Victory in Combat - 1st October

ISD Sessions

01/10/2011 Survival and Victory in Combat

This is a copy of the log, from an ISD session on surviving in combat. The expert was ISD IonCharge

The Log

ISD IonCharge > Greetings pilots, and thanks for coming
ISD IonCharge > Today's topic is Survival and Victory in Combat
ISD IonCharge > This seminar will be split into two sections - the 'on paper' mechanics of combat, such as fitting your ship to tank and deal damage, and the 'in space' mechanics of combat, such as positioning properly to ensure good accuracy of turrets
ISD IonCharge > This talk will be mostly pvp-focused, however the same applies to pve, and where it does not it will be specifically mentioned
ISD IonCharge > To win a fight, that is, to destroy your opponent and come away with your ship intact (if on fire), you must deal sufficient damage to deplete their HP bars, while at the same time keeping yourself alive
ISD IonCharge > Keeping yourself alive can be done in any number of ways, most of which would be classed as 'tanking'
ISD IonCharge > Tanking generally means absorbing and mitigating incoming damage such that our ship remains alive
ISD IonCharge > Most ships tend to tank using either armor or shield (in some cases both), which are the two primary HP bars you want to be focused on; tanking hull is not recommended as hull repairers are inefficient and increasing hull resistances has limited options
ISD IonCharge > While it might seem intuitive that each race will favour one kind of tank or another, this is not the case, especially not when it comes to pvp. Rather, tank type is determined more frequently by class of ship, and by the type of fleet the ship is joini
ISD IonCharge > joining
ISD IonCharge > For example, while Amarr are typically known to tank armour, a ship such as the Harbinger can be fitted with a minor shield buffer, which gives it great mobility and plenty of low slots to deal additional damage
ISD Tipene > Ion, Grevious has a question, what about hull tanking ships?
ISD IonCharge > Armor tanking is often used for less-mobile fleets, such as when defending an objective, as fitting armor plates generally reduces your maneuverability; shield tanks are favoured by faster, more agile ships, so tend to be used on mobile operations
ISD IonCharge > Hull tanking may be used in specific situations, especially when you want to 'bait' a fight - fit a battleship with a damage control and 7 reinforced bulkheads, and it will have HP equivalent to a full shield/armor buffer
ISD IonCharge > However, at the same time, its shield and armor will deplete very quickly under fire, which can lead attackers to carelessly throw themselves at it (bloodlust can cloud judgement) at which point the rest of your fleet will enter suitable ranges and
ISD IonCharge > attack them while their attention is diverted; i.e. you can use less-tanked ships which are outputting higher damage because they're not being shot
ISD IonCharge > As for more 'standard' shield and armor tanking, generally you will either fit a "buffer tank" or an "active tank" (and with shields, also a passive tank, but that comes under active for the moment)
ISD IonCharge > Buffer tanks are intended to increase your HP with little regard for repairing damgae taken, simply to outlast your opponent in a fight
ISD IonCharge > Active (or passive shield) tanks try to heal through any incoming damage, keeping your HP bars as full as possible while being shot
ISD Athechu > Ion, Athina has a question, What happens when their attention comes to you?
ISD Athechu > Assuming you are the one in a less tanked ship
ISD IonCharge > If you are in one of the less-tanked ships, you will generally also be more mobile - when you see the enemy group targeting you, you can disengage and move out of their way - however if they have been focusing on a heavily-tanked bait ship, they will
ISD IonCharge > already have sustained significant casualties, so you can generally clear up the field pretty easily at that point
ISD IonCharge > In PvE combat, generally active/passive tanks are favoured, as you will be taking a more or less fixed (i.e., known) amount of damage, so can set your ship to be able to heal sufficiently through it; in pvp, often buffer tanks are used, because
ISD IonCharge > an active tank would not be able to heal the damage of 10 ships shooting at you, and at that point, you would have a much shorter life span; unless it is a very small scale engagement
ISD IonCharge > Here is a numerical example:
ISD IonCharge > Let's say you are flying a battleship which can be fitted to either have 150,000 HP, or 50,000 HP and 1000 HP/second healing
ISD IonCharge > You enter a fight where the enemy fleet is putting out 10,000 damage per second
ISD IonCharge > With the buffer tank, this gives you 150 seconds to live
ISD IonCharge > 15 seconds*
ISD Athechu > Ion, achurakitten Has a question: my experience of big fleet fights is generally unless you have large amounts of rr ...when targetted its best to warp out and back as 300 people shooting one ships tends to end badly for the target
ISD IonCharge > With the active tank, you get 5 seconds to live, over which time you'll have healed 5000 Hp, or another 0.5 seconds
ISD IonCharge > So, in this case a buffer tank is significantly more useful
ISD IonCharge > I'll come to the question in a second
ISD IonCharge > If on the other hand you are in a small scale fight where the other ship is also shooting you for 1000 dps, you can entirely mitigate their damage with an active tank
ISD IonCharge > basically, the more people which are shooting you, the better a buffer over active tank becomes - as damage taken scales up, it becomes less appealing to fit an active tank
ISD Tipene > Jez J wants a little bit of an explanation of some of the terms you are using if you could
ISD Tipene > Such as buffer, active passive etc
ISD IonCharge > [42:02] ISD IonCharge > Buffer tanks are intended to increase your HP with little regard for repairing damgae taken, simply to outlast your opponent in a fight
ISD IonCharge > [42:22] ISD IonCharge > Active (or passive shield) tanks try to heal through any incoming damage, keeping your HP bars as full as possible while being shot
ISD IonCharge > As for the above question
ISD IonCharge > If you are in a large fleet fight, that is, let's say there are several hundred ships on each side
ISD IonCharge > Generally what will happen is the FC (fleet commander) will call 3 targets - primary, secondary and tertiary
ISD IonCharge > The targets are targeted and shot in that order; when 300 ships fire for 2000 damage per volley, ships basically get 1-shotted
ISD IonCharge > If your fleet is aligned to a warp out point, you will want to initiate warp immediately when you see yourself being targeted
ISD IonCharge > Remote repairs will generally not be enough to heal through volley damage in a fleet fight, so remote repair ships are often placed out of the fight, in a safe location, such that any damage you take while warping out, if you survive, they can quickly
ISD IonCharge > heal up, allowing you to return to the fight and resume fighting
ISD Tipene > Athina Alarei asks, is it always the case that fcs target call by a-z and being a z is safer?
ISD IonCharge > Target calling preference wil vary from alliance to alliance and FC to FC, however there are a few general guidelines, such as how easy the ship is likely to be to kill, how far away the ship is, how much of a threat it is etc
ISD IonCharge > You will often find that targets are sorted not alphabetically, but rather by ship hull; for example an FC might choose to take out all megathrons first, and for the subset of the fleet which is megathrons, they may choose to pick them alphabetically,
ISD IonCharge > or using any other arbitrary criteria
ISD IonCharge > In a large fight, it basically comes down to who has better damage output and HP that will determine the winner, as well as coherent target calling etc
ISD IonCharge > When it comes to smaller fights, many other factors immediately become important to take into account, such as electronic warfare
ISD Athechu > Hal Francis asks what about solo pilots
ISD IonCharge > If you are in a small fight, down to the scale of being solo, you don't necessarily want to just fit more HP and damage than the other ship - if you can reduce the damage they deal to you, or incapacitate them entirely, you can destroy them at your leis
ISD IonCharge > leisure
ISD IonCharge > This is why recon-class ships such as the Falcon (ECM jamming), the Curse (removal of capacitor, tracking disruption), and the Rapier/Huginn (dictating distance) are often used by small groups or even solo pilots
ISD IonCharge > However, choice of ship is dictated also by where you will be fighting. For example, if you are roaming across low security space, being the pirate you are, mobile ships with strong electronic warfare and high damage output can be very effective
ISD IonCharge > If on the other hand you are in a highsec corp and have had a war declared against you, you may just choose to use high-damage battleships (potentially with some remote repair assistance) since most fights will happen at gates or stations so mobility is
ISD IonCharge > not required
ISD Tipene > Athina Alarei - WAnts to know about different damage types and how important they are
ISD IonCharge > In PvE, you will want to pick the damage type against which your targets are weakest; you can find a complete list here: http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Damage_types#NPC_damage_Types ISD IonCharge > In PvP, where your weapons have a choice of damage type (that is, projectiles, drones and missiles), it comes down often to metagaming tactics, and the results can vary quite significantly
ISD IonCharge > If you are fighting pilots you've fought before, you may have checked their ship fittings from killboard records and therefore know what is effective to deal against them
ISD IonCharge > When coming up against an unknonw adversary, there are a few rules of thumb which are generally useful to stick to
ISD IonCharge > T1 shield tanked ships will often have kinetic as the lowest resist
ISD IonCharge > T2 shield tanked ships will often have explosive as lowest resist
ISD IonCharge > Armor tanked ships are a bit harder to guess, as they have a lower base variation in resistances so tend to fit more uniform; on a T1 ship, you will want to use explosive if they have no active hardeners running (you can tell by the graphics) or
ISD IonCharge > if they do, then kinetic/thermal will often be best
ISD Athechu > Athina Alarei asks, Are these things simply things one would have to memorize or are they easily accessable?
ISD IonCharge > Against T2 armor ships, their resistances will vary significantly with race; generally again they will be pretty well balanced so you should pick ammo type based on whatever gives you highest damage (e.g. from hull bonuses). This applies to shields as w
ISD IonCharge > as well
ISD Tipene > Another question raised, is what about kinetic on shield tanked ships? Isn't EM always the best damage?
ISD IonCharge > Shield tanked ships tend to fit a photon scattering hardener which will give them significant EM resist; they often also fit a thermal hardener, leaving explosive as 3rd highest naturally, and kinetic the lowest
ISD IonCharge > For example a shield ship using 4 hardeners will most likely have 1x em, 1x therm, 2x invulnerability fields
ISD IonCharge > This will put all of their resistances into the 70-80% range so choice of damage type isn't incredibly important, but if you can outguess your opponent then all the better to you
ISD IonCharge > As for memorising: it's really just something that comes to you with practice, especially as you diversify the range of ships you fly
ISD IonCharge > If you are using all races of ships, of both tech levels, you will find yourself fitting them in ways which best increase their survivability, and you can be sure your opponents will be taking similar measures
ISD IonCharge > I think we'll draw the base tanking/damage theory to a close here, and take any further questions before moving on to looking at positioning and general spaceflight aspects of combat
ISD Athechu > Draken-Korin asks, How does it look when fitting amarr ships, do we ignore bonuses to laser turrets?
ISD IonCharge > All four of the major races have ships which are best fitted with what is traditionally described as 'off-race' weapons
ISD IonCharge > For example, the Amarr punisher/maller recieve a bonus only to laser cap use, so you will get higher dps out of them by fitting hybrid blasters
ISD IonCharge > Gallente drone ships such as the myrmidon often favour projectile turrets like autocannons to save on cap, allowing them to fit a stronger tank
ISD IonCharge > As for Caldari shield resistances - let's take the Cerberus as an example
ISD IonCharge > It has a fairly standard distribution of 0 EM, 70 kinetic, 80 thermal, 50 explosive resist
ISD IonCharge > A typical fitting will include 1x photon scattering field (55% EM resist) and 1x invulnerability field (30% global resist) with a damage control thrown in for extra tank
ISD IonCharge > At this point, it will have more or less equal em/exp resists, in the 70-75% range, while kinetic and thermal will be significantly higher
ISD IonCharge > The reason why using explosive damage is suggested is that shield resistance rigs are relatively very cheap, so pilots may often throw on a shield EM resist rig or two as well, leaving explosive lowest
ISD IonCharge > Don't forget also that on ships with limited damage choice, for example laser ships, you can take off-damage drones, e.g. kinetic or explosive drones, to give yourself more uniform damage output
ISD IonCharge > OK, we'll now move on to spaceflight aspects of combat
ISD IonCharge > While you may fit a ship "on paper" to output 1200 dps and tank 800 dps and generally be awesome, on entering a fight you may find that this is not the case
ISD IonCharge > Your damage output was configured to handle stationary targets at 50m range, and you find yourself (after jumping a gate, for example) to be 20km away from a mobile target
ISD IonCharge > For this reason, and for general mobility, a microwarpdrive is generally part of most pvp fittings (some faster ships prefer afterburners instead)
ISD IonCharge > Microwarpdrives give you a significant speed boost (usually of the order of 3.5x above your base speed, if you haven't fit armor plates) which allows you to position yourself in a way that your weapons can deal their optimal damages
ISD Tipene > Athina Alarei asks - Ive found that trying to fit a MWD and still have a viable ship to fly is generally very difficult. Perhaps he could elaborate on fitting 'around' certain modules?
ISD IonCharge > Fitting specific modules which carry penalties, such as the high capacitor usage of a microwarp drive, will certainly require you to alter your ship's setup. PvP-fitted ships often have a capacitor injector which allows them to sustain the cap usage,
ISD Tipene > Hal Francis wants to know about being hit more if you use an mwd. Is that the case?
ISD IonCharge > though in either case, except on specifically speed-fitted ships, a microwarp will only be used in small bursts to help get you where you need to be, rather than left running all of the time
ISD IonCharge > Accuracy of weapons depends on 3 factors. This applies both to missiles and turrets (though for turrets, it's actually 4)
ISD IonCharge > The first of these factors is size of target vs size of weapon being used
ISD IonCharge > Subcapital turrets come in 3 sizes - small, medium and large
ISD IonCharge > These have respective resolutions of 40m, 125m, and 400m
ISD IonCharge > Resolution compares directly against the size of your target, and is factored into the chance ot hit equation
ISD IonCharge > So, if your effective size has been increased by a microwarp, you will certainly be easier to hit (and therefore take more damage) when being shot with larger weapons - for smaller weapons there will be no difference as they weren't losing accuracy due
ISD IonCharge > due to size of target anyway
ISD IonCharge > For missiles, the target's signature radius compares against the missile's explosion radius, with similar damage reduction if the target is smaller
ISD Tipene > achurakitten wants to know why in his experience you don't see turret ships use target painters
ISD IonCharge > Target painters are useful for all ships which are attacking targets smaller than their weapon size, and are not uncommon on turret ships of battleship size; smaller turret ships are often short on mid slots and choose more 'useful' modules instead,
ISD IonCharge > such as those which help deal with target speed, as their weapon resolutions will be fine anyway
ISD IonCharge > The 2nd factor to weapon accuracy is distance to target
ISD IonCharge > With missiles, calculating distance between 2 stationary objects (the shooter and their victim) is fairly trivial - multiply your missile's flight speed by flight time minus 0.5 seconds
ISD IonCharge > This is because missiles don't accelerate to maximum velocity instantly, so the range will be slightly reduced
ISD IonCharge > If the target is in motion, the missile in space will have to change trajectory to reach them - if they're flying away from you the may end up outrunning missiles which were 'in range' when fired
ISD IonCharge > For turrets, you have 2 ranges listed in the attributes - optimal and falloff range
ISD IonCharge > From 0m range to optimal range, turrets do not lose any range-based accuracy
ISD IonCharge > From optimal range to 2x optimal range, accuracy drops off to 0 as a non-linear curve
ISD IonCharge > http://wiki.eveonline.com/wikiEN/images/a/a4/Falloff.png shows how your effective DPS drops when in the range above
ISD IonCharge > Missiles are taken as having 0 speed when launched
ISD IonCharge > With the above graph, a few key points: at optimal + 1/2 falloff range, your effective dps is 80% of what it would be if you were in range
ISD IonCharge > At optimal + falloff range your effective dps is 40%
ISD IonCharge > Your chance to hit, is 50%, but because successful hits at lower accuracy also deal lower damage, the effective dps is reduced
ISD Tipene > Athina Alarei wants to know is falloff below and above optimal or just one way?
ISD IonCharge > Generally you will want to fight at below optimal + 60% falloff range to ensure you do consistent damage to your target
ISD IonCharge > The third factor when calculating damage done, is mobility of your target
ISD IonCharge > For missiles, the direction the target is flying in is irrelevant, and only the magnitude of speed is important; this is compared against missile's explosion velocity and a slow-exploding missile will deal less damage against a fast target
ISD IonCharge > For turrets, speed is not so important as relative speed; your turret has a fixed tracking rate, so if a target is moving across your ship quickly you will have a harder time hitting them when compared to a target which is moving in parallel to you,
ISD IonCharge > even if you were both to be going at 10km/s
ISD IonCharge > The http://wiki.eveonline.com/wikiEN/images/a/a4/Falloff.png graph applies to tracking as well as range - if your tracking rate is less than double the target's rate of orbit around you, you will lose accuracy
ISD IonCharge > To easily compare tracking rate to target's orbit, you can add the angular velocity column to overview, and you will see figures in radians/second, the same as is used by turrets
ISD IonCharge > With that, we'll take any final questions on the topic of tanking and dealing damage, and otherwise conclude this seminar
ISD IonCharge > I should also add that smartbomb damage is not reduced by anything other than resistances; bomb damage factors target's signature radius but not their speed into account
ISD Tipene > Leonard Dukes wants to know what's the difference between alpha and dps and when should we do either?
ISD IonCharge > Alpha is your single-volley damage, whereas DPS is average damage output over a continued time period
ISD IonCharge > Alpha is useful if you're going against low-hp targets (where low hp is relative to the combined alpha of your fleet)
ISD IonCharge > For example, if you have a 4000 damage alpha and a 20 second rate of fire, this is a nominal dps of 200
ISD IonCharge > If you have a 600 damage alpha and a rate of fire of 2 seconds, this is a nominal dps of 300
ISD IonCharge > In the first second of combat, the damage will be 4000 - 600 from both sources
ISD IonCharge > At second 20, the damage will be 8000 – 6600
ISD Tipene > And is it true that Fleets prefer alpha?
ISD IonCharge > Fleet ships tend to prefer alpha as they have enough damage output with it to instantly kill a target which all ships ojf the fleet turn their weapons to, rather than plinking away at them, giving them time to warp out
ISD IonCharge > In smaller-scale engagements, where you won't be destroying your targets outright in the first 1-3 shots, sustained DPS becomes much more important
ISD IonCharge > This also applies to large-scale engagements where you're shooting something with significant HP, such as capital ships or structures
ISD Tipene > Leonard also wants to know if defenders or smartbombs are worth it for shooting down missiles?
ISD IonCharge > Missiles have a set HP of 70 (torps=280, citadels=1920) and defender missiles deal 75 damage each
ISD IonCharge > Therefore a single defender will kill any missile, or 4 for a torpedo, etc
ISD IonCharge > Smartbombs can also be used to shoot down missiles, so long as the missile is in range of the AoE explosion
ISD IonCharge > There is a special case when applied to missile stacked from grouped weapons
ISD IonCharge > A missile stack (e.g. 3 cruise missiles) will have its HP multipled by the number of missiles in the stack, so it would have 210 HP
ISD IonCharge > Defenders which hit the stack reduce the stack's damage by how much HP they remove from the stack
ISD IonCharge > Smartbombs which hit the stack reduce the damage in the same way, unless the smartbomb's damage is greater than the HP of a single missile in the stack, in which case the whole stack is destroyed
ISD IonCharge > Doomsday weapons apply damage directly to the target, and are undodgable and mitigated only by the target's resistances
ISD Tipene > Ok i think we're all done with the questions now
ISD Tipene > FIrstly I'd like to thank Ion on the job today (yes he was typing) :)
ISD Tipene > I'd also like to thank ISD Athechu for helping me moderate
ISD IonCharge > If you practice typing lots and lots every day, you'll get really high wpm too ;)
ISD Tipene > A thread has been created https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=16461 for all your feedback
ISD Tipene > good and any improvements please let us know
ISD Tipene > based on the feedback we get we hope to turn these into regular occurances
ISD Tipene > And as we had suggested I'll look into getting this copied into the wiki for future reference
ISD Tipene > So unless Ion or Athechu have anyrhing else to add, thank you very much for being part of this, and we'll let you get back to your game :)
ISD IonCharge > I would just like to thank everyone for coming, and do keep an eye out for future seminars, which we will be announcing ahead of time
ISD Tipene > true keep an eye on the forums and new pages for new events
ISD Tipene > fly safe o/
ISD IonCharge > Fly safe!
ISD Athechu > Fly safe \o