User talk:Turin Williams

DST and the cloak trick

Since DSTs, without agility mods, can't reach the required speed to enter in warp instantly after decloaking in one mwd cycle, while staying cloaked for 100% of cycle, they trick can be splitted into 4 parts:

1. after clicking align and before clicking cloak
   
2. between clicking cloak and mwd
   
3. part of the mwd cycle while cloaked
   
4. between decloaking and the end of the mwd cycle.
   

In case of DST's, the 3rd part alone can't provide enough acceleration to reach the required speed. Trick works because other parts are also giving some acceleration. Here is a very simplified example just to show the basic principle (numbers is not real and just for example):
Let's assume we have a pilot with acceleration control IV, all other skills at V and 50MN meta mwd, who flies a Bustard with no agility mods. The Bustard will have 125m/s max speed, this means he needs to reach 93,75m/s speed to enter in warp.
With active cloak and mwd, this Bustard will reach the required speed in 11.53 seconds, this means that he will not be able to enter in warp after only one mwd cycle while staying cloaked for the full time. For simplicity, let's assume that at the end of the cycle, the ship will gain 70m/s (we will need this number later). But this what happens in practice:

1. The Bustard pilot clicking align, waiting half of a second, and then activating the cloak. During this half of a second, the ship gains, for example, 10m/s.
   
2. The ship already has 10m/s, and since pilot has bad shortcuts, he activates mwd after another half of a second, this phase will give additional 5m/s, resulting in 15m/s total speed
   
3. Main acceleration under the cloak. If the pilot would wait till the end of the cycle, instead of having 70m/s at the end, he would have 85m/s, thanks to the first two parts. But it is still not enough. So instead of waiting to the end, the pilot decloaks just before 9 second of the cycle.
   
4. Ship is decloaked, mwd has one more second of the cycle. And since there is no penalty from the cloak, the mwd will give a bigger boost, for example, 20m/s second, which will give more than enough speed to enter in warp at the end of the cycle
   

And here is a problem, 1st, 2nd and 4rd parts are related to each other, and by changing 1st and 2nd part, the critical point where the player needs to decloak is also changing. For example, if the player will shorten 1st and 2nd part, they will provide less acceleration, and as a result, the player will need to decloak sooner to compensate for the lack of it.
As a result of this, 10 players who will try to do the trick, using the same pc's, in the same room, in the same way, might receive different results. Add differences in ping, fps, human reaction, character agility skills, and things will become much worse, especially with roulette with server ticks (for example, if the player will click the cloak with the same delay after clicking align every time, it still can be processed by the server in +- one tick, if not two). Sure this looks like a problem only in theory, since in practice players will intuitively pick timings which works for them, and that's why the trick always works for most players. But still, there will be some players who may pick timing which works for them everyday, but than they might jump into the gate camp, and since they stressed, click cloak and mwd just a bit earlier than usual, and combined with bad luck with the server ticks, may end slowboating. One of the ways to avoid this, is to simply decloak sooner, but this has its own problems. Server ticks magic, combined with subjectivity in human feelings of time, may result in staying decloaked on grid for 2, and theoretically even for 3, server ticks (ticks, not seconds, which is important). Combined with mwd bloom, it may result in being catched.

Most players may even never notice this, but for some small number of players, it may become a noticeable thing, especially if they used to keep 1st and 2nd delays at bare minimum, and/or have bad agility skills/a bit unstable ping.