Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Yep. Threads about tracking are always like this. And the sig resolution issue is a pretty bit part of people's misunderstanding, a distressing number of people think it's a to-hit chance separate to tracking, as if turrets were missiles.

The counter-argument of the current system making it easier to relate your turrets' tracking speed to the angular velocity of a same-size opponent has some merit though. Although, since the sigs of different ships are so variable, it's not sure it's really that valuable.

I win at eve becuase I understand the way these things interact. Lets make those 13 year olds work for their account and investigate the differences.

What, when you have removed signature, will target painters do? They are crap as it is.

hint -- the correlation between the target's sig radius and the turret's sig res is the crux of the matter.


For all non-zero values of the target's transversal, the turret's sig res is essentially the same thing as the missile's explosion diameter (i.e. Sig Res <= Sig Rad, then 100% damage* .... OR ... Sig Res > Sig Rad, then proportional decrease in applied damage) .

*Barring other negative factors to your hit chance (in falloff, can't track fast enough, etc).

Remember that the hit chance is only half of the applied damage calculation, and that the game then "rolls" a value between 0 and 1 to determine if you hit, and for how much damage (i.e. "wrecking" or "glancing", etc)

Put another way -- it's sorta like a shotgun (note, we're gonna ignore the fact a shotgun creates a cone for now ... and totally making up the other numbers).

When you fire a round, the shot creates a cloud that is 18" (approx 450mm) in diameter (9" / 225 mm radius).
Assuming 100 pellets in the round, each doing 1 point of damage, and you're perfectly able to hit "center mass" (i.e. perfect tracking compared to a non-zero transversal speed -- i.e. transversal / tracking * range = 1).

if your target is under 9" radius, you will do less than 100 points of damage to it, proportional to the difference in surface area of your target and the projectile "cloud" (i.e. target sig rad vs gun sig res)

If the target is 9" or greater radius, you're going to do 100% damage.

If the target is >9" radius, and your accuracy is a bit off (because of transversal), you still have a fairly good chance of applying 100 damage, by sheer virtue of there being extra surface area outside of "center mass" that you can still hit.

I would keep signature resolution. In fact, I'd rather see more uses and ideas applying it than just removing it. Last thing I'd want to see is big turrets hitting smaller ships that easily. Redundant or not, the concept of it isn't that difficult.

It would be great to see more ships using this particular attribute, or turrets that have other numbers than ~40, 125, 400 etc.

So for removing turret signature resolution stat, I'd say no.

If the transversal is zero (or very close to zero) the whole equation 'zeroes out' and you hit perfectly.

A moros will hit perfectly an unmoving pod, a Phoenix won't.

In your previous post it seems you said both wouldn't hit.

OP Math is correct. It does simplify things mathematically and does have ZERO effect on the way game is played.

However, from a lore and phyical point of view, I wouldn't want to see a 125mm autocannon and 1400mm arillery to have the same "radius".

I believe there is an easier fix to make things more "readable":

Right now the angular velocity and tracking values are in rad/sec which is a hard to understand term. Change it to deg/s and suddenly it wil become much clearer for people.

Clearer to understand, but a bit harder to apply.

Example: a small turret has 0.3 rad/s tracking. Quick question: can it hit stuff up close?

Assuming 1,000 m as 'up close', I'd get 0.3 rad/s if the target orbited at 300 m/s. An AB frig will go 1,000 m/s at least, 400 m/s if webbed.

So, answer: up close, it hits well only frigs without a prop mod that are also webbed*. It will hit faster stuff too, but a severe (>50%) dmg reduction is to be expected.


Now, imagine the same question, but the turret's tracking is 17°/s. Try giving a quick approximate answer without using a calculator.


*Unless I can reduce transversal by also moving my own ship, of course, but that's beyond the point.

How so?

What is difficult about rad/s versus degrees/s? Do you get confused by inches and cm? Does it matter? If the whole system is built around the same units.

Set up your overview to accommodate angular velocity. Both it and tracking are measured in radians per second. Same units.


Rad/s are far more intuitive. Because,as mentioned several times, they have physical meaning, whereas degrees is just a convention.

1rad/s is when the magnitude of speed is the same as the range/orbit. 500m/s at 500m orbit, or 1000m/s at 1000m orbit, will all give you an angular velocity of 1rad/s. This would be 57.3 degrees per second. How do degrees help you?

Bigger number easier to read. Totally cosmetic...and also somehow easier to visualise.

Personal preference I guess ::shrugs::

I'm happy to see some discussion going other than 'lol OP your terrible at math.' Thanks for sharing your perspectives. Just one thing I want to reply to personally:



This is not the case in my experience. I very often find myself shooting at battleships with cruisers and shooting at frigates with battlecruisers and shooting at battlecruisers with destroyers. Perhaps I'm unusual though.