EVE New Citizens Q&A

I fly Level 2 Missions with an Omen and that works very well most of the time. The Lasers ( i use focused anode medium particle stream with some navy issue crystals) work very well on almost every rat i encounter.

But sometimes there are ships i do not hit at all (so it seems. It could also be possible that they reflect or mitigate what i shoot at them)

These ships are some of the frigates i encounter in the missions. It's like i am doing no harm and the fights last forever...whether i am attacking only with lasers or also with warrior drones.

As these ships are variations of ships i destroy easily i am not sure if its about the resistance (that would include all ships i encounter i think) or if they just avoid the beams.

The last times that happens it was against a ship called "corelli guard", while every other ship was destroyed fast.

What can i fit into the ship to destroy these ships more quickly?

i see that makes sence. but my drones also seem to miss that frigates.

A follow up question: in general do i leave my afterburner on while orbiting the enemy or do i shut it off? (my understanding is, that if i am in a close orbit and have my boost on.. its harder to stay in that orbit but i don't know how that works out ingame)

and another one: do i chose my orbit exactly at the perfect orbit distance (if i set it) or do i take a bit lower to actually have the right distance in fight.

Each ship has the following attributes:

- size (it's called (radar) signature radius in-game)
- speed / orbit speed (transversal or angular speed)
- range (distance from you)


Each weapon (lasers, hybrids, artillery/projectiles, missiles, drones) has the following attributes:

- size of target that it's intended for (signature resolution)
- tracking (gun and drones rotate, so they track the angular speed of target, missiles track the actual speed of target)
- optimal range (100% damage) + falloff range (50%) + falloff range again (0 damage)


So the range comparison is easy, if the target is too far away, it'll be out of range and the gun will do 0 damage or only a small % of damage.

The tracking / speed comparison is: if the target is moving too fast (for missiles) or orbits at high speed (for guns and drones), then the weapon can't track the target. For missiles, basically the missile can't catch up with the target, and for guns and drones the turrets they have can't rotate fast enough to line up with the target. Because this is a game, the server calculates orbit speeds as if your ship is gyro-stabilized and cannot rotate (as if only the turrets rotate).

The size comparison is an artificial "chance to land a direct hit" type of thing; imagine a battleship shooting the big guns at a small buoy; if the shell lands in the water it will do no damage, if the shell lands on the buoy it will obliterate it. So the big guns can't always land perfect hits because of vibrations and recoil. OOC this means that if a weapon is intended for cruisers (medium weapon) or for battleships (large weapon) or for capital ships (X-Large), that weapon will miss small frigates a lot, even if they stand still. This gives frigates a chance to have a role against big ships (namely, they can jam or tackle the big ships) and it was implemented by CCP specifically for this purpose.

So, basically, if you're in a cruiser with medium weapons, a few things happen:

1. Frigates have a size of about 40m, your weapons have a resolution of 120m, so the frigates get about 50-60% damage reduction just from size. Install a target painter module to make the target appear bigger and thus have the guns do more damage.

2. Frigates with afterburner typically move at 800+ m/s, and if they get close to you, that'll be a very high angular orbit velocity. Either use a webifier to slow them down, or try to keep them as far as possible (at max optimal range of your guns). For drones, train the drone skills to increase the tracking that your drones have; they orbit the target and without skills they don't do very well.

So if you're doing level 2 missions in a cruiser, your tactics should be:

1. Use target painter and/or webifier.
2. Fly in a straight line or stop your ship, to try to get the NPC's to come to you or follow you in a straight line (so they don't orbit).
3. Use "small" weapons (light drones instead of medium drones, rapid light missile launchers, or the "dual" versions of the guns)

Yup, you got the basic principle.

Since you use lasers, you can switch crystals without any delay. So, use radio M to shoot down fast approaching frigates and when they are too close, switch to better damage crystals and orbit at max optimal.

A web helps greatly when a frigate is too close and you can't get it off.

Or light drones.

Max optimal would be 10km in my example.

Falloff is when gun's ammo loses its effectiveness by 50%. You will still have a chance to hit but at reduced damage. Fighting in falloff is also an option if you can't really hit it at max optimal.

Falloff is complex on its own though. It's not flat 50% reduction.

Yes, you could annoy a player in battleship in a frigate by orbiting fast but he would most likely have a web and drones.

10k optimal would mean 0k to 10km.

5k falloff would mean 10.1km to 15km.

You have a chance to do 100% damage within optimal (bar tracking).
Once you fall into falloff, your damage become reduced. Max reduction is 50% at probably 15km.

Have fun and fly dangerous.

http://www.hostile.dk/files/eve/eve-tracking101.swf

The above link is an interactive tracking guide for Eve gunnery. It is a good intro to the basics of gunnery in Eve.


You've been given most of the info that you need already but I will attempt to summarize in a few words some of the more important points:


Optimal is the range within which you will not have any reduction in damage due to range.

Falloff is the range past optimal at which you do half damage.

Damage is reduced for range beyond optimal. At optimal + falloff damage is reduced by 50% and at optimal + two times falloff damage is reduced by 100%. At optimal + half of falloff damage is reduced by 25% etc... The damage reduction calculation is just one calculation among several that are done to determine what, if any, damage is done when you fire from a turret.

The tracking speed of a turret is rated for a ship with the same size signature radius as the turret's signature resolution. Turrets track faster against ships with larger signature radius's than the turrets signature resolution and slower against ships with smaller signature radius's. This is why speed tanking is sometimes called signature radius tanking or just sig tanking. This means that a small ship like a frigate can easily stay "under the guns" of a large ship like a battleship. Staying under the guns essentially means being close enough and moving fast enough to not take any damage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WT8VqVcLDqc&t=

The above link is Agony Unleashed's tracking and spiralling video. CCP has changed the way that turret's tracking speed is displayed since the making of this video but the math behind the new numbers is still the same so these concepts still apply.

Eve uni has some good information on turrets and tracking and damage application. If you want to know a lot of information on tracking and gunnery I'd do some searches on the Eve Uni wiki around those keywords and read up.

Your piloting affects not only your opponents tracking but also your own. This means how you pilot your ship is important to how you apply damage. When going up against small ships in medium ships ( like a cruiser ) you may need to web the frigates or fly either towards or away from the NPCs so that they either try to fly at you or from you, which they typically do in a strait line. This keeps their radial and transversal velocities low so that your guns hit well.

One strategy for using a cruiser in missions with a lot of small ships is to use long range guns and ammo and stay well out of range of the frigates so not only can they do no damage to you but they also will run strait towards you thus allowing you to do great damage to them. This is often called sniping and piloting this way can sometimes allow you to get rid of some tanking mods and replace them with range, tracking, and / or damage mods.