Difference between revisions of "Advanced piloting techniques"

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[[Category:Guides]]
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{{See also|Manual piloting}}
[[Category:PvP]]
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{{Navigation Links}}
[[Category:PvE]]
 
  
How to manually pilot your ship
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This is meant to be a compilation of the various things that separate capsuleers from monkeys. There is more to piloting a ship than locking a target and pressing a button, after all.
  
This may have been done before, but I've become interested in the personal skill aspect of ship piloting, and I thought I'd compile some of the little things I've picked up over the past couple months into one place. I did this over the past two weeks while I was hauling things around, so it's kinda long but I would appreciate any feedback even if you just skim it. If it's useful I may try to pretty it up. Here goes:
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So, in a one on one fight between two equal ships, how do you get the upper hand and come away with the win? A similar question would be: in a swarm of fifteen tacklers barrelling towards an enemy fleet, how do you keep yourself alive when frigates are popping all around you?
  
Rookie manual piloting guide, or: Skills that you can’t buy on the market
 
  
This guide is meant to be a compilation of the various things that separate capsuleers from monkeys. There is more to piloting a ship than locking a target and pressing a button, after all. I won’t be going into too much detail here – you can find more specific guides somewhere else. I also welcome additions and corrections as long as they are made in a loving manner.
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== Ship controls and tools ==
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First things first, you should know what tools you have at your disposal.
  
The question I want to answer is, in a one on one fight between two equal ships, how do you get the upper hand and come away with the win? A similar question would be, in a swarm of 15 tacklers hurtling towards an enemy fleet, how do you keep yourself alive when frigates are popping all around you?
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=== Autopilot ===
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The autopilot is capable of setting a route to one or more waypoint systems, and automatically flying your ship there. However, it warps to all stargates at 10km,<ref>https://www.eveonline.com/news/view/warp-drive-active-warp-speed-changes-now-live</ref> so travel time is significantly greater than manual flight. You will also be a sitting duck for ship-scanners, or [[gatecamps]] if you decide to go into low-sec space with autopilot on, so for the purposes of this guide, keep it off! Besides, the whole point of this guide is that you can pilot your ship better than the computer. What the autopilot is most useful for is route-plotting. Autopilot also continues controlling your capsule even if your ship is destroyed.
  
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=== Tactical overlay ===
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The tactical overlay button (to the left of your capacitor/health circle) puts range markers on your view of space (or, if you have it open, on your solar system map) so you can get a better sense of distance. If you mouse over one of your modules while in the tactical overlay, a circle will appear around your ship that shows the range of the module. (See the full [[tactical overlay]] article for more information.).
  
=== Capsule Controls (A Beginner's Reference) ===
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=== Directional and probe scanner ===
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The [[directional scanner]] is a tool on every ship which can scan a sphere or a cone with an adjustable radius of 0.1-14 AU from you. You can manipulate the scanning range and the direction of the scan from 360º to 180º all the way down to 5º to figure out where something is.
  
First things first, you have to know what tools you have at your disposal.
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Probe Scanner will scan the system (even if you don't have actual probes equipped) for Cosmic Signatures, Anomalies, Training Sites, Faction Warfare sites etc. Those are less advanced versions of the sites found with exploration. If you do have scan probes fitted, they will integrate to form a much more powerful scanner (see [[Probe scanning]] for more details).
  
Autopilot: The autopilot is capable of setting a route to one or more waypoint systems, and automatically flying your ship there. However it warps to all stargates at 15km, so travel time is significantly higher than manual flight. You will also be a sitting duck for gatecamps if you decide to go into low-sec space with autopilot on, so for the purposes of this guide, keep it off! Besides, the whole point of this guide is that you can pilot your ship better than the computer. I only use the autopilot in combination with 2D maps, to plan out travel routes.
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=== The overview ===
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The [[overview]] is the main source of information about what’s going on around you in space. If it’s set up properly, you should be able to play most of the game just by looking at overview information. I won’t go into the details of [[overview settings]], but suffice to say they are ''very'' important. In this guide we’ll mostly be concerned with the overview's ability to display an object’s distance and velocity (including radial, transversal, and angular components). In addition, by looking at the ship icons in the overview, you can tell whether you have been locked onto (flashing yellow targeting box), or have been attacked (solid red box).
  
Tactical overlay: The tactical overlay button puts range markers on your solar system map so you can get a better sense of distance. One useful feature it has, is that if you mouse over one of your modules while in the tactical overlay, a bubble will appear around your ship that shows the range of the module.
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=== Throttle ===
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The velocity control (where your velocity is displayed) lets you manually choose what velocity you want to travel at by clicking at speedometer gauge (a tip will appear when you hover your mouse). {{button|Shift}} - {{button|Space}} will stop your ship as long as you are not in warp. If your warp drive is active, but you are still aligning, {{button|Shift}} - {{button|Space}} will stop you and cancel the warp. If you use a custom throttle velocity, you'll have to set it again after you jump through a Stargate, since it resets to full speed again.
  
Directional and system scanner: The system scanner recently received an overhaul and is now much easier to use. It will scan the system for Cosmic Signatures, which are a less advanced version of actual sites found with exploration. If you have scan probes fitted, they will integrate to form a much more powerful system scanner. Look for an exploration class for more details.
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=== Double-click (manual piloting) ===
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Double clicking in space sends your ship in the direction you clicked. If you imagine, from the perspective of the camera, a vector shooting out from the middle of the screen, the horizontal and vertical angles are determined by where you click on the screen, and the depth component is determined by which way the camera is facing.
  
The directional scanner a tool on every ship that can scan a radius of around 14 AU around you. It can pick up anything seen in the overview, and you can actually use specific overview settings to filter the results. You can then narrow the direction of the scan from 360º to 180º all the way down to 5º to figure out where something is. Some good ideas are a filter for scanning for probes that are looking for you, scanning for ships at a gate from a faraway recon safespot, or looking to see if there are cans in an asteroid belt to flip (kidding). If you turn on brackets in space you will see the icons for gates and planets and stations, etc. You can then click on your own ship and use the little box to line yourself up with those places for precise scanning. There is a video and a class recording in the Library.
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=== Board ship ===
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If you are in a [[capsule]] and there is an empty [[ship]] in space, you can click the Board Ship button to take control of the vessel.
  
The Overview: The overview is the primary way you get information about what’s going on around you in space. If it’s set up properly, you should be able to play the game just by looking at overview information, and not even looking at your ship and what it’s doing. I won’t go into the details of overview settings, but suffice to say it is very important. In this guide we’ll mostly be concerned with its ability to display an object’s distance and velocity (including radial, transversal, and angular components). In addition, by looking at the ship icons in the overview, you can tell whether you have been locked onto (flashing yellow targeting box), or have been aggressed against (solid red box).
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=== Approach ===
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The approach button simply aligns your ship in the direction of the selected object and increases your velocity to the velocity you’ve set in the throttle. This maximizes your radial velocity and minimizes your transversal velocity. This is the same as the “align to” command, but “align to” is used for objects at warp distances, and approach used for objects at subwarp distances (less than 150 km).
  
Throttle: The velocity control (where your velocity is displayed) lets you manually choose what velocity you want to travel at, up to your max velocity. Ctrl-space will stop your ship as long as you are not in warp. If your warp drive is active, but you are still aligning, ctrl-space will work. If you use a custom throttle velocity, you'll have to set it again after you jump through a stargate, since it resets to full speed again.
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=== Orbit ===
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The orbit button tries to put your ship in a circular orbit around the selected object. The value can be set by right clicking and manually entering a default orbit distance, or by right-clicking the object in the overview and choosing from some preset distances. You can also orbit an object at your current range from it. Orbiting maximizes your transversal and angular velocities, and minimizes your radial velocity. You can orbit an object if it is on [[grid]] with you.
  
Double-click: Double clicking in space, basically makes your ship go to where you clicked. If you imagine, from the perspective of the camera, a vector shooting out from the middle of the screen, the horizontal and vertical angles are determined by where you click on the screen, and the depth component is determined by which way the camera is facing. Then the ship aligns to that vector.
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Your ship’s agility will determine your orbit speed: the better your agility (lower agility modifier), the closer your orbit speed will be to your maximum linear velocity. Depending on your agility and the relative speeds of you and the target, your orbit may drop from circular to elliptical, or even to the point where you can’t maintain a stable orbit if the other object is moving too fast.
  
Approach: The approach button simply aligns your ship in the direction of the selected object and increases your velocity to the velocity you’ve set in the throttle. This maximizes your radial velocity and minimizes your transversal velocity. This is the same as the “align to” command, but “align to” is used for objects at warp distances, and approach used for objects at subwarp distances (less than 150 km).
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=== Keep at range ===
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This draws a line between your ship and the selected object, and adjusts your ship velocity to move you backward or forward along that line in order to maintain the selected range. Like orbit, the default value can be set by right clicking the icon, or you can choose from presets in the right-click menu. Keeping something at range will minimize your radial, transversal, and angular velocities.
  
Orbit: The orbit button tries to put your ship in a circular orbit around the selected object. The value can be set by right clicking and manually entering a default orbit distance, or by right-clicking the object in the overview and choosing from some preset distances. Orbiting maximizes your transversal and angular velocities, and minimizes your radial velocity.
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=== Warp ===
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Starts the process of [[warp]]ing to the selected object greater than 150 km away. To warp to something it must be an object in space, a [[bookmark]], or a ship in your fleet. You can adjust how far you will land from your target when you come out of warp, from 0 to 100 km. Again the default value on the button can be changed by right-clicking and presets can be found in the right-click menu. For example, warping to something 150 km away within 100 km will move you inline toward the object 50 km.
  
Your ship’s agility will determine your orbit speed: the better your agility (lower agility modifier), the closer your orbit speed will be to your maximum linear velocity. Depending on your agility and the relative speeds of you and the target, your orbit may drop from circular to elliptical, or even to the point where you can’t maintain a stable orbit if the other object is moving too fast.
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When you press the warp button, first you have to align to the target. There are two steps to aligning which happen at the same time:
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* lining up the target with your ship’s movement direction within 5º
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* increasing ship velocity to 75% of its maximum
  
Keep at Range: This draws a line between your ship and the selected object, and adjusts your ship velocity to move you backward or forward along that line in order to maintain the selected range. Like orbit, the default value can be set by right clicking the icon, or you can choose from presets in the right-click menu. Keeping something at range will minimize your radial, transversal, and angular velocities.
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Your ship will not warp until it meets both of these criteria.
  
Warp: Starts the process of warping to the selected object greater than 150 km away. To warp to something it must be an object in space, or a ship in your fleet. You can adjust how far you will land from your target when you come out of warp, from 0 to 100 km. Again the default value on the button can be changed by right-clicking and presets can be found in the right-click menu. For example, warping to something 150 km away within 100 km will move you inline toward the object 50 km.
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How long this process takes depends on your ship's agility and acceleration. Once you are aligned you will see your normal engines cut out, your warp engine will turn on and you will no longer be able to stop the ship until the warp bubble collapses. Until your warp engine actually turns on, you can still be locked, tackled, [[#Bumping|bumped]] and fired upon as normal.
  
When you press the warp button, first you have to align to the target. There are two steps to aligning which happen at the same time: lining up the target with your ship’s movement direction within 5º, and increasing ship velocity to 75% of the maximum. How fast this process takes depends on your ship agility. Once you are aligned you will see your normal engines cut out, your warp engine will turn on and you will no longer be able to stop the ship until the warp bubble collapses. Until your warp engine actually turns on, you can still be locked and fired upon.
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=== Jump ===
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Pretty self-explanatory, you jump through the stargate if you are within 2,500 m. In order to automatically jump once you exit the warp you can press the button while in warp. Alternatively, instead of clicking Warp you click Jump in the first place; this will initiate warp automatically if the gate is in warp distance and jump on contact.
  
Jump: Pretty self-explanatory, you jump through the stargate if you are within 2500 m. In order to jump instantly you can spam the button starting half a second before you drop out of warp (you can see your engines slowing down). You may also want to set a keyboard shortcut to turn the autopilot on midwarp, which will then jump instantly for you if you are following a route. If you do that, be sure you disable the autopilot immediately after the jump.
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=== Look at ===
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This changes your camera’s anchor point from your ship to the selected object. You can use this to see where, if anywhere, another ship is aligning, and what kind of weapons it has equipped. Unfortunately no all weapons show up, e.g. smartbombs (though the absence of turrets on a turret battleship is a good sign of smartbombs).
  
Look At: This changes your camera’s anchor point from your ship to the selected object. This can be useful for visually determine what kind of weaponry the target ship has equipped – yes you can tell the type, size, and amount of turrets on a ship just from looking. Unfortunately missile launchers don’t show up, nor do smartbomb launchers. One example of what you would use this for is to see if a battleship you’d expect to have turrets, actually has any showing. If they don’t, they might have 8 smartbombs.
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=== Radial Menu ===
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If you click and hold on an object in space or an element in a window, a [[Overview#Radial_Menu|Radial Menu]] will appear. Most of the actions discribed above will be available through the Radial Menu. This can be helpful in battle where you can, for example, orbit a ship by clicking on it in space.
  
Using this button to ogle other people’s ships is also a good way to pass the time while waiting for uni fleets to get going.
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== General navigation ==
I’ve split this reference into 3 sections: Capsule Controls, Flying Manually, and Knowledge is Power.
 
  
=== Flying Manually (For Fun and Profit) ===
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=== Warping and alignment ===
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Warping is critically important for moving around space, and manual piloting of your ship has a big impact on how well the warp drive will work, meaning how quickly you can enter warp.
  
The first topic you should know about is warp mechanics. Warping is critically important for moving around space, and manual piloting of your ship has a big impact on how well the warp drive will work.
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When you press the warp button, several things happen. Your ship begins to align to the warp-to point. You lose a certain amount of energy from your capacitor based on skills and the distance of the jump (if you cancel the warp at this stage the energy is still lost). Once you are aligned, you warp to your destination, accelerating up to, and then decelerating down from, your ship’s warp speed.
  
When you press the warp button, several things happen. Your ship begins to align as described in section I. You lose a certain amount of energy from your capacitor based on skills and the distance of the jump (if you cancel the warp at this stage the energy is still lost). Once you are aligned, you warp to your destination at your ship’s warp speed. The two important aspects I’ll focus on are controlling the align time of your ship, and controlling where you drop out of warp using “warp to within” and bookmarks.
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Pods align instantly, and shuttles nearly so (2 seconds). So if you are paying attention, and have no lag, it is nearly impossible for you to be locked before you warp in these vessels (especially because their signature radius, a ship parameter affecting the attempted locking time, is of the smallest). Frigates have a typical align time of 3-5 s, cruisers might be more like 7-9 s, and battleships, industrials, and larger ships can take 20, 30, or more seconds to align for warp.
  
==== Align Time ====
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Your align time depends on your mass. Higher mass makes it harder to accelerate, decelerate, and turn the ship. Every ship has an agility modifier, which you multiply with the mass to get an “effective mass” that determines how agile your ship really is. Modules like nanofibers or inertial stabilizers reduce your agility modifier and therefore reduce your align time. In-game Fitting window or external tools such as [[PYFA]] can give you an approximate align time for your ship loadout.
  
Pods align instantly, and shuttles nearly so (about 1 second). So if you are paying attention, and have no lag, it is nearly impossible for you to be locked before you warp in these vessels (especially because your signature radius is so small). Frigates have a typical align time of 3-5 s, cruisers might be more like 7-9 s, and battleships, industrials, and larger ships can take 20, 30, or more seconds to align for warp.
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So where does piloting come in? Well, for one thing you can pre-align your ship to a target so that you enter warp instantly, even in a massive ship. You need to move toward your warp destination and set your speed at or above 75% of your ship's max speed. Aligning and then stopping your ship does nothing. The direction your ship is facing does not matter. The game only cares about the direction your ship is '''moving'''. From a stop, it will accelerate in any direction at the same speed whether that direction is in front or behind the ship.  Once aligned, if you need to warp out (run away), you will then warp instantly since the pre-reqs of 75% of your max speed and moving within 5° of the target direction will already be met. If you are in a frigate, you tend to orbit a lot and pre-aligning might not be practical. But in a larger ship in a dangerous situation, pre-aligning might save your hull. Some people will tell you to always be pre-aligned in combat.
  
To first order, your align time is simply dependent on your mass. Higher mass makes it harder to accelerate, decelerate, and turn the ship. Simple physics! Every ship has an agility modifier, which you multiply with the mass to get an “effective mass” that determines how agile your ship really is. Modules like nanofibers or inertial stabilizers reduce your agility modifier and therefore reduce your align time. Eve Fitting Tool (EFT) can give you an approximate align time for your ship loadout.
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==== Warp trick when undocking ====
  
So where does piloting come in? Well, for one thing you can pre-align your ship to a target so that you warp instantly, even in a massive ship. One little quirk is that because the EVE universe has a top and bottom, if your ship’s engines are off, you slowly drift back towards horizontal. If you want to stay aligned you have to keep your engines online, even if it’s 20 m/s. Of course to be truly aligned, keep your velocity above 75% of max. If you are in a frigate, you tend to orbit a lot and pre-aligning might not be practical. But in a larger ship in a dangerous situation, pre-aligning might save your hull. Some people will tell you – always fight pre-aligned.
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If you come out of a station in an industrial and align to something 90° away, you will have an agonizing wait while you make the turn at max velocity. This is because there are 2 ways that your ship can change speed (besides bumping). One is from the ships engines accelerating it in the direction it is aligning. This can be boosted by an Afterburner or MWD. The other is friction (or a sort of warp core drag according to EVE Lore<ref>"Power Enhanced Generator (PEG)" EVE Fanfest 2017 - The Physics Of New Eden https://youtu.be/fqQO0vY8VMk?t=964</ref>) that slows it down when you hit stop or reduce your speed. The problem is the amount of friction increases with speed so it slows quickly at high speeds but as you slow down the rate decreases. The last bit takes a very long time to stop since friction is very low at those speeds.  
  
Another way you can use manual piloting to improve align time is to “pump the throttle,” as I like to call it. If you notice, there’s a difference in align time right after a gate jump, and right after being squeezed out of a station. That’s because it is harder to turn your ship if it has a lot of velocity. When the computer aligns the ship it tries to maximize velocity at the same time as it turns the ship. If you come out of a station in an industrial and align to something 90º away, you will have an agonizing wait while you make the turn at max velocity. If you align to something 180º away, your velocity will drop drastically as you turn around and you’ll see the ship turn much faster.
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You just came out of the station and are moving at high speed. Now you align to something 90° away. 100% of the engine's power starts accelerating the ship in the direction of the align point and after your normal align time your ship is now moving toward the warp destination near the appropriate speed. But the ship is also still drifting in the original direction. This means that the ship is actually moving at an angle and will not align until friction slows the ship from moving in the original direction. That process can take a long time.
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There are two ways to fix this:
  
So the maneuver in this case is to close the throttle to cut your velocity manually if you know you’re going to need to make a turn, then open it up again so you can warp. Obviously you need to decide whether this will be worth it. If you are in a situation where turning the ship will take much longer than building to 75% velocity, then I would pump the throttle. If you guess that the align time will be fairly short it might not be worth it.
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# If you are in a ship that aligns quickly (like a shuttle) and there are hostiles on grid, you can hit stop ship. Note, when you have just undocked from a station, a [[Timers#Location_Change_Timer|Location Change Timer]] is triggered that makes you invulnerable for 30 seconds or until you move. As long as you do not do anything else but hit the stop ship button, it will not be possible target you for the hostiles for 30 seconds. Once the ship comes to a halt, warp out. This ends up taking about the same amount of time as simply aligning but it minimizes the time that you are targetable.
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# The second way is faster. Rather than letting friction slow you down, you can double click toward the station (which makes you targetable) to let the engines stop you, then warp out once you are near zero velocity. A slightly faster way is to double click toward the station but at an angle toward the align point then warping when the ship stops moving away from the station. This method of using your engines to slow down then turning can be used for turning quickly in combat as well.
  
The bottom line is that you should always be aware of how long it will take you to get to the safety of warp. Whether you’re hauling trade goods or at half structure in the middle of an enemy fleet, good piloting can come in really handy.
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The bottom line is that you should always be aware of how long it will take you to get to the safety of warp. Whether you’re hauling trade goods or at half structure in the middle of an enemy fleet, good warp awareness can come in really handy.
  
==== “Warp within” and bookmarks ====  
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==== Speed awareness in alignment ====
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Another point to remember is that your required speed to align is always 75% of your ''ship's'' max velocity. Being webbed can sometimes help you get into warp faster, since it lowers your max velocity -- if you're piloting a freighter you can speed travel up by bringing a friend (within your corp, so they don't get CONCORDed) along to web you. This is also why tacklers are taught to 'point, then web'.
  
Where you come out of warp is critical. As I mentioned at the beginning, autopilot is bad because you come out of warp so far from the gate that you cannot jump immediately. If you warp to 0 km on a gate, you’ll land within jump range, which is crucial if you want to avoid confrontation.
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Using a propulsion module (usually a MWD) can reduce your align time if it is normally more than the cycle time of the module (this can be the case, for example, with an MWD on the Orca). By pulsing the module once, the aim is to get past your normal align speed, even though your align speed with the module active is much higher. Once the cycle ends, your max speed (and the required align speed) will drop back down to normal and you should warp soon after.
  
Likewise if you’re warping to a hostile gate, you’ll be at a decisive advantage if you drop out of warp at your optimal range. The easiest way to do this is by warping within X km, where X is your optimal range. Remember you can set X to anything between 0 and 100 km by right-clicking on the warp icon. If you have bookmarks around the gate you have even more options for recon, or for warping past the gate, or somewhere unexpected. For more information about bookmarks, there’s a really good thread on the forums: http://www.eve-ivy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=15375
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When you combine MWD use with a protoype/covops cloak, then you can use the [[Cloak trick|MWD+cloak trick]] to align while cloaked, providing much better security in some situations.
  
One last thing about warp within: if you warp to a cloaked ship in your own fleet, never warp to 0 because that will break their cloak and leave them vulnerable for 30 seconds. Warp to within at least 5 km.
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===  “Warp within” and bookmarks ===
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Where you come out of warp is critical. As discussed above, autopilot is bad because you come out of warp so far from the gate that you cannot jump immediately. If you warp to 0 km on a gate, you’ll land within jump range, which is crucial if you want to avoid confrontation.
  
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Likewise if you’re warping to a hostile gate, you’ll be at a decisive advantage if you drop out of warp at your optimal range. The easiest way to do this is by warping within X km, where X is your optimal range. Remember you can set X to anything between 0 and 100 km by right-clicking on the warp icon. If you have [[bookmarks]] around the gate you have even more options for recon, or for warping past the gate, or somewhere unexpected.
  
The second major topic has to do with tracking mechanics. Damage from both turrets and missiles is affected by how the ships are moving. To really understand tracking I recommend the official guide at http://www.hostile.dk/files/eve/eve-tracking101.swf. Some basics:
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One last thing about warp within: if you warp to a cloaked ship in your own fleet, never warp to 0 because that will break their cloak and leave them vulnerable. Warp to no closer than 5 km.
  
* the higher your transversal velocity, the harder you are to hit with turrets.
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== In-combat navigation ==
* the higher your absolute velocity, the less damage you take from missiles.
 
* the smaller your signature radius compared to the weapons being fired, the less damage you take.
 
  
So given these facts how can you sway a fight in your favor? Well first you have to assess the situation and decide what angle you want to take. Are you better at offense or defense? In fact the relevant numbers are the time it will take you to beat your opponent’s tank versus the time it will take him to break your tank. Your only goal is to make that first time less than the second time, which you can do through increasing damage or increasing survivability. It might work better to use examples:
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=== Manual piloting and gunnery ===
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The second major topic has to do with tracking mechanics. Damage from both turrets and missiles is affected by how the ships are moving. You can read about the details of tracking [[Gunnery_Guide#Tracking|here]]; and you can read about the details of missile damage [[Missile_Launchers#Damage|here]].  
  
==== Two identical ships, but one is using artillery (long range, bad tracking) and one is using cannons (short range, good tracking). ====
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A tutorial with helpful animations can be found on the EVE Online official web site Combat Mechanics page <ref>https://www.eveonline.com/eve-academy/ships/combat-mechanics</ref>.
  
Let’s say I’m the artillery pilot. I know that artillery do less damage per second than cannons. But if I can maintain a range of 20 km, I know that I can damage him but he can’t damage me – I’ll win in the end. So I can set my orbit to 20 km, or if I want to do more damage, I can keep him at a 20 km range so my transversal goes down and my guns track easier.
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A boiled down summary:
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* the higher your angular velocity, the harder you are to hit with turrets.
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* the higher your absolute velocity, the less damage you take from missiles.
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* the smaller your signature radius, the harder you are to hit with turrets (provided you move) and the less damage you take from missiles
  
If I’m the autocannon pilot, I know I have to get up close in order to do any damage. Once I’m there, if I go into orbit I’ll have maximized my transversal so I’ll see an advantage because my guns track better than his.
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So, given these facts how can you sway a fight in your favor? Well first you have to assess the situation and decide what angle you want to take. Are you better at offence or defence? The relevant numbers are the time it will take you to beat your opponent’s tank versus the time it will take him to break your tank. Your only goal is to make that first time less than the second time, which you can do through increasing your applied DPS, or increasing your survivability.
  
You might notice that in this situation, whoever has the higher speed and agility is going to have a decisive advantage, because they will control the range of the fight so their guns are doing maximum damage, and they will be able to set an orbit around the other ship such that they will take minimum damage.
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=== Engagement examples ===
  
If you are the slower ship in this situation, it’s an uphill battle but it’s not over. Taking another example:
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The following examples will provide a practical insight:
  
==== A frigate vs. a cruiser ====
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==== Two identical frigates: artillery vs autocannon ====
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The pilot using artillery knows that artillery does less damage per second (DPS) than autocannon. But if he can maintain a range of 20 km, he knows that he can damage his opponent while his opponent's autocannon can't damage him: the artillery will win in the end. So he can set his orbit to 20 km, or if he wants to do more damage, he can keep him at a 20 km range so that the angular velocity goes down and the artillery track more easily.
  
As the frigate pilot, I know that I won’t last long if I let his guns (or missiles) track me with 0 transversal. But I know my defense will be very high if I can get under his guns by establishing a close orbit. Getting in close without getting hit is a problem though. People tend to use a zig-zag or a spiral path of approach. Instead of approaching in a straight line, I can approach at 45 degree angles by double clicking in space between the enemy ship and the edge of the screen. The reason for the spiral is to keep my vector changing and narrowing on the target, while never sliding through the cone in the middle of the screen where transversal is low. I hope he doesn’t have drones!
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The autocannon pilot knows he has to get up close in order to do any damage. Once he's there, if he goes into orbit he’ll have maximized his angular velocity and will probably avoid all the fire from the slow-tracking artillery, while applying lots of DPS from his fast-tracking autocannon.
  
As the cruiser pilot, I know that medium weapons will do less damage against the frigate – and even worse because the frigate will have the speed advantage, he’ll be very hard to track. But I have a couple options. One is to deploy drones, which have a much easier time tracking and orbiting fast ships. Another is to minimize my transversal so I can get some good hits off. As the frigate is approaching, I can try to keep at range, and that will make the computer attempt to turn the ship to minimize the transversal. Remember for turning the ship, having a low velocity allows me to turn faster.
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You might notice that in this situation, whoever has the higher speed and agility is going to have a decisive advantage: they will '''control the range of the fight''' so their guns are doing maximum damage, and they will be able to set an orbit around the other ship such that they will take minimum damage.
  
But if he gets in an orbit around me, it’s not over yet. If I have a decent velocity I can make his orbit elliptical, and when he goes around the narrow ends of the oval his transversal will be lower than average. Changing directions frequently (double-click!) will also make him adjust his orbit and possibly lower his traversal. This works even better if I time my direction change well: for example, as he is moving across the top of my screen to the left in his orbit, I can make a quick right turn and this will cause him to have to chase me – with low transversal – for a little while.
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If you are the slower ship in this situation, it’s an uphill battle but it’s not over. Taking another example:
  
You can also double back on your tracks to try and escape an orbit, or web range. Details on these maneuvers can be found here:
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==== A frigate vs a cruiser ====
http://www.eve-tribune.com/index.php?no=2_40&page=6
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The frigate pilot knows that he won’t last long if he lets the cruiser's medium guns track him with low angular velocity. But he also knows that his defense will be very high if he can get under the cruiser's guns by establishing a close orbit.
  
==== A cruiser in a mission with frigates and battleships. Don't try this at home. ====
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Getting in close without getting hit is a problem though. The best technique for frigate pilots to do this is to '[[Manual piloting#Spiral Maneuver|spiral in]]' on the target rather than simply approaching directly.
  
Let's assume for fun I'm in an autocannon ship and all the enemies are turret based as well. I might be suicidal running a mission with battleships in a cruiser but this is just as an example of the thought process. First thing in a close range heavy fire situation, always keep moving. I'd have my afterburner on constantly. Next I'd have to figure out what was doing the most damage to me. It might not be a battleship - a lot of that damage is reduced because of the size difference. It might be an elite cruiser. Whatever it is, I'd orbit it to minimize the damage I'm taking. Then I'd set my drones on the frigates that are warp jamming me, and using the overview, pick out ships that have a low transversal for me to attack.
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The cruiser pilot knows that medium weapons struggle to properly hit the frigate –- and the frigate will have the speed advantage, and so can make itself very hard to track. But there are a couple of options. One is to deploy drones, which have a much easier time tracking and orbiting fast ships. Another is to minimize the transversal so that he can get some good hits off. As the frigate is approaching, he can try to keep at range to keep angular velocity low.
  
Now obviously I'll need a massive tank (T3 cruiser maybe?) to actually pull this off. Normally you have dedicated tanking ships who can take the beating, and separate damage ships because it's too hard to do everything yourself. But the point of this is twofold: For one thing, a lot of these maneuvers will fail in missions because there are just too many ships and well..have you seen the last scene in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid"? So just like in other games, pilot skill is going to shine more in small gang or solo fights. The second thing is that...missiles are really good for PvE. By staying at long range you eliminate a lot of turret dps being thrown at you.
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Even if the frigate successfully gets into a close orbit around the cruiser, it’s not over yet. If the cruiser has a decent velocity it can make the frigate's orbit elliptical: and when the frigate goes around the narrow ends of the oval its transversal will be lower than average. Changing directions frequently and sudden bursts of speed from a pulsed overheated propulsion module will also make the frigate adjust its orbit and possibly lower its traversal.
  
Okay, a couple more things about turrets and ship maneuvers. Turrets have the feature/bug that if the target is at a range of 0 m, they do no damage. So if you hug a turret ship close, you can mitigate a lot of damage that way.
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This works even better if the cruiser pilot times his direction/velocity changes well: for example, as the frigate is moving across the top of the cruiser pilot's screen to the left in his orbit, the cruiser pilot can make a quick right turn and this will make the frigate chase the cruiser –- with low angular velocity –- for a little while.
  
The last thing is bumping. Bumping is basically the act of throwing your ship directly at an opponent at high speed, to turn his ship around and mess up any aligning he’s trying to do. The faster and more massive your ship is, the better. Against a slowly-aligning ship, you may be able to keep him from entering warp indefinitely.
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==== A cruiser in a L4 mission ====
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Let's assume for fun you're in an autocannon ship and all the enemies are turret based as well. You might be suicidal running a L4 mission in a cruiser but this is just a thought experiment. First thing in a close range heavy fire situation: always keep moving. You'd want to have an afterburner on constantly. Next you'd have to figure out what was doing the most damage. It might not be a battleship -- a lot of that damage is reduced because of the size difference. It might be an elite cruiser. Whatever it is, you'd orbit it to minimize the damage. Then you'd set your drones on the frigates that are warp jamming or webbing you, and, using the overview, pick out ships that have a low angular velocity to attack.
  
=== "There Is No Knowledge That Is Not Power" ===
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Now obviously you'd want a massive tank (a [[HAC]] or a [[Strategic Cruisers|T3]], perhaps?) to actually pull this off. But the point of this is twofold: a lot of these maneuvers will fail in missions because there are just too many ships and well..have you seen the last scene in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid"? Just like in other games, pilot skill is going to shine more in small gang or solo fights.
  
Information is everything. Whether it’s a scout or a ship scanner on a logistics ship, any information you can gain will give you an advantage. And along with this is experience and judgment, which you can only pick up through practice.
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The second thing is that long range weapons are often really good for PvE. By staying at long range using missiles, beam lasers, railguns, artillery or drones, you avoid a lot of short-range turret-based DPS and the enemies present themselves in sub-waves separated by the different times they take to get close to you.
  
==== Know your modules ====
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=== Bumping ===
Know what they’re capable of and how to use them best. Even better, know your enemies modules and what they’re capable of. Use the Look At button to see if that guy has artilleries or autocannons. Figure out if they’re using an AB or MWD. Predict the enemy’s capabilities.
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Bumping is basically the act of throwing your ship directly at an opponent at high speed, to turn his ship around and mess up any aligning or movement he’s trying to do. (You're welcome to shout 'Ramming speed!' while doing this, provided you don't do so over Mumble . . .) The faster and more massive your ship is, the better: [[Machariel]]s and [[Stabber]]s with battleship-sized MWDs fitted (you'll probably want some Reactor Control Units to get enough grid) work nicely.
  
For example, the reason people bring stasis webifiers is to control the velocity in a fight like described above. It’s important to know what the range of a stasis web is so that you can plan to escape its effects if need be. It’s important to guess if that BS has smartbombs so you can orbit outside of 7.5 km. Etc, etc.
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The goal of bumping is to delay a slowly-aligning ship from entering warp (though after 3 minutes of attempting to align, the ship will automatically jump.  This timer can be reset by any effect that disrupts the ability to warp - i.e. scrams and bubbles). They can also, together with webs, delay a ship which is trying to burn back to a gate after jumping into a [[gatecamp]].
  
==== Thermodynamics ====
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== Use of modules ==
You should also know what the overheated range of a webifier is. Thermodynamics is one of the biggest “edges” you can have in a battle. It’s described nicely at this page, but basically you “overclock” your modules so they perform better but they take damage. http://wiki.eveonline.com/wiki/Heat.
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Knowing what your modules can do -- their ranges (cold and overheated), the amount of capacitor they're likely to use up, and their effects -- is very important. Even better, know your enemies modules and what they’re capable of. Use the Look At button to see if that guy has artilleries or autocannons. Figure out from their speed in your overview if they’re using an AB or MWD. Once you have some experience, you can often deduce how your opponents will behave if you know which kind of propulsion module and which weapons they're using.
  
==== Adapt ====
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=== Overheating modules ===
Make smart decisions about fitting for different circumstances. There are a lot of specialized tools, from remote reps to Ewar drones, that shine under the right conditions.
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The Thermodynamics skill lets you overheat modules, at the cost of damaging them. Usually this just gets you more oomph -- more DPS from guns, stronger jam strength on ECM jammers, &c -- but overheating webs, warp disruptors and warp scramblers increases their range, letting you catch the enemy earlier, or hold them at a longer range for a short while. You can read a detailed guide to overheating [[overheating|here]].
  
==== Running Hot Modules ====  
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=== Pre-activating modules ===  
 
If you are in the middle of locking someone, you can activate your modules and they’ll instantly turn on when you’ve completed the lock. This can make the difference between a tackled target and a free target.
 
If you are in the middle of locking someone, you can activate your modules and they’ll instantly turn on when you’ve completed the lock. This can make the difference between a tackled target and a free target.
  
==== Cycles ====
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[[Category:Getting Started]]
Some modules have activation cycles which you should be aware of. Keep track of how much energy they’re using and pulse them if necessary to keep as much capacitor as possible.
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[[Category:Game mechanics]]
 
 
==== There is no six ====
 
Someone once told me to watch my six, but I don’t even know what that is.
 
 
 
==== Weapon Grouping ====
 
Staggering vs. volleying guns: The advantage of firing 8 lasers at the target all at the same time, is that you do a large chunk of damage at once, which can break through a passive tank’s prime recharge rate (~30%). Also, if you think you may only have time for one shot, then by all means volley. However be aware that the downside is that your capacitor will take large hits at once, possibly hurting its recharge rate.
 
 
 
==== Self-destruct ====
 
Self-destruct starts a two-minute timer which you can cancel at any time. If you survive the two minutes, all your fitted modules and ship will be destroyed, and you’ll collect the insurance. It also denies your enemies a killmail.
 
 
 
Ejecting puts you in your pod and leaves your empty ship out in space to be boarded by your enemy if they have the sense to stop firing. With tech 3 ships, ejecting or self-destruct will save you the skill point loss from losing your ship.
 
  
But that will never happen now that you’ve read this far! I’ve pulled this information from a lot of different sources, and I hope it was helpful to do so. I also hope that this guide gave you a good sense of the importance of pilot skill in EVE, as well as a starting point from which you can find out more detailed information. Fly well o7
 
  
Kellath Eladrel
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==References==
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<references />

Latest revision as of 21:35, 11 August 2024

See also: Manual piloting


This is meant to be a compilation of the various things that separate capsuleers from monkeys. There is more to piloting a ship than locking a target and pressing a button, after all.

So, in a one on one fight between two equal ships, how do you get the upper hand and come away with the win? A similar question would be: in a swarm of fifteen tacklers barrelling towards an enemy fleet, how do you keep yourself alive when frigates are popping all around you?


Ship controls and tools

First things first, you should know what tools you have at your disposal.

Autopilot

The autopilot is capable of setting a route to one or more waypoint systems, and automatically flying your ship there. However, it warps to all stargates at 10km,[1] so travel time is significantly greater than manual flight. You will also be a sitting duck for ship-scanners, or gatecamps if you decide to go into low-sec space with autopilot on, so for the purposes of this guide, keep it off! Besides, the whole point of this guide is that you can pilot your ship better than the computer. What the autopilot is most useful for is route-plotting. Autopilot also continues controlling your capsule even if your ship is destroyed.

Tactical overlay

The tactical overlay button (to the left of your capacitor/health circle) puts range markers on your view of space (or, if you have it open, on your solar system map) so you can get a better sense of distance. If you mouse over one of your modules while in the tactical overlay, a circle will appear around your ship that shows the range of the module. (See the full tactical overlay article for more information.).

Directional and probe scanner

The directional scanner is a tool on every ship which can scan a sphere or a cone with an adjustable radius of 0.1-14 AU from you. You can manipulate the scanning range and the direction of the scan from 360º to 180º all the way down to 5º to figure out where something is.

Probe Scanner will scan the system (even if you don't have actual probes equipped) for Cosmic Signatures, Anomalies, Training Sites, Faction Warfare sites etc. Those are less advanced versions of the sites found with exploration. If you do have scan probes fitted, they will integrate to form a much more powerful scanner (see Probe scanning for more details).

The overview

The overview is the main source of information about what’s going on around you in space. If it’s set up properly, you should be able to play most of the game just by looking at overview information. I won’t go into the details of overview settings, but suffice to say they are very important. In this guide we’ll mostly be concerned with the overview's ability to display an object’s distance and velocity (including radial, transversal, and angular components). In addition, by looking at the ship icons in the overview, you can tell whether you have been locked onto (flashing yellow targeting box), or have been attacked (solid red box).

Throttle

The velocity control (where your velocity is displayed) lets you manually choose what velocity you want to travel at by clicking at speedometer gauge (a tip will appear when you hover your mouse). Shift - Space will stop your ship as long as you are not in warp. If your warp drive is active, but you are still aligning, Shift - Space will stop you and cancel the warp. If you use a custom throttle velocity, you'll have to set it again after you jump through a Stargate, since it resets to full speed again.

Double-click (manual piloting)

Double clicking in space sends your ship in the direction you clicked. If you imagine, from the perspective of the camera, a vector shooting out from the middle of the screen, the horizontal and vertical angles are determined by where you click on the screen, and the depth component is determined by which way the camera is facing.

Board ship

If you are in a capsule and there is an empty ship in space, you can click the Board Ship button to take control of the vessel.

Approach

The approach button simply aligns your ship in the direction of the selected object and increases your velocity to the velocity you’ve set in the throttle. This maximizes your radial velocity and minimizes your transversal velocity. This is the same as the “align to” command, but “align to” is used for objects at warp distances, and approach used for objects at subwarp distances (less than 150 km).

Orbit

The orbit button tries to put your ship in a circular orbit around the selected object. The value can be set by right clicking and manually entering a default orbit distance, or by right-clicking the object in the overview and choosing from some preset distances. You can also orbit an object at your current range from it. Orbiting maximizes your transversal and angular velocities, and minimizes your radial velocity. You can orbit an object if it is on grid with you.

Your ship’s agility will determine your orbit speed: the better your agility (lower agility modifier), the closer your orbit speed will be to your maximum linear velocity. Depending on your agility and the relative speeds of you and the target, your orbit may drop from circular to elliptical, or even to the point where you can’t maintain a stable orbit if the other object is moving too fast.

Keep at range

This draws a line between your ship and the selected object, and adjusts your ship velocity to move you backward or forward along that line in order to maintain the selected range. Like orbit, the default value can be set by right clicking the icon, or you can choose from presets in the right-click menu. Keeping something at range will minimize your radial, transversal, and angular velocities.

Warp

Starts the process of warping to the selected object greater than 150 km away. To warp to something it must be an object in space, a bookmark, or a ship in your fleet. You can adjust how far you will land from your target when you come out of warp, from 0 to 100 km. Again the default value on the button can be changed by right-clicking and presets can be found in the right-click menu. For example, warping to something 150 km away within 100 km will move you inline toward the object 50 km.

When you press the warp button, first you have to align to the target. There are two steps to aligning which happen at the same time:

  • lining up the target with your ship’s movement direction within 5º
  • increasing ship velocity to 75% of its maximum

Your ship will not warp until it meets both of these criteria.

How long this process takes depends on your ship's agility and acceleration. Once you are aligned you will see your normal engines cut out, your warp engine will turn on and you will no longer be able to stop the ship until the warp bubble collapses. Until your warp engine actually turns on, you can still be locked, tackled, bumped and fired upon as normal.

Jump

Pretty self-explanatory, you jump through the stargate if you are within 2,500 m. In order to automatically jump once you exit the warp you can press the button while in warp. Alternatively, instead of clicking Warp you click Jump in the first place; this will initiate warp automatically if the gate is in warp distance and jump on contact.

Look at

This changes your camera’s anchor point from your ship to the selected object. You can use this to see where, if anywhere, another ship is aligning, and what kind of weapons it has equipped. Unfortunately no all weapons show up, e.g. smartbombs (though the absence of turrets on a turret battleship is a good sign of smartbombs).

Radial Menu

If you click and hold on an object in space or an element in a window, a Radial Menu will appear. Most of the actions discribed above will be available through the Radial Menu. This can be helpful in battle where you can, for example, orbit a ship by clicking on it in space.

General navigation

Warping and alignment

Warping is critically important for moving around space, and manual piloting of your ship has a big impact on how well the warp drive will work, meaning how quickly you can enter warp.

When you press the warp button, several things happen. Your ship begins to align to the warp-to point. You lose a certain amount of energy from your capacitor based on skills and the distance of the jump (if you cancel the warp at this stage the energy is still lost). Once you are aligned, you warp to your destination, accelerating up to, and then decelerating down from, your ship’s warp speed.

Pods align instantly, and shuttles nearly so (2 seconds). So if you are paying attention, and have no lag, it is nearly impossible for you to be locked before you warp in these vessels (especially because their signature radius, a ship parameter affecting the attempted locking time, is of the smallest). Frigates have a typical align time of 3-5 s, cruisers might be more like 7-9 s, and battleships, industrials, and larger ships can take 20, 30, or more seconds to align for warp.

Your align time depends on your mass. Higher mass makes it harder to accelerate, decelerate, and turn the ship. Every ship has an agility modifier, which you multiply with the mass to get an “effective mass” that determines how agile your ship really is. Modules like nanofibers or inertial stabilizers reduce your agility modifier and therefore reduce your align time. In-game Fitting window or external tools such as PYFA can give you an approximate align time for your ship loadout.

So where does piloting come in? Well, for one thing you can pre-align your ship to a target so that you enter warp instantly, even in a massive ship. You need to move toward your warp destination and set your speed at or above 75% of your ship's max speed. Aligning and then stopping your ship does nothing. The direction your ship is facing does not matter. The game only cares about the direction your ship is moving. From a stop, it will accelerate in any direction at the same speed whether that direction is in front or behind the ship. Once aligned, if you need to warp out (run away), you will then warp instantly since the pre-reqs of 75% of your max speed and moving within 5° of the target direction will already be met. If you are in a frigate, you tend to orbit a lot and pre-aligning might not be practical. But in a larger ship in a dangerous situation, pre-aligning might save your hull. Some people will tell you to always be pre-aligned in combat.

Warp trick when undocking

If you come out of a station in an industrial and align to something 90° away, you will have an agonizing wait while you make the turn at max velocity. This is because there are 2 ways that your ship can change speed (besides bumping). One is from the ships engines accelerating it in the direction it is aligning. This can be boosted by an Afterburner or MWD. The other is friction (or a sort of warp core drag according to EVE Lore[2]) that slows it down when you hit stop or reduce your speed. The problem is the amount of friction increases with speed so it slows quickly at high speeds but as you slow down the rate decreases. The last bit takes a very long time to stop since friction is very low at those speeds.

You just came out of the station and are moving at high speed. Now you align to something 90° away. 100% of the engine's power starts accelerating the ship in the direction of the align point and after your normal align time your ship is now moving toward the warp destination near the appropriate speed. But the ship is also still drifting in the original direction. This means that the ship is actually moving at an angle and will not align until friction slows the ship from moving in the original direction. That process can take a long time. There are two ways to fix this:

  1. If you are in a ship that aligns quickly (like a shuttle) and there are hostiles on grid, you can hit stop ship. Note, when you have just undocked from a station, a Location Change Timer is triggered that makes you invulnerable for 30 seconds or until you move. As long as you do not do anything else but hit the stop ship button, it will not be possible target you for the hostiles for 30 seconds. Once the ship comes to a halt, warp out. This ends up taking about the same amount of time as simply aligning but it minimizes the time that you are targetable.
  2. The second way is faster. Rather than letting friction slow you down, you can double click toward the station (which makes you targetable) to let the engines stop you, then warp out once you are near zero velocity. A slightly faster way is to double click toward the station but at an angle toward the align point then warping when the ship stops moving away from the station. This method of using your engines to slow down then turning can be used for turning quickly in combat as well.

The bottom line is that you should always be aware of how long it will take you to get to the safety of warp. Whether you’re hauling trade goods or at half structure in the middle of an enemy fleet, good warp awareness can come in really handy.

Speed awareness in alignment

Another point to remember is that your required speed to align is always 75% of your ship's max velocity. Being webbed can sometimes help you get into warp faster, since it lowers your max velocity -- if you're piloting a freighter you can speed travel up by bringing a friend (within your corp, so they don't get CONCORDed) along to web you. This is also why tacklers are taught to 'point, then web'.

Using a propulsion module (usually a MWD) can reduce your align time if it is normally more than the cycle time of the module (this can be the case, for example, with an MWD on the Orca). By pulsing the module once, the aim is to get past your normal align speed, even though your align speed with the module active is much higher. Once the cycle ends, your max speed (and the required align speed) will drop back down to normal and you should warp soon after.

When you combine MWD use with a protoype/covops cloak, then you can use the MWD+cloak trick to align while cloaked, providing much better security in some situations.

“Warp within” and bookmarks

Where you come out of warp is critical. As discussed above, autopilot is bad because you come out of warp so far from the gate that you cannot jump immediately. If you warp to 0 km on a gate, you’ll land within jump range, which is crucial if you want to avoid confrontation.

Likewise if you’re warping to a hostile gate, you’ll be at a decisive advantage if you drop out of warp at your optimal range. The easiest way to do this is by warping within X km, where X is your optimal range. Remember you can set X to anything between 0 and 100 km by right-clicking on the warp icon. If you have bookmarks around the gate you have even more options for recon, or for warping past the gate, or somewhere unexpected.

One last thing about warp within: if you warp to a cloaked ship in your own fleet, never warp to 0 because that will break their cloak and leave them vulnerable. Warp to no closer than 5 km.

In-combat navigation

Manual piloting and gunnery

The second major topic has to do with tracking mechanics. Damage from both turrets and missiles is affected by how the ships are moving. You can read about the details of tracking here; and you can read about the details of missile damage here.

A tutorial with helpful animations can be found on the EVE Online official web site Combat Mechanics page [3].

A boiled down summary:

  • the higher your angular velocity, the harder you are to hit with turrets.
  • the higher your absolute velocity, the less damage you take from missiles.
  • the smaller your signature radius, the harder you are to hit with turrets (provided you move) and the less damage you take from missiles

So, given these facts how can you sway a fight in your favor? Well first you have to assess the situation and decide what angle you want to take. Are you better at offence or defence? The relevant numbers are the time it will take you to beat your opponent’s tank versus the time it will take him to break your tank. Your only goal is to make that first time less than the second time, which you can do through increasing your applied DPS, or increasing your survivability.

Engagement examples

The following examples will provide a practical insight:

Two identical frigates: artillery vs autocannon

The pilot using artillery knows that artillery does less damage per second (DPS) than autocannon. But if he can maintain a range of 20 km, he knows that he can damage his opponent while his opponent's autocannon can't damage him: the artillery will win in the end. So he can set his orbit to 20 km, or if he wants to do more damage, he can keep him at a 20 km range so that the angular velocity goes down and the artillery track more easily.

The autocannon pilot knows he has to get up close in order to do any damage. Once he's there, if he goes into orbit he’ll have maximized his angular velocity and will probably avoid all the fire from the slow-tracking artillery, while applying lots of DPS from his fast-tracking autocannon.

You might notice that in this situation, whoever has the higher speed and agility is going to have a decisive advantage: they will control the range of the fight so their guns are doing maximum damage, and they will be able to set an orbit around the other ship such that they will take minimum damage.

If you are the slower ship in this situation, it’s an uphill battle but it’s not over. Taking another example:

A frigate vs a cruiser

The frigate pilot knows that he won’t last long if he lets the cruiser's medium guns track him with low angular velocity. But he also knows that his defense will be very high if he can get under the cruiser's guns by establishing a close orbit.

Getting in close without getting hit is a problem though. The best technique for frigate pilots to do this is to 'spiral in' on the target rather than simply approaching directly.

The cruiser pilot knows that medium weapons struggle to properly hit the frigate –- and the frigate will have the speed advantage, and so can make itself very hard to track. But there are a couple of options. One is to deploy drones, which have a much easier time tracking and orbiting fast ships. Another is to minimize the transversal so that he can get some good hits off. As the frigate is approaching, he can try to keep at range to keep angular velocity low.

Even if the frigate successfully gets into a close orbit around the cruiser, it’s not over yet. If the cruiser has a decent velocity it can make the frigate's orbit elliptical: and when the frigate goes around the narrow ends of the oval its transversal will be lower than average. Changing directions frequently and sudden bursts of speed from a pulsed overheated propulsion module will also make the frigate adjust its orbit and possibly lower its traversal.

This works even better if the cruiser pilot times his direction/velocity changes well: for example, as the frigate is moving across the top of the cruiser pilot's screen to the left in his orbit, the cruiser pilot can make a quick right turn and this will make the frigate chase the cruiser –- with low angular velocity –- for a little while.

A cruiser in a L4 mission

Let's assume for fun you're in an autocannon ship and all the enemies are turret based as well. You might be suicidal running a L4 mission in a cruiser but this is just a thought experiment. First thing in a close range heavy fire situation: always keep moving. You'd want to have an afterburner on constantly. Next you'd have to figure out what was doing the most damage. It might not be a battleship -- a lot of that damage is reduced because of the size difference. It might be an elite cruiser. Whatever it is, you'd orbit it to minimize the damage. Then you'd set your drones on the frigates that are warp jamming or webbing you, and, using the overview, pick out ships that have a low angular velocity to attack.

Now obviously you'd want a massive tank (a HAC or a T3, perhaps?) to actually pull this off. But the point of this is twofold: a lot of these maneuvers will fail in missions because there are just too many ships and well..have you seen the last scene in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid"? Just like in other games, pilot skill is going to shine more in small gang or solo fights.

The second thing is that long range weapons are often really good for PvE. By staying at long range using missiles, beam lasers, railguns, artillery or drones, you avoid a lot of short-range turret-based DPS and the enemies present themselves in sub-waves separated by the different times they take to get close to you.

Bumping

Bumping is basically the act of throwing your ship directly at an opponent at high speed, to turn his ship around and mess up any aligning or movement he’s trying to do. (You're welcome to shout 'Ramming speed!' while doing this, provided you don't do so over Mumble . . .) The faster and more massive your ship is, the better: Machariels and Stabbers with battleship-sized MWDs fitted (you'll probably want some Reactor Control Units to get enough grid) work nicely.

The goal of bumping is to delay a slowly-aligning ship from entering warp (though after 3 minutes of attempting to align, the ship will automatically jump. This timer can be reset by any effect that disrupts the ability to warp - i.e. scrams and bubbles). They can also, together with webs, delay a ship which is trying to burn back to a gate after jumping into a gatecamp.

Use of modules

Knowing what your modules can do -- their ranges (cold and overheated), the amount of capacitor they're likely to use up, and their effects -- is very important. Even better, know your enemies modules and what they’re capable of. Use the Look At button to see if that guy has artilleries or autocannons. Figure out from their speed in your overview if they’re using an AB or MWD. Once you have some experience, you can often deduce how your opponents will behave if you know which kind of propulsion module and which weapons they're using.

Overheating modules

The Thermodynamics skill lets you overheat modules, at the cost of damaging them. Usually this just gets you more oomph -- more DPS from guns, stronger jam strength on ECM jammers, &c -- but overheating webs, warp disruptors and warp scramblers increases their range, letting you catch the enemy earlier, or hold them at a longer range for a short while. You can read a detailed guide to overheating here.

Pre-activating modules

If you are in the middle of locking someone, you can activate your modules and they’ll instantly turn on when you’ve completed the lock. This can make the difference between a tackled target and a free target.


References