Damage Dealing 101

Class Information

This is a syllabus for a class provided by EVE University. This section contains information about this class and its contents. General Information includes materials to create a proper class listing on the EVE University forum. Additional resources and teaching tips are listed under Notes for the Teacher.

General Information

Illustration link for class description on the EVE University forum: xxx.jpg

This class will cover the essentials of being an effective damage dealer in fleet.

Duration: 60 minutes

Location: Docked up safely in any station

Topics include:

• What is a damage dealer?
• Different racial preferences for weapons systems
• How to fly a damage dealing ship
• Q&A

Student requirements:

• Mumble registration and access - make sure you have Mumble sorted out and operational well before the class begins.
• Access to the Class.E-UNI in-game chat channel

If you have any additional questions, please post them in this thread.

Notes for the Teacher

Note that this syllabus is quite comprehensive and is not yet fully complete.

Class Contents

Introduction

Being a damage dealer means that your primary role in a fleet is to be responsible for blowing things up. In EVE University fleet operations, you will usually fire upon the ship denoted as the primary target unless noted otherwise by your fleet commander.

Generally, a good damage dealing ship is one that provides bonuses to weaponry systems that you are already proficiently skilled in. Each race tends to specialize in a particular type of damage.

Weapon Types (Racial)

Laser Turrets (Amarr)

Laser turrets are heavily favored as the Amarr weapon of choice. Laser (energy turrets) like Hybrid turrets require energy (capacitor) to fire and operate. They also generally require a hefty powergrid to fit them properly. Fortunately most Amarr ships feature big capacitors and a lot of powergrid for this purpose. Additionally certain Amarr ships get bonuses to Energy Turret capacitor usage.

Lasers rely on focusing crystals to fire; changing between these alters the range of the turret, along with how much damage they do. With crystals you trade range in exchange for damage. Shorter range crystals inherently do greater damage than longer range crystals.

Energy turrets suffer from a few disadvantages. Lasers generally have slower tracking speeds, large power consumption, and have a fixed damage type; all energy turrets do EM and Thermal damage.

Lasers also have advantages though in that energy turrets do not use ammunition. Instead they rely on a focusing crystal that decays over time. This means that buying one crystal is equivalent to 1000-3000 rounds of ammunition. Likewise, the price on crystals is higher in markets to reflect this. Additionally, energy turrets can switch between crystals with a 1 second delay. This is in contrast to the projectile/missile/hybrid weapons that require a 10 second delay to switch ammo types. This allows them to swap crystals and maintain range/optimal distance while moving. Lasers also have decent fall off ranges, and very good range even on short range variants.

Energy turrets are divided into two categories: Pulse and Beam.

Pulse turrets are the short range turrets. They generally fire faster and are easier to fit. There lacks a third variant of the Large Pulse turret however, making the Beam turret the weapon of choice for Amarr Battleships. Pulse turrets have a high base DPS, and the best range of short range turrets.

Beam turrets generally take longer to fire, but have greater range than Pulse turrets. Additionally, the Tachyon turrets in the Large category are the highest damaging large turret, making them hard to fit, but worth it. Beams are the weapon of choice for snipers and other “range” engagements. Beams have the highest base DPS of all long range turrets, as well as the highest tracking rate of all long range turrets.

Missiles (Caldari)

The Caldari favor missiles and hybrid turrets as weapons of choice for combat. Missiles come in four versions, in regard to ammo type: EM, Kinetic, Explosive, and Thermal. They also come in short ranged (generally higher damage) and long ranged (lower damage) varieties. For more information about different types of missiles and launchers, please refer to: Evelopedia: Missiles. These will also be covered more in depth in Damage Dealing 201.

One of the main advantages of using missiles over turret-based systems is that missiles have no optimal or falloff range. In other words, this means that if the target is in range of the missile, it is guaranteed to impact and take damage (taking into consideration that the hostile is not using defender missiles or smart bombs, which will be covered below). You can roughly determine the range of a missile being fired by multiplying its flight time by its speed, found in its attributes. The damage the missile will deal is affected by the size, signature radius, and velocity of the target ship.

Like all weapon systems, missiles also come with some disadvantages. Defender missiles have the ability to intercept incoming missiles in an attempt to destroy them before they hit their target. Likewise, smartbombs (if timed correctly) can cause missiles to explode before impact. You also have to take into consideration that missiles have a flight time attached to them, meaning that a target ship could attempt to outrun them and by doing so decrease the damage dealt or avoid damage completely.

Drones (Gallente)

Drones are heavily favored by the Gallente Federation, and are used extensively in a variety of roles. For basic combat drones, there are three classes: scout drones, medium drones, and heavy drones. Scout drones are used against small targets such as frigates and cruisers. Mediums are often seen used in combat against cruisers and battle-cruisers, while heavies are primarily used against battleships.

Drones of each race do the same type of damage as the race they belong too: Amarr drones do EM Damage, Caldari drones inflict kinectic damage, Gallente drones are designed for thermal damage, while Minmatar drones deal explosive damage. Generally, only Gallente combat drones are used in PvP due to their superior damage output when compared to other racial drones. The only exception is the Minmatar scout drone, the warrior, which is often deployed as a speedy drone to counter fast frigates.

Drones must be controlled and used in a unique way. First of all, when docked, you must place drones into your ship's drone bay to be able to use them in space. Drones must fit within the size limitations of your drone bay, and must abide by your ship's bandwidth limits. In space, drones must be released through your drone management window and can be controlled via hot keys or through right-click menus. For more information on how to equip and use drones, please read Using Drones.

Hybrid Turrets (Gallente, Some Caldari)

A Hybrid Turret is a turret which utilizes a magnetic field to fire a charge at extremely high velocity at a target. Hybrid turrets are relatively advanced weapons, and require energy to operate (though they consume less capacitor than Amarrian Lasers). Hybrid turrets are notable in the fact that they are the most widely used type of turret in the universe - they are the primary weapon of the Gallente, and many Caldari ships also eschew missiles in favor of Hybrid turrets.

As with all turrets, Hybrid turrets are available in both short ranged and long ranged variations, with blasters and railguns performing these functions, respectively.

Blasters are an extremely short range, highly destructive weapon system. Blasters possess high tracking speeds, short cycle times, and high volley damage, and as a result are one of the most powerful weapons available. Blasters consume ammunition quickly, though this is mitigated by high capacity magazines. With their very short effective range, a Microwarpdrive or Afterburner is mandatory for combat, lest pilots rely on their superior range to deny blaster equipped ships a chance to land a hit. However, one major criticism concerning blasters is that their short optimal ranges often leave ships vulnerable to being out-ranged in a battle.

Railguns are the long range version of the Hybrid Turret, though they do considerably less damage than blasters. Railguns feature longer optimal ranges than both Beam Lasers (Amarr) and Artillery (Minmatar). With the right fittings, a railgun equipped sniper battleship can hit targets at distances greater than 200 kilometers. However, these weapons have poor tracking and are restricted to kinetic and thermal damage types. Railguns are primarily used as a Sniping weapon.

Projectile Turrets (Minmatar)

Minmatar specialize in the use of projectile turrets. Projectile turrets have several advantages over other turret types, they don't consume any capacitor unlike laser and hybrid turrets, and they are able to select their damage type by changing their ammo. When compared to lasers and hybrids, projectile turrets have the longest falloff range of the turret types giving them a lot of flexibility in their engagement range.

Projectile ammo is split into 3 different range brackets: short range (EMP, Fusion, Phased Plasma which all have -50% optimal range but the highest damage output), medium range (titanium, sabot, and depleted uranium which have no range modifier but a 20% tracking bonus and do medium damage), and long range (carbonized lead, photon, and nuclear which have a 60% range bonus and a slight tracking bonus but do the lowest damage).

T2 projectile ammo works differently: Autocannons use Barrage (+50% falloff, slight tracking penalty, medium-high damage) and Hail (50% penalty to falloff and optimal, large tracking penalty, even higher damage than normal short range ammo), Artillery uses Tremor (+80% optimal range but huge tracking penalty, this is sniping ammo) and quake (-75% optimal, minor tracking penalty, highest damage artillery ammo), all T2 projectile ammo do kinetic and explosive damage.

Autocannons are the short range projectile turret, they fire very rapidly and do high dps, they also have the fastest tracking of all turret types. Normally you use short range, high damage ammo in autocannons because you are almost always engaging in falloff range; so the optimal range difference in ammo types has little effect in the effective range of autocannons. You would want to use barrage ammo when attempting to kite your target at a longer than normal range. Hail ammo would only really be used when shooting a large target in very close range.

Artillery is the long range projectile turret. They fire very slowly but have the highest alpha damage of all weapons. The high alpha makes artillery the most popular weapon for sniper fits and many artillery ships are capable of killing smaller ships in a single volley at long range. When choosing ammo, you want to use the ammo that has an optimal range that most closely matches your target's range. Artillery has fairly slow tracking (almost as bad as railguns) so will have difficulty hitting smaller targets at close range.

Damage Per Second (DPS)

Ammo

Turret Ammo is grouped into twelve groups, by size (small, medium, large and extra large) and turret type (laser, hybrid and projectile). All ammo groups contain a gradient of ammo that spans from close-range to long-range. For example, Antimatter Hybrid Ammo has a -50% range penalty but very high damage, while Iron charges has a 60% range bonus but low damage. In between is a score of other ammo types that have varying range modifiers and damage. Every ammo sub-category contains eight ammo types.

All hybrid turret ammo does a mix of Thermal and Kinetic damage, the ratio between the two damage types depending on the ammo itself. It is generally split into damage and range ammo, with damage ammo typically used in blasters and range ammo going into railguns. This is not a rule, however, and damage ammo is often used in railguns for medium to close-range encounters. Get used to the fact that whatever ammo type you put into blasters, however, your range is always going to be somewhat lacking due to the low base values involved.

Laser crystals, like hybrid ammo, only do two damage types; thermal and electromagnetic (EM). Unlike hybrid ammo, however, they are not consumed when shooting, and can be instantly replaced with crystals in the cargo hold. The damage ratio between crystals can vary greatly, and it is always a good idea to study the ammo you are carrying in any case.

Projectile ammo, quite unlike the other two ammo types, can do a multitude of damage types. Every ammo does two different damage types, which gives increased tactical variety as damage can be alternated depending on the target's shield and armor resistances. When selecting projectile ammo, take note of the damage types involved, as well as the volumes you are going to go into battle with, since the consumption rate of projectile ammunition is high. This is especially true of autocannons.

Missiles are quite different from the turret weapons. Missiles have a consistent and versatile damage output, and are capable of dealing single damage types. As such, missiles are valuable in PvP combat, as they allow a pilot to exploit a weakness in an opponent's tank. It is also impossible for a missile to miss a target, unless the target outruns the missile, moves out of range, or disengages and warps away. However, missiles can be destroyed in flight (either with Defender missiles or with a well-timed smartbomb detonation), partially or completely nullifying the attacker's damage output.