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. To really understand tracking I recommend the official guide at http://www.hostile.dk/files/eve/eve-tracking101.swf. Some basics:

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 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.

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

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.