Ships & Modules

I can't think of any reason why that would be the case. I'd expect that the only real difference would be the DPS lost because you weren't firing all your guns for part of the time. I'd also expect the grouped guns to provide higher volley damage and thus to slowly break through any repairing the rat did.

I think the most likely answer is that the rat got closer or your transversal dropped, or maybe you just got lucky with it not repping for a cycle or two (its random).

If its consistent, can you fraps it for us?

-Liang

I'll have to find the mission or a similar tank again before I can do any more serious testing. I had an agent over in amarr space who seemed to give it out every few days so I'll try and head over there and hope it comes up again. Might takea few days so unless someone else knows for sure i'll repost as soon as possible.

I too enjoy speculating on technical issues I could not possibly know definitively about unless working for CCP or reading something published by them.

I'm actually pretty damn sure that when weapon grouping was introduced partially to reduce server load...Not because I think I know how EVE's backend works, but because CCP said it does.

EDIT: Found the devblog.


OP: You are hallucinating. There is no damage increase by keeping your weapons ungrouped.

If you watch the CCP War on lag presentation, you will find out exactly what the devs think of people who don't group their guns....

CCP presentation

Whole thing is very interesting but the part that I mention is @ 32:48
This would seem to disagree with you.

Not grouping all of your guns has its uses in an alpha fleet. If you have 10-20 DPS ships there's a possiblity of alphaing your target outright and wasting damage that could be applied to the next target. This only matters because each pilot is only applying DPS every ten seconds or what have you as opposed to say a hellcat or drake fleet in which the pilot applies damage on a near-continuous basis. I gave an example of a small/mid size fleet because beyond this there's enough variance in how quickly pilots react/ how quick they switch targets that wasted damage is minimal.

Tldr: Group short-range weapons, and split long range weapons in groups of two or three.

Requires projectile weapon rigging IV

LOL

Anyways as to why it looked like you were doing more damage either (1) you had improved range or changed position to cause more damage, (2) damage has a random component so you might have just had a few good hits in a row, or (3) the psychological element of seeing the targets' HPs go down steadily as opposed to in starts and stops when the grouped turrets fire.

As to uses for ungrouped weapons, for pve I know not, but in pvp if you have your log open and weapons in 4 groups each with different damage type, fire one salvo and check log to see which damage type did the most dmg vs your opponent, then load all turrets with that damage type - if it's going to be an extended combat that can be useful (obviously factor in the delay in changing ammo type)

Well - as you're referring to PVE, it makes sense not to group all weapons, but not in the scenario you provided.

If a ship has a huge tank, I'd fire all guns on it and it wouldn't make difference if they're grouped or not. However, if your guns do lots of DPS, there are lots of rats you might only want to shoot with 2 guns beause more would be overkill and you unnecessarily lose DPS becasue you're using a full volley on ships that would be alpha'd with 2 guns.