Warfare & Tactics

Radial is the speed of how rapidly the other ship is closing or going away from you.

So if you arent moving and the other guy is burning 1000ms toward you, radial is -1000, if hes going away its 1000.
If you are moving toward him at 500ms and hes burning away from you at 1000ms radial is 1000-500.

If both of you are moving same direction at same speed, radial is 0 since your distance isnt changing.
Sometimes you want to know their actual velocities insted, since radial doesnt really tell you if they have ab/mwd if they are for example orbiting you which keeps radial small, while their actual velocity is high.

Basically if you are having trouble hitting the enemy who is orbitting you - double click somewhere in the direction they are moving so that your "radial" velocity goes up (as they get closer to you) and the "angular" velocity goes *down*.

Additionally as their orbit attempts to correct for your intercept course - if you fly *away* from the course it sets, you can pull out of their desired range, further decreasing the "angular" velocity and keeping "radial" higher as you separate.

Finally as their orbit pulls a 180 degree turn and flies directly towards you to re-attain their desired range if you turn and fly directly towards them your *radial* velocity should approach your max speed + their max speed - while your *angular* velocity approaches 0.

At minimum this should guarantee that your guns hit (if you have the range of course) - and ideally you may land a warp scrambler on them as the distance between you rapidly shrinks - shutting down their MWD and allowing you to control range for the rest of the engagement and do with them as you please.


The "Angular" velocity is actually the only one that matters for gun tracking - "Radial" velocity is merely a useful related statistic that helps you in minimizing the "angular" velocity.


Also this is all from the point of view of the slower ship having trouble tracking a fast moving target - if you are the fast moving target trying to avoid being hit you want to avoid them doing this to you, naturally


Happy murdering people

I now what degrees and rads are :P

on a good note missiles does not care about anything but your target speed and size :D

so if anyone else finds turrets mechanics confusing as well you can always switch :)

[personally I prefer missiles, because last time I was checking on the combat of ships of the same sizes and both turret based, maximingsing your outgoing damage will also maximise the damage from that foe to you (unless I got it terribly wrong)

while for missiels you can try minimising damage incoming without hampering your damage outgoing... and maximise damage outgoing without forcing yourself to eat more damage...

That's the incredibly simplistic version, yes.

Yet some turrets track better than others, and some ships have tracking bonuses. By taking these factors into account you can better decide whether to bother attemping to mitigate damage or just face tanking your opponent and praying you win the dps race.

I had this perfectly demonstrated a few days ago fighting an active armour tanked Succubus in my shield buffer fit Succubus. I made the mistake of attempting to mitigate damage by orbiting until it became apparent my reduced DPS wouldn't kill him before he whittled away my shields. By turning away and applying full DPS, the tides quickly turned and a wrecking hit blew through his remaining armour and most of his structure to hand me the fight. It was my failure to account for the fact that he had a tracking bonus (yet taking my own into account, because derp) that led me to orbit, and once I realised my mistake things went a lot smoother.



Just that in a lot of situations, it's overrated. Doubly so if you're losing sight of other factors in an attempt to fly your ship well. The trick is knowing when to trust the game, and knowing when making a turn and in which direction will benefit you more than simply pressing a button and hoping the game knows what you want it to do.