Advanced piloting techniques: Difference between revisions

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

=== Autopilot ===

=== Tactical overlay ===

=== Directional and system scanner ===

The system scanner will scan the system for Cosmic Signatures, which are less advanced versions of the actual sites found with exploration. If you have scan probes fitted, they will integrate to form a much more powerful system scanner (see [[Probe scanning]] for more details).

=== 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. {{button|Ctrl}} - {{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|ctrl}} - {{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.

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.

=== 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 ===

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 ===

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:  

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

=== Jump ===

=== 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 missile launchers don’t show up, nor do smartbombs (though the absence of turrets on a turret battleship is a good sign of smartbombs).

== Flying Manually For Fun and Profit ==

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 above. 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 (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.

==== Speed and Alignment tricks ====

Another point to remember is that your required speed to align is always 75% of your ''current'' 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.

===  “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.

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 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:

==== 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.

==== 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.

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.

==== 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.

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 ===

== Modules ==

=== Thermodynamics ===

=== Pre-activating Modules ===  

==References==