Intergalactic Summit

Railguns too. You can't find more precise weapons in our cluster than railguns.

Except that doesn't work at all.

Seriously, have you never studied ballistics physics? At all? The human eye is amazingly bad at tracking fast moving objects at kilometers range. Especially objects that will appear to be specks of light that happen to move very fast. That's why dogfights had always taken place within distances measured in meters. Kilometers and you start finding yourself having trouble hitting a damn thing accurately.

Gunnery station crewmen are expected to know ballistics physics to understand how projectiles, whether gyrojet shells, railguns, plasma blasts, missiles or particle beams/lasers interact with moving targets at a specific velocity flying at a specific angle at a specific distance, with added consideration of the effects of gravity affecting the trajectory of the projectile or the beam. If on the surface and dealing with firing projectiles (not beams) at ranges measured in kilometers, we even have to take into account of wind direction and the planet's curvature in the calculation. Intuition is terrible at managing that.

Even then they do not actually do the calculations manually. They run the calculation through the ballistic control system or the targeting computers using the variables provided by the tactical suite. Modern systems do away with crew entirely, the sensors and tactical suite operate together with the capsuleer's cerebellum (not cerebrum. That is how we are able to instinctively come up with calculations, albeit not entirely accurate, in cycle intervals without being entirely aware of having done the calculation. The program was written into our subconscious) and individual targeting computers/ballistic control systems of every individual turret or launcher to calculate firing solutions just in time for the next firing cycle of the weapons. The more auxiliary computers added into the link-up the more accurate the calculations become.

The computers, by the way, are what we call 'Fire Control Directors'. It's not a person, it's a computer that calculates exactly where to aim, after taking into account of all these factors.

Besides, you didn't realise that you have MULTIPLE TURRETS with multiple angles to consider. Are you expecting to track the target through multiple views at multiple angles?

((https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire-control_system aka you do not eyeball your targets when you have giant turrets with a fixed turn speed and the targets are moving kilometers away. Use a goddamn calculator and know your calculations))

A Minmatar engineer knows ballistic physics and how to design a fire control system using five year old computers that some wasteful idiot is tossing into a junk heap that is able to get them a firing solution for a weapon type infamous for jumping ever so slightly due to recoil every second and still achieve a reasonable level of accuracy. I doubt you actually manually aim anything and just want to feel good about yourself.

Am I that bad?

I had already mentioned that the 'reticle' thing only works for targets who are meters away from your location, not KILOMETERS away, where the best you will see of your target is a barely perceptible speck of light and you have to rely on a telescope to even see the thing properly. Then you have to gauge velocity and direction so that you may lead your very fast moving target. And even then eye-based distance and velocity determination is horrifically inaccurate. That's why your ships have sensors systems/network and tactical suites whose job is to tell you where a target (identified by electronic signature, NOT sight) is, how fast it is going, what angle is it flying. Because your eyes are terrible at managing that kind of data.

Then you have to also take into account about the guns being located at different parts of the ship and each having different angles. Your fire control director system is there to take into account of the sensor data, turn speed of turret, location of said turret and then figure out exactly where to aim, then direct the turrets to aim exactly there. If missiles, aim launchers for most expeditious delivery of payload, upload tracking data and let the missiles lose.

However, the automated fire control system has weaknesses. For one, it relies entirely on sensor data, which does not provide a single accurate reading but an average. This is due to the fact that sensors have resolutions and the fact that the data is generated based on the target's electronic signature radius rather than true size and silhouette. As such, the figure generated by the sensor can be wrong, but due to how the system is programmed, it will keep generating the same inaccurate figures. In order to compensate for this problem, the fire control system has to be designed to work not with a specific figure but with probable figures. Probability. Aim trajectory based entirely on the probability of where the target will be in the next firing cycle.

To do this, the fire control director system will need to be programmed using a neural network scheme. However, such a system has a very steep hardware requirement, if all components were to be artificial. Even worse, fabricating such a thing will very quickly draw the attention of CONCORD, and for good reason. Artificial neural networks form the framework of strong AI, which as we all know is what led to the birth of the Rogue Drones.

That's where the capsuleer comes in. Every capsuleer already has a neural network in his or her brain. Every capsuleer is equipped to deal with probabilities. We can intuitively determine the chance of whether the target is actually where the data says it will be and adjust the accordingly. If there is a miss, we can adjust again, something a traditional fire control director can't do. All the capsuleer needs is to have his side of the program and the instinctive understanding on how gunnery, and by extension, this program, works in his or her brain. So we take the skill injection, spend more time for the knowledge to bake into our subconscious, then plug ourselves to the capsule (and it's brain-machine interface and computer) and then to the ship (and her network of sensors, tactical suite, starboard AI and targeting computers and/or ballistic control systems), link up with the rest of the components of the fire control director system and be faster, more efficient and generally outright better at hitting targets between 500m to 100+km away as compared to any other ship that still relies on gunnery crew or the traditional fire control director system.

Of course, no amount of advance programming and intricate brain-machine interface system designing is going to compensate for the mechanical weaknesses and quirks of one's auto-loaders and turrets.

Note: Every ship already has targeting computers, tracking enhancers and/or ballistic control systems installed as stock. However, they all have a set limit to how many processing power they can draw from the starship main computer (and by extension, shipboard AI). Adding more of these hardware allows the fire control director to draw more processing power to calculate firing solution faster and more accurately before the next firing cycle, thereby extending range and improving the probability of good hits. Law of Diminishing Return still applies.

I swear, if I have to keep posting technical information like that, I might have to put together a 'Starship Systems for Dummies' guide.

Spirits above! My first two years in the RMS Capsuleer Programme involved cramming all this information into my head. I was very accustomed to the mechanical and electrical engineering side of starship operations, but computer programs, navigation and etc were new to me. I was expected to master each of these novel subjects within six months! I wasn't even allowed to take a break due to injuries caused by intense physical conditioning programmes we had to take every single day. Torn rhomboids? The pain keeps your mind sharp, they said!

I had to wonder exactly what kind of organisation made Kim a capsuleer if she didn't already know all of this by now.

Not to mention the shield booster systems also incorporate replenishment of the high viscosity plasma layer, maintenance of the electromagnetic field and the reassembly of the lattice made of superlight shield-hardening nanites.

With remote armor repairers all you need to do is to direct where you want to dump the nanites on. 'Directed'. That and the time it takes for the nanites to repair the armour are why armour repairers only take effect at end of cycle rather than the beginning of it.

Ah yes. The Caldari Navy also teaches this propaganda to their cadets.

Did you even go through the Capsuleer Programme through the Caldari Navy? Or did you get in by writing a very flattering pro-Heth opinion piece to be published to the working public?

This is getting embarrassing. She's talking about having a camera on a turret just for fun, not for using it to aim.

Indeed. But, well, I guess some peoples are straightforward stupid to realize this. I think Egivand is actually a... ship mechanic? Right? I can understand the way he is reasoning: "If to target a ship you need to look at it, thus if you are looking at it, you need to do the targeting procedures yourself." This is quite common logical fallacy, and a reason why I would never ever actually let someone like Egivand to do complex engineering tasks. I believe despite his ability to cite technical manuals his best position on the ship (if he wouldn't be a capsuleer) would be a janitor.

As for Rella's remark, it is widely known that the space between her ears is as bright as jump links in J7HZ-F. Quite typical for a rabid dog like her to jump in help to another tribal to try to attack a Caldari representative. But alas, she did it so fast without even realizing what the talk was about, just displaying her inability to think to the whole IGS. I would pity her for her lack of mental prowess, if I would consider her a human being.


Oh, and Mr. Ramal. It was not just for fun, but to see how they explode and cease to exist. It gives sort of... satisfaction.