Turret damage: Difference between revisions

A turret always has a 0–100 percent chance to hit a target. The hit chance is affected by turret tracking, optimal and falloff ranges, target angular velocity, target distance and target signature radius.

===Falloff and optimal range===

Inside optimal range the gun will suffer no reduction in hit chance due to distance. If the target is sitting still inside the optimal range, every single attack will hit it.

Falloff is an extra range that goes beyond your optimal range. This is, however, not a limit value, like the optimal range is. It is best described as a gradual loss of hit chance. Distance of falloff + optimal represents the distance at which you are down to a 50% hit chance. At optimal plus two times your falloff value your hit chance is down to 6.25%, even though it is unlikely you can still hit your target at that range, and at three times your falloff range the chance to hit is only 0.2%.

Falloff and optimal ranges are visible in turret info window. They are further modified by skills, ammo, modules, hull bonuses and incoming tracking disruptors. Target distance is visible on overview.

Tracking is a value that indicates how well you can hit targets that are passing you by, higher tracking is needed for faster moving targets. This is not a limit value either, in fact it works exactly as falloff does but without any optimal range. When the target's angular velocity is equal to the turret's tracking value divided by 40000 you will have a 50% hit chance (note: size of the target will also affect this, see below). Just as for falloff, when a target's angular velocity is two times your tracking, the hit chance is down to 6.25%.

Turret tracking is visible in turret info window. It is modified by skill, ammo, modules, hull bonuses and incoming tracking disruptors.

Note that the turret tracking was recently changed. Any info that mentions turret signature resolution is outdated.

This can be a tricky concept. It describes how fast something passes by something else. It is measured in in radians per second (rad/s), where one radian is equal to about a 57° angle (more accurately, 360° = 2π radians). Your ingame overview can show this value if you open its settings and tick a box under the tab called columns. Angular velocity is used to determine the penalty to the hit chance based on the turret's tracking capabilities. Relying on high angular velocities to stay alive is called speed tanking (not to be mixed up with kiting). A cool headed player can use special maneuvers (like keep at range) or modules to drastically reduce the angular velocity of a foe to open up for some heavy handed blows against a target that is otherwise hard to track.

Angular velovity is calculated as ω=v_t/d, where v_t is tranversal velocity of the target relative to shooter and d is distance to target. The shooter and target will both have same angular velocity to each other.

It doesn't matter what a ship looks like physically. They are all treated as if they were spheres when they are shot at. The target signature radius describes how big this sphere is, the bigger it is the easier it will be to track with guns. Target signature radius only affects tracking and has no effect when shooting a stationary target.

Target signature radius is visible in ship fitting window. It is modified by modules, hull bonuses and incoming target painters.

The chance to hit formula calculates the chance to hit a target based on the parameters listed above. The hit chance is always a number between 0 and 1, or 0% and 100% if you will. The computer then generates a random number to see if a hit is scored or not.  

<math>\pagecolor{Black}\color{White}\text{Chance to Hit} = {0.5^{\left({\left({\frac{V_{angular} \times 40000m}{WAS \times sig_{target}}}\right)^{2} + \left({\frac{max(0, Distance - opt_{turret})}{fall_{turret}}}\right)^{2}}\right)}}</math>

where V_angular is angular velocity of target, WAS is weapon tracking speed, sig_target is target signature radius, distance is distance to target, opt_turret is optimal range of turret and fall_turret is falloff of turret.

When a turret shots a target a random number between 0 and 1 is generated. If the random number is greater than the hit chance the shot misses. One thing that needs to be emphasized is that your own piloting can change your hit chance, by actively trying to control the range and the movements relative to your opponents.

Math students may recognize that something of the form ''x''^{(''a''+''b'')} is identical to ''x^ax^b'', so we can rewrite the above as<br/>

* <math>\pagecolor{Black}\color{White}\text{Chance to Hit} = 0.5^{\text{tracking term}} \cdot 0.5^{\text{range term}}</math><br/>

From this we can see that tracking and range are actually calculated separately, then the results from each are multiplied. This shows that Range and Tracking are indeed two different and independent things, and both will be used to score a hit.

There is also one more thing we can find out by just looking at the equation. This is, however, a little trickier to follow, but the conclusion is easy. The aim is to compare the tracking term and the range term for similarities in how they behave. Do they have anything in common? To do this, we will freeze all values in those respective terms except for one variable in each, that will be 'turret tracking' and 'falloff' respectively. Then we can look at how that single variable effects the outcome in each case and see if there is any similarities between them.

The tracking part: All turrets measure tracking speed as a ''Turret tracking'', which describes how well a turret can cope with targets moving around the turret in circles (or how well the turret can cope with its own ship moving around the target in circles; as far as the equation is concerned, these are the same situation). Let's freeze the ''angular velocity'', meaning the ships are orbiting each other at a constant speed. In the tracking term we also have a ''40000 meters'' term (a true constant) and ''target signature radius'' (which is usually constant except when any effects that affect [[signature radius]] are applied or removed). The result: a fixed number divided by ''turret tracking''.

The range part: Being inside optimal never incurs a hit penalty, so we must move out into falloff ranges to see any changes in the to-hit equation's output values. Lets freeze everything apart from ''falloff.'' The result: a fixed number divided by ''falloff.''

Did you see what they have in common? In the tracking term, we now have ''something''/''Turret tracking'', in the range term we have ''something''/''falloff''. In both cases there is a value that is divided by the variable we were interested in. There is an important insight here: tracking and falloff behave identically. Also, they are not fixed limits, they become ratios that describes how quickly you lose hit chance as you start to push range and orbiting speeds. Also, the hit chance loss is gradual.

All turrets have a base damage, this is a fixed number. The volley damage that your turrets do will be spread around this number. The higher the number the more damage the turret will do when it hits. It is calculated from the turret's Damage Multiplier attribute, the ammo's damage values and skills. This is before any resistances are taken into consideration. A high base damage means that your guns hit hard (but do not mistake this for DPS (damage per second). The base damage is always a bit below the average damage (about 1.5% lower) when there is a 100% hit chance because of the rare-but-powerful perfect hits.

 

 

 

 

At the heart of a turret's damage output is a single randomly generated value between 0 and 1 that is several digits long. This random number is used '''both''' to determine if the turret hits the target and then to determine how much damage the hit actually did. If the random number is less than 0.01 (1% chance) the hit is perfect hit and deals 300% damage. If the hit chance is less than 1% this perfect hit can also miss and any non perfect hit will miss.

In non perfect hits the damage modifier of the shot is calculated with formula

The base damage is multiplied by this modifier to get the final damage. The result is that the turret can deal 50% - 149% of its damage in single non perfect hit. Also note that since the same random number is used for hit and damage calculations the possible damage range gets lower as hit chance lowers. At 70% hit chance the turret can deal 50% - 119% damage with non perfect hit.  

No. Even if the guns are grouped on your screen, they are still treated separately. This can be seen by collecting damage data and comparing that with the normal expected damage distribution, it's very clear that it's a combination of several separate turret shots instead of a single one. It can also be deduced by looking at the turret group's damage output when shooting at hard to hit objects, like things deep into falloff, it's possible to tell when one, two or more guns hit the target.