Hi, I'm AzurillSkull from Agony Unleashed. In this video, we're going to discuss turret mechanics. In particular, we're going to focus on tracking.
We're also going to discuss something called spiralling. This is a technique for reducing the amount of damage dealt by turrets to your ship. Turret mechanics is all based around chance to hit. The better your chance to hit, the more damage you're going to be doing.
There are two key factors which play into this. Range and Tracking The range of turrets in EVE is determined by two attributes Optimal range and accuracy falloff. Here's how they work Let's imagine a turret with an optimal range of 20 kilometers and an accuracy falloff of 10 kilometers An optimal range of 20 kilometers means that anywhere inside 20 kilometers this turret will hit 100% of the time if range is the only concern Outside this range accuracy will begin to decrease An accuracy falloff of 10km means that the target would have to be 10km outside of this turret's optimal range before its accuracy would be reduced to 50%. It would then take the same distance again, another 10km, before it would be able to hit at all.
Some turrets, like autocannons, have very short optimal ranges and very long accuracy falloffs. In other words, they deal their best damage up close, but they have a great deal of flexibility about it and they can afford to be outside that range without losing too much damage. Other turrets, such as pulse lasers, have very long optimal ranges and very short accuracy falloffs. This gives them excellent damage at range, but stray outside that range and their damage quickly falls off to zero.
In general, most turret ships aim to be inside optimal range plus one falloff at all times. That's the simple bit out of the way. Unfortunately, range isn't the only factor which determines a turret's hit chance. We also have to take into account tracking.
All turrets have an attribute called tracking speed. given in radians per second. This indicates how good that turret is at keeping track of a moving target.
As we can see here, the frigate-sized 125mm autocannon has a tracking speed of about 0.4 radians per second. The battleship-sized 800mm autocannon, on the other hand, has a tracking speed of 0.04 radians per second, only one tenth the speed. This tracking speed is compared to the angular velocity of the target ship, also expressed in radians per second.
The easiest way to understand the angle of velocity is this. Imagine someone's running around you in a circle. You hold out your hand and you have to keep it pointed at them at all times. The faster you have to move your hand to keep it pointed at that person, the higher their angle of velocity relative to you.
In this example, you can see I'm being orbited by three ships. Titus Kassar in the Manticore is orbiting relatively slowly at 20km, giving him an angle of velocity of just under 0.03 radians per second. Brutitos in the Rift is orbiting at the same distance, but is orbiting faster.
This gives him a much higher angle velocity of 0.1 radians per second. Sarek in the Dramiel is orbiting far faster than both of the ships, however he's doing it at much longer range. Despite his high speed, this means he's taking longer to actually turn around me, and so his angle velocity is lower.
Unfortunately it's not quite as simple as just comparing our tracking speed to the angle velocity of the target. To get a real comparison, we need to talk a bit about signature radius. As far as the mechanics of EVE are concerned, your ship is just a giant sphere. It doesn't have wingy bits, it doesn't even have a front or a back. It's just a sphere.
The size of this sphere is what's called your signature radius. To put this into context, a Megathron battleship has a signature radius of 400 metres. A frigate on the other hand, like this Tristan, has a much smaller signature radius of only 42 metres. Signature radius affects many things.
It determines how quickly ships can lock you, how easy you are to scan down with scan probes, and also how much damage you take, from turrets and from missiles. In PvP, keeping your signature radius small is almost always a good thing. This is especially true if you're flying something small, like a frigate.
Unfortunately, there aren't many ways to reduce your signature radius, and those that there are are quite exotic. There are, on the other hand, a number of modules which will increase it. A bad thing. The most notable of these is the Micro Warp Drive. This module lets you travel very fast, but when active increases your Signature Radius by a factor of 6. This effectively makes a frigate the size of a battlecruiser.
Some ships, such as Interceptors, get a bonus for reducing the Signature Radius penalty of a Micro Warp Drive. Most ships, however, are not this fortunate. Let's look at why Signature Radius is so important. In addition to tracking speed, guns have another attribute called Signature Resolution. What this effectively tells you is the size of the ship the gun is designed to be used against.
As you can see here, the signature resolution of our battleship-sized gun matches the signature radius of the Megatron. On the other hand, our frigate gun is much closer to the signature radius of the Tristan. What signature resolution and tracking speed effectively tell us is against a ship of this size, this is how fast the gun can track. For example, our battleship gun is able to track a battleship-sized target at 0.04 radians per second.
If it were shooting at a smaller target, its actual tracking speed would be worse than the one listed on the gun, potentially much worse. This is where things start to get a little bit complicated. First of all, you have to understand that your effective tracking speed isn't necessarily always the same. It's actually the product of your base tracking speed, and the ratio between your target's signature radius and your gun's signature resolution.
If these two numbers are the same, as is the case with our battleship gun shooting the Megatron, then our effective tracking speed is exactly what it says on the tin. However, when our signature radius and signature resolution are not the same, then our effective tracking speed is going to differ. For example, if the signature radius of our target is 1 tenth the signature resolution of our gun, as is the case with the battleship gun shooting a Tristan, our effective tracking speed is going to be 1 tenth of our base tracking speed. If our target's signature radius is higher than our signature resolution, as is the case with the frigate-sized gun shooting a Megatron, our effective tracking is going to be even higher.
Regardless of your tracking speed, the only time a turret will have a 100% hit chance is when the angle velocity to your target is absolutely zero. That said, providing the angle velocity of your target is significantly lower than your effective tracking speed, you should be hitting quite consistently. When the target's angle velocity is the same as your effective tracking speed, your turrets will hit 50% of the time.
Beyond this point, you're not going to be hitting very much at all. Remember we're still talking about effective tracking speed, which isn't necessarily the same as the one listed on your gun. As the chance to hit your target decreases, the first shots you begin to lose are the high quality ones. This means that when your chance to hit is low, say 25%, almost all of your hits will be glancing or low quality hits.
You can still hit your target, but the quality of those hits is so poor, you're actually doing much less than 25% of your ideal damage output. So we know that targets with low angle velocity are easy to hit, and we know that targets which are far away have low angle velocity. So imagining we're far away from the target that we want to be tackling, how do we get into range to do so without getting shot on the way?
What I want to show you now is what we in Agni Unleashed call the spiral approach. This is a method of approaching a distant target while keeping your angle velocity high. This is mainly relevant to small, fragile ships like frigates. Larger, tougher ships can usually just tank their opponent's damage until they get to their desired range.
Since frigates don't have this luxury, keeping high angle velocity is key to their survival. Here you can see I've got a fairly standard afterburner Merlin. I've got a scram, a web, and a medium shield extender. But otherwise, nothing particularly special. Here I'm up against a Pulse Apoch.
This is a very long range ship. Even with Pulse lasers, it's got an optimal range between 80 and 90 kilometres. Not only that, but the fact that it's still using a close range weapon system means it has far better tracking than almost any other battleship operating at the same ranges.
As you can see, I'm about 100k away at the moment. If I just select my target and hit orbit at my desired range, in this case about 7km, what's gonna happen is my ship's gonna head for a point on that 7km orbit. This means I'm going almost directly towards my target. What this also means is that I have very little angular velocity.
Without angular velocity, my ship's already taking significant damage from the APOC's turrets. Unsurprisingly, it doesn't survive for long, and I'm still 86km away, not even inside the APOC's optimal range. If we're going to reach this APOC without dying, we're going to have to do something differently. What we need to take into account is the effect of our direction on our angle velocity.
If you're travelling almost directly towards a target, your angle velocity will be very low, almost zero. The result is that you'll be taking full damage from the opponent's guns, even in a very small ship. To avoid this, we need to always approach targets with some angle velocity.
That said, remember that the more angle velocity you have, the less progress you're making towards your target. Travelling straight towards a target may give you low angle velocity, but it does get you there fastest. For the most effective approach, we have to reach a balance between the two.
So here we are again with a new Merlin. This time we're going to try approaching at an angle, maintaining some angle velocity all the way towards the target. We'll aim to strike a balance between angle velocity and progress, ensuring we get in range within a reasonable amount of time, without dying before we can do so. This should mean we approach our target with a slight spiral, hence the name.
Viewed from above, our path would look something like this. Now the way to go about this is first of all, line up your camera so you're looking straight through your ship towards your target like so. Then double click halfway between your target and the edge of the screen. This should serve your ship at a slight angle.
When you do this you'll probably find you're making a lot more progress towards the target ship than you'd expect from where you're clicking. Clicking about halfway between the target and the edge of the screen as I am here, actually leaves me doing about a 15 to 20 degree angle from the target ship, not that much at all. If you look at my radial velocity, you'll actually see I'm still making over 1km a second towards the target at the angle I'm going at the moment.
My anger velocity isn't huge, but these are battleship guns and I don't need all that much to avoid them. As you can see, I am taking some damage here, but it's significantly less than it was before. I did get a lucky hit just there, but after a while it should stabilise and I should be able to make it in here.
And what I'm doing here is repeating the process from before. So whenever you feel like your ship's not making enough progress towards the target, just rotate your camera again so you're looking through your ship towards your target. Double click halfway between your target and the edge of the screen, and your ship will adjust course accordingly. You'll probably find the closer you get to your target, the more often you have to adjust this. There are of course some situations where spiralling in like this is either undesirable or completely unnecessary.
For example if your target is a missile or drone user, increasing your angle velocity has no effect and is fairly pointless. Similarly if you know your target is jammed or if you know that you're well outside of their range, for example approaching a blaster megathon from 50km, You can be fairly safe to approach direct until such a time as the target is actually able to fire upon you. Finally, if you have reason to believe your target is attempting to flee rather than fight, their priority is unlikely to be shooting back at you, and you may just want to dive in there and get tackled before they escape. Once you get in range, you can actually keep orbiting in exactly the same way. What I'm doing here is what I was doing earlier, rotating the camera, double clicking between the ship and the edge of the screen, and repeating.
Obviously doing this for any length of time can be quite challenging, so you may just want to hit the orbit button. Bear in mind though that when you click that button your ship will often make quite a drastic change of course since the direction you're travelling at the moment has no bearing on the direction it wants to start orbiting. This isn't a huge problem, but just be aware that your angle velocity will drop when this takes place and it's possible for a lucky shot to catch you as you're doing it.
This will be particularly noticeable if the distance on your orbit button isn't the same as the distance you are to your target when you click it. When this is the case, the ship will first try to reach its desired orbit distance and then start orbiting again. This is really a skill that's worth practicing. If you don't want to practice this in a hostile situation, just find a court mate willing to play the role of the battleship and give it a go with them.
Try approaching at different angles, try it with a micro warp drive instead of an afterburner and just see how it goes. After all, this is quite literally a trick that can save your life. And that brings me to the end of this video.
Check the Agony Unleashed channel for more videos, or visit www.agony-unleashed.com for more information.