Advanced piloting techniques: Difference between revisions

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

I’ve split this reference into 3 sections: Capsule Controls, Flying Manually, and Knowledge is Power.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 try a neat flash-based guide [http://www.hostile.dk/files/eve/eve-tracking101.swf here]; and you can read about the details of missile damage [[Missile_Launchers#Damage|here]]. A boiled down summary:

* 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 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:

Let’s say I’m the artillery pilot. I know that artillery do less damage per second (DPS) than autocannon. 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.

http://www.eve-tribune.com/index.php?no=2_40&page=6

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 [[Overloading|here]].

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.

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.

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.

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 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.