Advanced piloting techniques: Difference between revisions

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

The autopilot is capable of setting a route to one or more waypoint systems, and automatically flying your ship there. However it warps to all stargates at 15km, so travel time is significantly greater than manual flight. You will also be a sitting duck for ship-scanners, or gatecamps if you decide to go into low-sec space with autopilot on, so for the purposes of this guide, keep it off! Besides, the whole point of this guide is that you can pilot your ship better than the computer. What the autopilot is most useful for is route-plotting.

The tactical overlay button (above the Reset Camera button in the buttons to the left of your capacitor/health circle) puts range markers on your view of space (or, if you have it open, on your solar system map) so you can get a better sense of distance. If you mouse over one of your modules while in the tactical overlay, a bubble will appear around your ship that shows the range of the module. (See this guide for more information: [[Getting the Visual: Optimal Range and Falloff]]).

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 [[Scanning_%26_Probing|Scanning & Probing]] for more details).

The directional scanner is a tool on every ship which can scan a sphere with a radius of around 14 AU around you. You can manipulate the scanning range and the direction of the scan from 360º to 180º all the way down to 5º to figure out where something is. There are class recordings and a video on this subject in the [http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Eve_University_Class_Library archive], and a [[Directional Scanner Guide|detailed guide]] on this wiki.

The overview is the main source of information about what’s going on around you in space. If it’s set up properly, you should be able to play most of the game just by looking at overview information. I won’t go into [[Overview_Guide|the details]] of overview settings, but suffice to say they are ''very'' important. In this guide we’ll mostly be concerned with the overview's ability to display an object’s distance and velocity (including radial, transversal, and angular components). In addition, by looking at the ship icons in the overview, you can tell whether you have been locked onto (flashing yellow targeting box), or have been attacked (solid red box).

The velocity control (where your velocity is displayed) lets you manually choose what velocity you want to travel at, up to your max velocity. Ctrl-space will stop your ship as long as you are not in warp. If your warp drive is active, but you are still aligning, ctrl-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.

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).

The orbit button tries to put your ship in a circular orbit around the selected object. The value can be set by right clicking and manually entering a default orbit distance, or by right-clicking the object in the overview and choosing from some preset distances. You can also orbit an object at your current range from it. Orbiting maximizes your transversal and angular velocities, and minimizes your radial velocity. You can orbit an object if it is no more than 150 km from you.

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.

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.

Starts the process of warping to the selected object greater than 150 km away. To warp to something it must be an object in space, a bookmark, or a ship in your fleet. You can adjust how far you will land from your target when you come out of warp, from 0 to 100 km. Again the default value on the button can be changed by right-clicking and presets can be found in the right-click menu. For example, warping to something 150 km away within 100 km will move you inline toward the object 50 km.

How long this process takes depends on your ship's agility and acceleration. Once you are aligned you will see your normal engines cut out, your warp engine will turn on and you will no longer be able to stop the ship until the warp bubble collapses. Until your warp engine actually turns on, you can still be locked, tackled, bumped (see below) and fired upon as normal.

Pretty self-explanatory, you jump through the stargate if you are within 2500 m. In order to jump instantly you can spam the button starting half a second before you drop out of warp (you can see your engines slowing down). You may also want to set a keyboard shortcut to turn the autopilot on midwarp, which will then jump instantly for you if you are following a route. If you do that, be sure you disable the autopilot immediately after the jump.

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).