Ships & Modules

Paper DPS is what a ship can put out at maximum. IE a Torp A Golem does say 1000DPS


Real DPS is what the ship is doing once all pentilies and checks go through. Like Sig Radius, Velocities and so forth. So if you shooting at a cruiser sized target a Golem just shooting at a cruiser will only do a portion of that. And that would be it's real DPS.


A Rattler would be more effective since it's Drones apply better to smaller targets.


EDIT and yes, Pyfa has a graph where you can look at it's dps and input different settings, like Sig Radius and Target Velocity and it will tell you what you're actually doing

Nah, it goes slightly deeper than that.

Well, it's like that(-ish) with missiles, and not like that with turrets.

Say, hype can get about 1200-1300ish paper DPS with blasters. Or astarte can get about 1100ish i think. But apart from purely mechanical application figures seen on graphs you also have to look at the usecase. That is, what the pilot of the ship should to to apply all that deeps. Namely, chase NPCs in this case. Which means you are not shooting at your optimal most of the time. BUT. If you want to do besieged covert sites, blaster astarte/hype are the hot stuff (okay, rattle is very good too).

OTOH rattle has a choice between sentries and heavies. Sentries (and any turret-like long range weapon system in general. PVE naga ftw) are very good at blapping oncoming frigs because the vast majority of NPCs in game don't know about transversal. Provided, of course, you are starting away from the frigs. But sentries anchor you to a place, and the time spent blapping frigs is the time spent not moving to your goal. Meanwhile with heavies you get wasted deeps on small stuff.

Oh, and you are not doing the blockade in a sensible way in a torp golem probably. Because ranges (though I'm not sure about torp golem projection possibilities).

Similar sentiments can be applied to anom ratting dreads (stuck in a siege after anom is cleared), MJDs (min 6 minutes per pocket for a normal BS), bastion (again, 1m pocket time increments).

So while applied DPS is definitely a more useful metric than paper DPS, it often bears little relation to The One True Metric - iskies per hour. Ultimately you are ratting to earn isk, Which consists of site rewards vs site expenses vs site turnabout time. More often than not a mach with an ascendancy set will net you better site turnabout time than all the golem application in the world.

Paper is paper and the accuracy of the numbers relative to performance in the field is dependent on how accurate you are and which tools you use. Fitting tools will always give you your maximum DPS, some even have limited capability to project what your DPS will be against a specific NPC but rarely against a specific ship from the NPC. A well set up spread sheet that takes all of the relevant factors into account can be extremely accurate in predicting actual aplied DPS but they are time consuming to set up and use.

The rest of this is personal preferences / experiences.

In the real world there is no such thing as a best ship / fit and DPS is not relevant when compared to simply having fun. Even the highest DPS ship you can fly / afford would be boring if you did not like it for some reason.

I have access to and fly all four of the marauders as well as all of the pirate faction BS and to be honest they are all better and they are all worse depending on the NPC. Of all of the ships there are four that stand out in my experiences the Vargur and the Paladin are the most devastating against some NPC, the Machariel is perhaps the best ship for blitzers and the Rattle and Golem tie for most versatile although both of them can be outdone by other ships in specific circumstances.

drones have travel time as well so you have to factor that in as well.

Applied and practical dps are only apparent once you're actually in the situation, you can only calculate paper dps so far

The Golem has 8 effective launchers(4 launchers + 100% hull bonus). The Rattlesnake as 7.5 effective launchers(5 launchers + 50% bonus to kinetic/therm Gallente BS bonus) and 5 effective heavy/sentry drones(250% hull bonus with 2 drones).

As to Paper vs Real(i.e applied DPS). It's relative to your target size, speed, etc.

So we take the Rattlesnake that has 0 application bonuses. Assuming the following fit with level 5 skills:
5x T2 Cruise - Scourge Fury Cruise
3x BCS II

2x Rigors II
1x Flare II

The Scourge Fury Cruise missiles has 104.4 Explosion velocity and 281.065 explosion radius. Which means anything moving faster then 104.4 ms/s or smaller then 281.065 sig radius will reduced damage applied.

So your dps is 786 with an alpha of 6842 to anything that that you apply 100% damage to with cruise missiles. There's math involved that I really don't feel like getting into. Google can help you there. But you can use certain modules like target painter, stasis web/grappler to reduce your target's speed and bloat their signature to apply 100% damage. Anything smaller/faster will take reduced damage at a ratio that is modified by an invisible damage reduction factor. Like I said. math involved. Google that.

Suffice to say that you can make setup your ship to apply 100% of your missile damage to a good number of targets.

Guns on the other hand, in this case sentry/heavy drones for the Rattlesnake. Are much harder to game. Since the damage is RNG based modified by if your target is in optimal or 1x to 2x falloff, the target's transversal vs tracking speed and signature of the weapon/target. You cannot guarantee 100% applied gun damage. If you're lucky with your rolls with webs/target painter you can average higher then 100% of your paper damage. If you're not then lower.

I don't use Pyfa but with EFT you can setup a attacker and target ship. I used to use a npc database for helping with my missile calculations. You can add in speed and transversal. To have a general idea of the damage you'll do in situations.

"EFT Warrioring" is like a full time job.

I was just pulling numbers from memory but thanks for the correction. Either way, Rattlesnakes gives you the same amount of effective drones with Sentry/Heavies as a Dominix with Gallente BS 5 for just sitting in the damn thing. Win right there.

The fit I was using that was only 792 dps was just to show missile damage/application as I said in my post that gun damage was much harder to game and fit no purpose for my example.

Either way, I would never use any rapid launcher for PvE. The reload time is rediculous and not to mention the wasted volleys unless you're in their face.

Also, your fit with 1650 paper dps, I'm almost 100% sure is with rhml and heavy drones....unless your a masochist with torpedos... Your dps is likely not counting the reload timer which will drop it more around 1400. Which is around the range of cruise/sentry.