Turret damage: Difference between revisions

All the data is based on facts, drawn from the mathematical equations working behind the scene every time someone pulls a trigger. Since not everyone is fond of math, the article will be divided into two sections. The first part is more like a summary that describes all the concepts and how they work. The second part is the same thing all over again, but more theoretical and with math.

To understand how turret damage is generated you will need to understand a number of concepts and how they interconnect. Some of them are visible under the attributes tab when you click for info on your guns, but not all. Especially the concepts falloff and tracking are easy to misunderstand, so be extra careful when reading those.

A turret always have a 0-100 percent chance to hit a target. The hit chance start at 100% but factors that reduce the hit chance can lower this. Those factors are basically the range to the target and the targets movement, with a few modifications. When the hit chance has been calculated, the EVE server will "roll a dice" for each turret to see if it hits or misses the target. 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 of your opponant.

In the 0-100 percent hit chance interval, there is a 1% chance of doing a perfect hit. It is that first percent unit in the entire interval. Think of it as rolling a 1D100 (a dice with a onehundred sides), if it lands on a 1, you get a perfect hit regardless of the hit chance. This actually means that if your hit chance is a measly two percent, half of your hits will be perfect. If your hit chance is less than one percent, you must first get that hit, before it can become a perfect one. A perfect hit will always do exactly 300% of your ideal average damage (tiny intentional error, it is base damage).

This can be a tricky concept. It describes how fast something passes by something else. It is measured in the unit rad/second, where one rad is equal to a 57 degree angle. Your in game 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 turrets 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 manouvers (like keep at range) or modules (turning webs on and off can really mess with orbiting ranges) 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.

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, where the given number (plus optimal) represents the distance at which you are down to a 50% hit chance. At 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 with luck even at three times your falloff range.

Few players would be able to spot a -10.6% loss in DPS. In fact, this is so small that the normal random distribution sort of drowns this out. Based on this. It is safe to say that you can use 1/3 of your falloff or tracking without any loss of noticeable performance. It is a sweet spot if you will, and a good value to remember for those who often engage targets out in falloff. You still have fairly good performance out to 1/2 (half) your falloff or tracking, but beyond that things quickly get worse.

This is not as hard as it sounds, there is a rather neat way to quickly estimate what kind of tracking you really have against smaller or bigger targets. First you need to know the tracking value of your guns, the second thing is the Turret Signature Resolution of your guns, and the third is the size of your target. Guns always come in the resolution of 40m (small), 125m (medium) and 400m (large), so that is straightforward. Now you calculate the ratio between the target size and your gun size (target size divided by gun size), then multiply that ratio with the tracking value of your turrets and you will have the value of your true tracking against a target of that particular size.

Example 1: A battleship (400m resolution on guns) fires on a frigate (40m radius). Target size divided by gun size gives us 40m / 400m = 0.1, or 10%. So large guns can only use one tenth of their listed tracking against an average sized frigate.

Example 2: An Incursus (44m size) and a Rifter (35m size) both uses small guns (40m resolution) (also assumed that both are armor tanked, since shield tanks will increase size). That means that the incursus is (44m / 40m = 1.1 or 110%) 10% easier to track than the listed tracking value on small guns. While the rifter is (35m / 40m = 0.875 or 87.5%) 12.5% harder to track than the listed tracking value on small guns.

Example 3: An Incursion Machariel with three T2 Tracking Enhancers and T2 large autocannons have a tracking value of 0.067rad/sec. While shooting at a Sansha frigate (49m size), its effective tracking value is only 49m / 400m = 0.1225 or 12% of the stated one, 0.067rad/sec x 0.1225 = 0.0082rad/sec. A typical Sansha frigate orbits at 14km at roughly 500m/s, that corresponds to an angular velocity of 500m/s / 14000m = 0.036rad/sec. Although this is half of the listed tracking value, it is actually over 4 times higher than the Machariels effective tracking value against such a small target, so it becomes nearly impossible to hit it unless it can be webbed.

Let's start by taking a look at the variables inside the equation. Most of these variables are actually determined before you even undock. From things like your choice of ship, your skill points and your fitting. There are only two that depend on you as a player (how you fly your ship), those are called 'Transversal Speed' and 'Range To Target'. This is the first important insight: How you fly will affect the damage you do.

[[File:HitChanceVsFalloff.JPG|500px|thumb|right|Click to enlarge]]

[[File:HitChanceVsRelativeDPS.JPG|500px|thumb|right|Click to enlarge]]

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