EVE New Citizens Q&A

So I finally attempted to do the maths.
An Ogre orbits at roughly 3,000m.
It has a base tracking speed of 0.45 rad.
It has a signature resolution of 400m
It has an orbit velocity of 250m

250 / 3,000 = 0.08333 rad/s <- This is the actual angular velocity that the drone creates by simply orbiting the target.

0.45 X ( 145 / 400 ) = 0.163 rad/s <- This is the effective tracking of the Ogre when targeting a Vexor with a signature radius of 145m.

When the angular velocity of the target is equal to the tracking speed of the turret / drone, then there is exactly a 50% chance to hit.

I have to admit, I was surprised at how good the effective tracking is, and I expected the angular velocity to be much higher. The effective tracking is almost double the actual targets angular velocity. According to this:

http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Turret_Damage#Angular_velocity

The chance to hit is going to be roughly 83%, with a total DPS reduction of 22%.

The base DPS of the Ogre is 25.8. So in this situation our heavy drone is doing 20 dps to a vexor. I'll quickly to the same calculation for a Hammerhead.

440 / 1,500 = 0.293 rad/s

0.58 X ( 145 / 125 ) = 0.6728 rad/s

At 43% of the tracking speed, we would expect a dps loss of around 15%. The base DPS is 12.8, so our final applied DPS is 10.88

The heavy drone is doing roughly twice the damage as the medium against a stationary cruiser sized target.

I know I have simplified things by assuming the target is completely stationary, but you also have to account for the fact that these calculations haven't taken into account ship bonuses and the players skills, which are going to positively influence things too.

The biggest issue is that the base top speed of an ogre is 1,000 m/s, and an orbit velocity of 250 m/s. Comparatively the hammerhead has a base max velocity of 1,680 m/s and an orbit of 440 m/s.

So the only reasonable conclusion I can come to is that heavy drones will always do better against cruiser sized targets in a situation where they can catch them. The only situation where mediums will be more useful is if you need the extra speed to catch targets. A Vexor with 2/2/1 format will out perform a vexor with 5 mediums against other cruiser sized vessels in almost any scenario, especially given most PVP vexor fits are equipped with a scram and at least one web.