Warfare & Tactics

So we had a speedy Dramiel (is there any other kind?) whizzing about in our neck of the woods harrassing our miners, so we decided to go after him. We had him trapped in a dead-end pocket but there were two gates he could have taken to get to our system, so I took one while two corpmates took another.

My fit was more-or-less identical to this, the main difference being I had meta 4 guns and faction ammo (RF proton) rather than T2 guns and ammo:

Solo gatecamp Tempest

I was sat at the gate at 120km, which with that fit and the appropriate scripts and ammo was also my optimal, and my targeting range. The smarter among you may have noticed the flaw in this plan already. The guy appears on grid at 123km and I can't target him. Fortunately he moves into range, I lock him (4 seconds) and let loose with the 1400s. They miss completely. I then freak out and cloak before he can get close... which he does in a disturbingly short amount of time. I knew Drams were fast but this was the first time I'd seen it firsthand.

So... why did my guns miss? I get that he must have been moving fast, but at 120km that couldn't have made much difference to tracking surely? And he must have had a MWD on to move as quickly as he did, so sig radius shouldn't have been an issue either, right?

So guns, Y U No hit target?

If anyone cares we eventually got him with a bait mackinaw and a 200mm fit tornado. Ironically the Mack's drones did more damage than the tornado did and dealt the final blow, so our brave miner claimed the killmail

Alright, a couple of questions then:

- Could I make any modifications to the fit posted so that I could hit a Dramiel at 100km+ ?
- If not, what should I expect to be able to insta-pop with this fit?
- Would I be better off doing this with a 720mm Hurricane / Tornado against frigs?

And finally... what was actually causing me to miss? I know large guns aren't known for their ability to hit frigs but why is this? Tracking shouldn't be an issue at 100km+, and I'm using approximately a million sensor boosters so neither should sig radius. I've popped rat frigs at the same range with no issues; shouldn't his increased sig radius due to the MWD cancel out the benefit of speed at such a long range?

1) If it decided to stand still for the time it took you to lock it and fire - same fit would work. Otherwise... large guns don't hit small targets well, especially if they are moving.
2) Small stuff that stood still or was 2xwebbed/scrammed... T1 industrials maybe.
3) Get a Thrasher...

- As I said, I'm sure someone will come along shortly and give you the math on this (at work currently so I can't do it for you). One thing you may want to add to your overview is "Transversal Speed", especially if you are trying to hit small targets with large guns. Try and get that as close to 0 as possible before firing.

Also plz don't compare PvE with PvP... it just isn't right.

I seem to have confused scan resolution with signature radius. But it sounds like tracking is the issue, not sig radius. I didn't expect it to be an issue at all at 120km. I'll admit I wasn't watching his AV or traversal, I was too busy going "I got him! I got him! I don't got him! ****!"

I'm wondering what exactly the point of this loadout is then. It has a lot of + votes so clearly its good for something but I guess I'm just using it wrong. I had pictured it being used in exactly this situation; we get a lot of small fast ships coming through our space and harrassing people. I have no interest in ganking newbs in T1 ships in lowsec; its going to be primarily T2 / faction frigs and HACs I'm facing and it sounds like this fit is pretty useless against those. Faction / T2 frig is too fast, HACs are too tough to volley.

Except that loadout specifically says "solo", so I can only conclude that its designed for ganking newbs in T1 haulers.

I could have used my Thrasher, or Fleet stabber, two ships which are "designed" to slaughter frigates, but so long as burning back to the gate is an option I don't see how I'm going to kill a Dramiel on a gate; they're just too fast even webbed. The idea behind the "instalock" sniper is that I'd get at least one volley off, and I did, without any chance of retribution. Shame it does bugger all against frigs.

This is what I was looking for. Sounds like I'd be better off dumping at least one of the sensor boosters for a tracking computer then... would this actually make any difference though?

I can't recall from the top of my head whether Sensor Boosters are affected by stacking. However, assuming they are, there might be merit in swapping a few of the with Target Painters to increase the signature radius of the Dram.

I can see where you're trying to go with lock time and alpha and tracking speed, but when fitting ships, fitting more than 3 modules to boost any one stat will generally reach diminishing returns*. Ergo, you should probably look for other modules to achieve whatever it is you're aiming for.

*Noteably there are modules that are not stacking penalised - (Shield Rechargers? Cap Rechargers? They're google-able at any rate)

My last note for your specific fit and aim is the two following points.

1. If you have the Grid/CPU left over, you could put some medium neuts in the utility highs. This might allow you to neut a frig to turn off their scrambler should they sneak past your death range. A heavy neut would protect you a little better (24km range, long point range etc) but that would be quite hard to fit.

You could augement the neuts with a flight of ECM drones.

2. Stay aligned, towards a big clump of celestial objects (so you're not so easy to follow). If you're going to warp back, make your you have more than one bookmark to warp back to, or risk looking stupid when you land directly back in range of the tackle you just fled from.

The tracking formula takes into account the tracking of the gun, the transversal speed fo the target, the turret signature resolution and the targets signatute resolution. I suspect you only knew about the first two. Full details here:
http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Turret_damage

You missed because the only thing in your favour was range - slow guns, fast target, large sig guns, low sig target.

You would have had a better chance with medium guns, maybe in a 720 arty hurricane, but still there is a chance the dram could have evaded the guns. Really there is little that you can do to be guaranteed to gank a fast ship - and that is the way it should be.

Next time perhaps use some deception. Go in a autocannon armor hurricane, with 2 webs and 2 neuts, but sit 50 off the gate. He thinks you are arty fit and tries to get under your guns ...

Actually, the influence of both were pretty much the same in this situation, although the sig radius had a bit more influence.

Considering the Dramiel flew with 5000 m/s and approached you at an angle of 30 degrees, the transversal velocity was 2500 m/s

Using these 2500 m/s transversal, the angular velocity would have been 0.021 rad/s at 120km.
The 1400mm Arty has a tracking speed of 0.009 rad/s.

The quotient of tracking speed and angular velocity thus is
0.021/0.009 = 2.333



On the other hand the sig radius of the Dramiel is 32m, opposing the 400m sig resolution of the 1400mm artys. The quotient here is
400/32 = 12.5

considering the MWD was turned on, the Dramiels Sig radius was quadrupled to 128m:
400/128 = 3.125


Note: High quotients are bad for the attacker. The higher the quotient, the worse.
It is 2.333 for the tracking issue and 3.125 for the sig radius issue.

The chance to hit in above situation is (considering that the Dramiel was within optimal range)
0.5^((2.333 * 3.125)^2) = 0.00000000000000000998 = 0.000000000000000998 %



(All calculations under the assumption that the Dramiel flew with 5000 m/s at an angle of 30% to the tempest. Different results if this assumption is incorrect, and it surely is. But: The chance to hit would still be extremely small, even if the transversal was much lower. Calculate it yourself if you've got better approximations for the velocity of the Dramiel.)

Now if only I could do that math in my head in a split second before any engagement..