Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Actually it doesn't. That's the point. Using 100 as a normalization again, a 200mm rail gun will track a BS at much higher angular than it's stated tracking, but that frigate? Nope, hitting that is harder than suggested by it's angular compared to your tracking. How much so? Guess you need to learn the tracking formula.

Your personal attack is appreciated, but you are wrong. This would have literally no effect on the performance of target painters, just like it would have literally no effect on anything game-mechanics wise. All it does is free us from a redundant and difficult-to-understand turret stat.

No. The numbers change, but the way the game works does not change. A battleship turret that used to have 0.1 tracking might have 0.02 tracking now, but it will hit both small and large ships exactly the same way it did previously.

His proposal is absorb the effect of turret scan res into tracking,by an amount dictated by the turret size.

Yes, as far as calculations go nothing should change. But this won't make it easier to understand.

You will still be staring at 2 different numbers, which mean jack all to you, and ponder why you can't hit a frigate that's moving slow than your tracking, when being in a frigate yourself.

Radians per second have physical meaning. Your proposal shoves this physical meaning which relates range to perpendicular velocity out of the window.


For referance https://www.flickr.com/photos/42106607@N07/14538975516/ tracking. All you need now is to approximate ratios. The product of their tracking to their turret scan res over your angular velocity times your sig. Not difficult.

Sir, please.

40, 125, whatever else. Not difficult to "know" anything.

This thread has been a goldmine of posts by people who don't understand math.

Anyway, currently we have three variables: turret sig resolution, target sig radius, and turret tracking. Fixing turret sig resolution and rolling the variability there into tracking reduces your variables to just target sig radius and turret tracking.

It's simpler to understand and changes nothing about how the game works. On the other hand, it requires some degree of developer effort and it changes nothing about how the game works.

I think this is the problem. It's possible that I am not entirely understanding your proposal, but from what I've seen in this thread I am of the opinion that you are mistaken about removing the stat not effecting anything. Yes, turret sig res has the same effect on turret tracking as tracking speed. But equal value in the equation does not mean they are the same, as they are applied to different things.

Tracking speed is balanced against angular/transversal velocities an so forth. Basically, if my target is orbiting me, I have more trouble hitting it then if my target was sitting stationary (assuming that my ship is not moving, as ang/trans velocity is relative between the two objects, in this case my ship and the enemy ship).

Turret signature resolution is balanced against target signature radius, a stat that is effected by ship size, TP's, whether or not they are running their MWD ect. Basically, the size of my guns vs the perceived size of the target. This allows for the addition of tracking penalty to large guns shooting at small targets, regardless of ang/trans velocity. It also allows for increased tracking of small guns vs large targets by merits of shooting a much bigger target.

So while yes, turret tracking speed and turret res have scale to the same degree of how well you can hit your target, they are balanced against different stats; with tracking speed balancing damage application in regards to movement and turret sig res balancing damage application against size. Removing turret sig res (or replacing the value with tracking speed) would essentially break the curve upon which size factors into an engagement. In the absolute best case scenario, every signature radius in the game would have to be rebalanced against the tracking modifier, which scales between 0 and 1, where as presently sig rad is balanced against turret sig res, which scales between 0 and several 1000 (for instance, lasers go 40, 125, 400 and 2000 for S,M,L and XL respectively).

This does not simplify the turret damage application equation, if anything, it makes it more complex. It essentially hamstrings the game into using the same value for two different applications, instead of using two unique but equal values to adjust for the two different measurements being taken.

But here's the kicker, you don't want to simply replace one value with the other. You want to do away with the value entirely. This means that tracking, while rebalanced, will be entirely decided upon based on ship speed and trans velocity. You would be removing the variable size factor from the equation entirely. Basically, you would be altering how the game deals with tracking on the weapon side, but not on the target side. In this scenario, a large turret would hit a stationary battleship exactly the same as a stationary frigate, where as presently, I do not believe it is possible to do this. You may hit said frigate for enough damage to one shot it, but I don't think the upper limit on how much you can hit the frigate for will ever be the same as the upper limit on the battleship (relative to weapon damage), unless the frigate is somehow sporting the same signature radius.

TL;DR Either I don't understand you/some facet of the equation, or you've missed the concept of size-relative tracking and are trying to change it to a static form of tracking which will NOT work the same as it presently does; even though tracking speed/trans velocity and sig res/sig rad scale equally into how well you hit your target.

Put the crayons down, because you're not ready to do algebra yet, kid.

What you've actually done is compute the tracking speed necessary to yield a constant hit probability on ships of varying signature radii (and you botched that, too, because (1/ω * 100/40 = 1) yields ω = 2.5, not 0.4) . It should not be surprising that this result varies by target signature radius--of course the tracking speed needed to generate the same hit probability is different for different sig radii. That's the whole point. You need a higher ω to achieve the same hit probability for a 40m frigate than for a 125m cruiser, all other things being equal.

In reality, the weapon tracking speed is fixed for a given ship/skill/implant/velocity/etc. combination and it is the hit probability that varies by target signature radius. But setting the expression (1/ω * 100/St) equal to a constant carries the implicit assumption that hit probability is being held constant.

The OP's maths are correct and I understand the proposal.

However, I don't like it.


With the current system, you can compare the target's angular velocity with your guns' tracking speed, if you're shooting at the 'standard target' for your gun size:

. Small turrets --> frigates
. Medium turrets --> cruisers
. Large turrets --> battleships

If you're shooting cruisers with small turrets, you know your tracking is 3x better. Likewise, if you're shooting cruisers with large turrets, you know your tracking is 3x worse.

But, even if PVP is extremely varied, most of the time you'll be shooting at the 'standard target'.


With the OP's proposal, if all signature resolutions were 'normalized' say to medium turret values (125), nothing would change for medium turrets but in, say, every frig vs. frig fight we'd have to mentally divide our small turrets' tracking by 3 to get a tracking speed that we could actually relate to the target's angular velocity as shown in the overview.

Unnecessarily complicated, imo. Especially considering that, while PVP in EVE comes in all shapes and sizes, it's safe to say that most of the time you'll be shooting at frigates with small guns, cruisers with medium guns and battleships with large guns.

Also, while some may argue it's a matter of personal taste, in this case change is bad in itself because regular PVPers are used to the current system. Casual PVPers won't understand tracking and sig res anyway, becuase there's really no easy way around it: if you're 'serious' about PVP, you have to invest some time to fully understand the maths.

.4/1 = 2.5 You basically stated the reciprocal of what I said.

But yeah, I just ran those numbers real fast with only the built in calculator (doesnt support exponents btw) on my phone while sitting in a carpool on the way home. (no excel warrioring)
Now at home with proper excel warrioring, actually the numbers come out just fine across the board, with no notable change to turret accuracy after the change.

Things to note however.
choosing a 100m as the nominal works just fine, and scanning through other nominal values of turret resolutions just makes the numbers wonky with what your new tracking should be. For example, choosing a 1m instead makes all tracking speeds terribly low, and 200m gets strange fast.

Also unless my excel warrioring is wrong, there should be no change in effect from TP sig bloom (MWDs, all that jazz), or warfare links lowering sig, between current and post change. I don't think TDs/TCs should change either, but im going to bed soon, someone else figure it


Oh well, guess its not a bad change, the math works, and meh.

Though it begs the question, where did the 40/125/400 gunrez stats come from? is this 1 of those old... back in the early days of eve before resist things (missiles still had a "shield damage" and "armor damage" stat a year or so ago that they finally got rid of I think, actually hevent checked in a while, is that still there on missiles? I think ammos had it too)