Tracking, Turrets and Transversal Velocity

When I first started playing EvE, I was totally confused by terms like tracking speed and transversal velocity. I was even more confused when it became apparent that even though I could fly a battleship I would barely be able to hit a frigate, it just didn't figure in the bigger is better logic.

While all well and good, I soon found that bigger doesn't equal better in EvE and this is one of it's most equalising qualities in the “long time Eve player must be better than the raw newbie” argument. In other words, it trashes that argument and ensures there is a place for frigate pilots in the EvE universe.

Now that I've got that rant out of my system (thank you!) I'll start by describing what I am going to do here. I'm not going to copy from the EvE guide but I am going to paraphrase quite a bit. The reason I'm going to do that is because I feel it's a bit dry and maybe a bit too technical for a new player fresh out of the tutorial. I'll emphasise the basics which will be the building blocks you can add to as you need.

Firstly and foremost, you have to understand that when it all boils down to it, hitting a target with your guns is based on chance.

To make the chance more in your favour you need to know the following stuff:

Range penalty
Turrets optimal range.
Turrets falloff range.

Signature resolution matching
Targets signature resolution.
Turrets signature radius.

Tracking speed and velocity
Targets transversal velocity
Turrets tracking speed and distance to the target.

I bet you thought it was just pressing f1-f8 didn't you? Lol, well it is really but you may as well know that under the hood all sorts of stuff is going on and if you get some of it to go in your favour then you can shoot your enemies in the face.

Range Penalty
Look at the attributes of a gun, and look at two stats in particular:

Optimal range.
Accuracy Falloff.

For sake of example, we'll give them values:

Optimal range =15km
Accuracy Falloff = 5km

Anywhere in Optimal Range, no range penalty is applied so your chance to hit as far as range is concerned is 100%. So 0-15km, you will always hit. In a perfect world.

If your target is over 15km away and under 20km away (Optimal range + Accuracy Falloff = 20km) then a sliding scale of Range Penalty applies starting at 0% at the 15km mark rising to 50% at 20km.

So basically, at 20km you now have 50% less chance of hitting the target. That's quite a penalty to consider.
We're not done yet. Let's say that the enemy is flying away (or you are!) and weapons are still blazing away. You are now between 20km and approaching 25km away.

This is Optimal range + Accuracy Falloff + Accuracy Falloff = 25km

Another 50% sliding scale applies to that last 5km with the result that at 25km away, you have NO CHANCE to hit the target at all.

You have to also bear in mind that your ammo affects the range of your guns.

As a very blunt rule, Anti-Matter shortens the range but increases damage at that short range, Iron is longer range but fairly poor damage with other ammunition types fitting in between. Check the range penalty attribute of the ammo for details.

That's if we look at range only of course. Let's now look at:

Signature Radius and Signature Resolution.

Typical Signature Resolution of the Turrets (the size of target the turret is best suited for)
(Do not confuse with charge size! e.g. 125mm rail gun)
Large Turrets = 400m
Medium Turrets = 125m
Small Turrets = 40m

Typical Signature Radius for the enemy ship (how big it looks to turrets)
Battleships = 400m
Cruisers = 125m
Frigates = 40m

The closer the match, the better the chance to hit.
What tends not to work is a battleship with large turrets firing on a frigate. A lot of shots will simply miss.

Comfortable with that so far? Cool.

Tracking Speed.
Each turret has a tracking speed. The faster the tracking speed means it can track faster targets erm, faster.

If you have a slow turret tracking a fast target that's just a situation full of fail and not much will happen no matter how often you bash the keyboard. Sorry, that's personal experience again...lol

So what we need to know really is what is fast, what is medium and what is slow.

Eve uses some measurements that some of us probably have never used outside of a maths class so lets get used to it again. Radians per second! Say it again, Radians per second.

Fast turret 0.2 rads per sec
Medium turret 0.1 rads per sec
Slow turret 0.066 rads per sec

So now we know that the goal is to be at a range from the target that has a good chance to hit and also the turret needs to be able to track the target effectively.

What about Transversal Velocity?

Ok well low transversal velocity is obtained in the following examples:
Two ships approaching
The ships fly away from each other
One ship chases another
Both ships fly in the same direction at the same speed.

All of the above give a low transversal velocity. (You can add that columns to your overview settings too by the way.)

A high transversal velocity is obtained when:
One ship stands still and the other orbits
One ship approaches or leaves at a 90 degree angle.

For a pretty graphical version done by the lovely people at CCP follow the related link.