrunning your gun's tracking).

Which is better:

It depends.

I misunderstood how it worked then. I thought stay just under optimal for those reasons, not to stay a little over it. I will have to try again when I get home from work.

Thank you for taking the time to reply. I appreciate it.


I know bigger is not always better, but I think I want to set an eventual goal of flying a carrier. Commanding an army of drones just seems like a fun idea. Kind of like my mastermind on city of heroes or bonedancer on daoc.
anyone know of any guides for people thinking of going that route?

Yeah.

Don't


YOu are number "stopped counting cause it hurts my brain, that much" that think a carrier is fun.


If you like a very very limited range of being useful, so hardly used it AND being dependant on others in your survivablity as fun.

Go ahead.


A carrier is a logistics/drone platform, only useful in low/null/WH and ONLY usefull when you have a good support fleet with you.

A solo carier is just a killmail waiting to happen...



As said above, go the Gallente subcapital route. Same gameplay, way more useful. Of course, add a carrier to it. But don't be amazed when you find out you will hardly use it or that it ain't that fun to fly around.

With my gun based ships, sometimes I keep at range instead of orbiting because the tracking is too awful

Wish it was possible to customize how a ship looks, oh well... myrmidon doesn't look bad. May go f9r it

Sounds like small railguns? Long range weapon systems like railguns have poor tracking, so it is often better to use "keep at range" or manually pilot to lower your transversal. Your optimal just tells you the "base" damage you can put out due to range. You can still lose most of that damage due to tracking. Since small weapon systems have low optimal ranges, angular velocity at those ranges tend to be high and can really mess up your damage output.

For example, an blaster Atron orbiting at it's optimal (~700 m) will miss most of its shots because the angular velocity is so high, despite the good tracking of blasters. At 6000 with railguns you are further out so angular velocity is lower, but railguns have much worse tracking so you may still miss if you are orbiting rather than flying in a straight line toward or away from the target.

Missiles don't have these problems but they have their own set of application issues (explosion velocity and explosion radius). They also start with much lower base DPS.


They've been teasing us with this possibility lately. It may be coming Soon(tm).

It's a tool, not some scenery.

It doesn't matter how ugly or nice it looks, as long as it is efficient


I rather have an ugly ship that is very efficient then a nice looking ship that is useless.

For what?

Missions? Only lowsec level 5s, and enjoy having a target on your back from the second you step into a carrier (in a few years time) and losing it when you get careless.

PVP? Carriers are mainly logistics ships (repair ships) for PVP. They're not solo ships.

They're damn useful as glorified cargo ships, though less so now than before Phoebe's jump changes. Still good, depending on what/where/how often though

To all the hate regarding carriers, I think it's a little counter productive to knee jerk tell every newbie "hell no!"

To introduce myself, I fly an archon, and have lost several. I fly both nulslec 'slowcat' and triage type archons

Yes, they are NOT a solo ship, however it IS a very reasonable 'end goal' to ahcieve. Don't go rushing in to a carrier skill plan, but do try out the following roles to see if you like them

Logistic ships. Join a corp, rep some buddies in pvp or pve, they're fairly quick to train in to the t1 versions and you'll immediatly know if it's for you.

Drone boats. These are ships that are very Flavour Of The Month of isk making and PVP. They're a worth while ship to train in for, and in some cases, like with remote rep domis, you comine that with logistic ship roles to get a feel for how a slowcat carrier can work minus the big ass and slow ass flying speed/jump drives.

Try each of a carrier' different roles, and see if they work for you. If they don't, aim for something else! By training in to these different roles before jumping straight for the shineys, you've at the very least got some good core skills in frequently used ships should you ever give them a try, want to specialise more in one specific role.

As an aside, IF you train towards a carrier and are in the right kind of group, you will end up using it plenty so long as you've skilled up good supports behind it.