Ships & Modules

Short answer: painters only help with transversal.

Long answer: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=5219030

Don't muddy the waters on this. Painters do not help with range issues.

Since this has now come up twice in three months I've gone ahead and made a quick spreadsheet.

It's open to editing so go ahead and play with it. At the time of writing I've entered an all 5 425 II on a Sleipnir as the gun and a pretty typical cruiser rat as the target. The Sleipnir has an optimal of of about 1800m and a falloff of about 27000m. If you set the range to optimal + falloff you'll see that the first term in the tracking formula is rather near 0 but the second term is at about 1 for an overall hit chance of about 0.5. It's that second number that is reducing the hit chance, not the first.

Ok, now apply a painter. Let's go all out and use a domination painter on a Minny recon: that's a 61.875% signature increase. What happens? The first term in the to hit formula gets even closer to 0 and the second term doesn't move at all. Hit chance is virtually unchanged.

This is exactly the expected behaviour. Since hit chance is determined by 0.5 raised to the sum of the two individual factors (falloff in the second term and signature and tracking in the first term) a painter won't help with falloff hit reduction in the least. Painters (and webs for that matter) will only help mitigate hit reduction if that reduction is coming from signature or transversal speed and will help not one bit if the hit reduction comes from falloff.

Who said anything about assuming 0 transversal?

Let's do another calculation: AB Vengeance has a sig of 37m. It's spiraling in 30 degrees off of tangential with a speed of 861m/s. Effective transversal speed is 746m/s. Same Sleipnir is using the same 425 II. At a range of 20km overall hit chance is 47% with no painter.

However, you're right that the first term is now more important than the second. So let's apply an arbitrary 50% painter. Hit chance goes up to 60%. So yes, that helps. And it's enough that it's worth noting.

The answer remains the same though. Painters DO NOT help mitigate damage reduction from falloff, which was the original question. Painters obviously DO help when trying to mitigate the effects of signature and transversal. And yes, they do help more when dealing with smaller targets, especially when those targets are moving tangentially or near-tangentially to the point of fire.

If we were to drop the range further -- say, to 12km -- the painter makes a huge difference since transversal is now higher due to low range. No painter? Hit chance 25%. With arbitrary 50% painter? 52%. But then we'd probably want to skip the painter and apply a 60% web instead -- which gives us a 74% hit chance.

Yes, it's all situational, but at the end of the day a painter isn't going to help you much deep in falloff no matter what you're shooting at: the second term in the hit formula just takes over under those circumstances.

look at the original question again:

"affect gun application in deep falloff?"

for all intents and purposes, this is YES. Increasing a target's signature will mean that you will apply better at any range, until you hit your theoretical dps cap.

exactly, the frigate would just need a tiny bit of transversal to completely fck up 425 rails, so painters (even though not the preferred method for turrets) will help with that as long as it's within painter optimal, outside optimal it gets erratic.

I had a feeling this link would go to that thread :)



This is the correct answer.


You would expect a bloomed sig radius to increase your chance to hit something that's at the edge of your falloff, but unfortunately, falloff chance to hit reduction doesn't incorporate sig radius. It doesn't make a lot of sense, but that's just the way it works.

Strictly speaking - no. Painters affect sig radius and for a stationary target Sig radius does not affect damage losses due to range.

The examples brought in this thread are valid in practice, because there are plenty occasions when your target is not stationary in the transversal sense. For them to be stationary in the transversal sense, they'd either be not moving, or moving towards you in a straight line.

As Bronson Hughes describes, it is only relevant because turret hit chance is dependent on both range and tracking.

It depends on target size and gun tracking range. (which again interacts with damage application in geographical range) bloating a drone in deep falloff my not lead to a hit with some guns/bonuses/skill/implants/boosters/RNG. But may lead to damage application, eg better quality hits, with frig sized guns falloff or guns with higher tracking regardless of deep fall off. Tracking target in falloff is already high enough for most cases, but again. OP should Post exacktly the type of guns/ammo and target. and tranvsersal on both attacker and target (game transversal).

. But painting a "bigger target can indeed" can indeed lead it to be trackable by guns in fall off. Damage application and incresed dps is another question.