Ships & Modules

I am gonna do a little basic physics, imagine 2 points A and B. A is the point from where the bullet starts and B is the point where it should go on a maximum straight forward trajectory. If the bullet is for example big as a soccer ball and the so called frig is the size of a fly that fly should die if it is in his trajectory, because no matter how small the fly is the ball is so big that he can't escape it in time ( this is the situation of 0 transversal , in that case a titan should hit eve a POD that is stationary perfectly ). So it should support the idea of using enough webs by the support fleet to be in the same situation to not be able to avoid "the ball" in time. Now what CCP is trying to do is to change the rules of physics and say NO , if that fly is small enough the ball will not hit it , which is against any physical logic. Why ? Because Goonswarm knows that a titan bullet "the ball" just can't hit the frig "fly".

I personally do not care about Shadoo's vision about this game everyone bears his own and i am supporting my point of view.

I think both of you are completely off point on this and should just drop it. Distance has positive and negative affects on ability. We want sig to adjust over range to make it harder to hit moving objects. Nuff said.

I don't think its really beneficial to go down the RP road of justifying formula components based on the inability of starship manufacturers from the distant future being able to design targeting systems with "sufficient resolution."

Instead, how about looking at the way guns currently work in EVE Online: A Game that Needs Balancing. Go load up a fitting tool (recommend EFT), and run some DPS comparisons between ships of various sizes in a variety of transversal situations.

For example, there have been several people in this thread whining about "Maelstroms blapping frigates." HERE is a graph showing Maelstrom DPS vs a frigate in two different scenarios: In the first, the frigate is MWDing directly at the battleship. In the second, the frigate is MWDing towards the battleship, but ~10 degrees off of "directly."

Note that the DPS drops from 180-something to 4. If you increase the approach angle by another ten degrees, the DPS drops to zero.

Personally, I really like the fact that gun mechanics force clever piloting in this game. I don't see why it's necessary (as a whole slew of you claim it is) to change the game so that large guns necessarily do less damage to small targets regardless of how smaller ships are being flown. To take an extreme example, there's absolutely no way that the Malediction pilot above who is lazy and / or dumb enough to hit "approach" on the Maelstrom should be allowed to live simply because "his ship is smaller."

Titans are kind of a special case for a number of reasons. Part of the problem is the way they bounce on warpin, resulting in extremely large groups that make it difficult to keep transversal up vs all of them. Part of the problem is that they're one of the only ship classes in EVE that do enough damage to easily alpha ships several sizes small than them (even an artymach, for example, can't alpha most HACs). A large part of the problem *was* their ability to quickly lock up a large number of targets, making it relatively easy to cherry-pick low transversal individuals for nuking. With a much lower max target count, this should be less of an issue in the future.

In general, the tracking formula works. It provides for long range guns that track badly, and short-range guns that track well but can't reach terribly far out. It ALREADY DOES make it more difficult to hit targets that are smaller than their "intended" targets. If you don't believe me, load up a megapulse battleship, then have an AB frigate go out to 20km and orbit your ship at a speed that results in his angular velocity matching the max tracking value for your guns. Then shoot at him and tell me how long it takes to kill him (hint: you'll be there a while).

The problem with Titans raping subcaps isn't a gun problem, it's a Titan problem. Getting such a large bonus to XL gun damage with no associated tracking penalty is problematic, especially when it comes with the ability to easily cherry pick targets and the physics problems that spread Titans over a large area. CCP are already dealing with the cherry-picking problem, and could easily "solve" the remainder by requiring Titans to use even "larger" guns to deal their current levels of DPS / alpha. XL weapons on Titans would be far less problematic if one was only able to cherry pick a target and do, for example, 20k damage to them rather than alpha'ing them. It's the coincidence of favorable spatial distribution, high scan res, high max lock count, insanely high alpha, and decent tracking that make Titans a problem on TQ right now.

First off, the primary problem is ships not having clearly defined roles. Secondary to that is the turret damage formula. Those are the two biggest issues at hand regarding game balance, and the Titan is the biggest example of both issues. Give it a clear role, and fix its ability to hit small/medium/large ships at medium/long ranges.

The best way to do that is with the turret damage formula. Sig resolution is not the size of the bullet, nor the area within which damage is applied. Sig resolution is the area targeted by your turret. Your bullet will hit somewhere within the sphere defined by your sig resolution. The problem is firstly that this is not adjusted over range. If range were 0 meters from the barrel of the gun, sig res should equal the diameter of the barrel of the gun (very, very tiny.) The farther away, the larger the sig res. What does not make sense is that currently guns have a maximum range at which they can hit any target regardless of size. Beyond that range the bullet essentially disappears. What should happen is that if you're aiming at something the size of a planet from 2 million kilometers away, you should have a very high chance of hitting it. By the same token, a 35 meter long frigate at 2 million km out would be almost impossible to hit. There'd still be a chance, though, however small.

Secondly, if at a given range your turret's sig resolution is 400m and your target has a 40m sig radius, that really should automatically make the absolute highest chance to hit be 10%. Your bullet is hitting somewhere within a 400m in diameter sphere and your target has a 40m diameter. 10% chance to hit, maximum. THEN factor in range and tracking. Bear in mind, your sig resolution should get a lot smaller the closer your target is to your guns.

If we modify a gun's sig resolution over distance, ships will balance themselves out over sizes much like we already see with missiles. Turrets will still remain unique in that there will always still be a chance to hit, unlike missiles which always hit. Right now that chance to hit at medium/long ranges, particularly with larger turret sizes against smaller ship sizes, is too great, as is clearly evident in large fleet situations (such as when 10 or more Titans are spread out to around 30km of each other, or large groups of maelstroms being able to alpha anything into oblivion. XL turrets and large artillery should not function this way because it obsoletes small ships, and therefore new players.)

Truth. Currently it's almost always better to bring larger ships. The "bigger is better" mentality is something that needs to go away, just like the "higher tier is better" mentality does.

If we are going to talk physics, a much better analogy is that a sea battleship (838 ft long vs 9.2 mi long titan yields a scale of 1:58) is shooting its largest cannon at a fly flying at 150 meters away at 70 m/s around it. No sea BS can track that. Shooting car-sized projectiles at a fly out at one km away will kill it if it hits, but the area cross-section of the projectile at that distance demands impossible accuracy when it has to cross a single point at an exact moment in time.

Course, projectiles take time to cross that distance, so it seems instant turret damage is a bad idea, but I don't see that changing anytime soon.

But how about we stop getting distracted from the topic and address the Titan's biggest issue, 1 DD alpha strike on caps. How many dreads does it take to alpha a BS? bet it requires more than 1.

Imagine a fleet of 40 titans. Now imagine them attacking 40 carriers repairing a sov structure (or doing some other task away from station). Now imagine 40 DD eliminating 40 carriers instantaneously with no chance to counter the titans in any way. Now imagine that everything you just said seemed silly. Finally imagine that everyone has already figured out that in order to survive, their cap pilots must be flying Titans and not carriers whenever possible.

The "plan" of the stealth bomber is to be anti-BS. doesn't mean that I can now justify 1 SB alpha'ing a BS with every volley. The plan of the destroyer is to be anti-frig. Doesn't mean that a destroyer can alpha a well-fit and well-flown frig with every volley. No matter what "the plan" is, there is such a thing as OP, and a reason why people know that we need to re-balance the titan. Among other things, one reason is the DD. I say that an anti-cap plan does not justify it.

Actually, you don't have to remove the weapon - just change the DD module such that it is unable to be fired. Titans can still have it fit, it just won't shoot.

Let me help out:

No, titans roughly match the turret DPS of dreads but with WAY better tanks while keeping their mobility and ability to recieve reps.