Damage application

Okay, so I have been playing eve about 2 years. Was a care bear :frowning: for a majority of that time, then I tried PvP and loved it. That said of course skill ques quickly went from cough mining related to damage and tank orientated skills. Now I am stuck, of course I can solo a fleet (plenty of those losses) but I also keep having issues where I feel like I am applying less than half of expected DPS. I have tried everything I can think of in fights, spent many hours trying to figure out why I am just getting curb stomped and seemingly doing nothing to my opponent. Any incite would be greatly appreciated.

The answer to your very specific question is a profound yes.

There are an incredible number of factors that goes into determining your ship’s ability to apply damage. A general question like this, at best, will just get general answers. Do you have anything specific, maybe a recent example or a recording of a fight?

Biggest things in general are speed of both you and their ship vs tracking or missle explosion velocity and easiest way to try and fix that is a web.

Second is range, if they are to far you won’t do much, prop mods are necessary for PvP.

Third is ewar/cap management, are you being jammed, damped, disrupted or neuted?

Edit: typos

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There are two types of damage : missiles and turrets

missiles’ application is basically (target_sig*expl_sig/target_speed/expl_sig)^rf , with rf set according to the ammo type (very close to 1 for T2 rage/fury).
The application is then limited to target_sig/expl_sig, meaning even if you web your target to 0.01m/s you can’t apply 100% to a T1 frig with rage torps.
Then this is limited by 1, so that you can’t deal more than the damage of your missiles.

The application of turrets is kind of different
First you need the evasion of the target . It’s 40000(= the optimal sig of all turrets) * target_angular/target_sig.
once you have the evastion, you also need the distance df into the fallof
df= max(distance-falloff, 0)
with the evasion and distance you can compute the … I like terms, let’s say acquisition acq = evasion²/tracking²+df²/falloff²
from the acq you have the hit chance h=0.5^acq
from the hit chance h you have your application app = (h²+h+0.05)/2

support skills for your prefered weapon system?

your targets maybe…
your fits…?

Your last condor loss for example should probably have been scram fit but you lost it to a faction frigate.
Moa’s i hate for pvp… and not sure why your hull tanking a vexor but i havent flown one for a while; your using 2 heavy, 2 medium and 1 light drone in that?

Are you orbiting with blasters or approaching? keeping at range? are you scram kiting at all or just trying to melt face?

Not sure what you were doing with that chimera…

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Looking at your killboard I think it comes down to ship choice and engagement choice.

You haven’t spent a lot of time flying any one ship and also every fight you lost was a poor matchup which you were bound to lose. First of all, scrap the moa, it kind of sucks. It has no bonuses to damage application (other than range) and you have no webs on it, so with that setup you’re not going to kill anything solo unless you get lucky and catch someone making a mistake like this ONI https://zkillboard.com/kill/77110967/ who appears to have flown too close to you and you were able to scram him. This is basically the only thing that moa fit will be good for. Scrambling cruisers and pounding on them from close range. it doesn’t have the tracking to kill frigates without a web(s). I would just stay away from cruisers until you get a grip on frigates first though. Cruisers have a slow warp speed so you’ll be waiting longer between fights and that will be annoying because you’re going to lose a lot.

The condor is a step in the right direction because you seem to be fighting in lowsec a lot but you have a disruptor on it. Disruptor would be fine if you had a microwarpdrive on it and you were flying in null, kiting things but since you’re afterburner fit and flying it in lowsec, you lose your range control against certain ships because you have no scram.

I would stick to lowsec for a little while because you can shrink the array of ships you come up against to just frigates and destroyers by using novice/small outposts. Try the condor with a scram and try orbiting things at 7.5km. Use its fast base speed to your advantage and scram kite. Try out the Kestrel, it’s a lot better than the condor. Another good ship for your skills is the Hookbill. It’s one of the best ships in FW and it’s about the same price as a moa.

Scour this guide https://drive.google.com/file/d/1z7dkJrFiKZo4w_xVgJSmWCUyvKQ8Ha8Q/view and learn about the good/bad matchups for whatever ship you’ve chosen to fly. Watch a lot of videos on youtube, try to find ones with comentary. Suitonia, blights wretch, lasker emmanuel, etc.

Lastly, and I think the most important thing, buy your pvp ships in bulk so you can pvp more often and with more confidence. I use https://red-frog.org/ to ship them to convenient systems near lowsec. Just keep getting out there. You have to put in the time and die a lot to learn.

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Try this mechanics tutorial I wrote a couple years ago.

My time in Eve was spent flying a T1 Frigate at the dirty edge of what it could do. I’ve killed a little bit of everything in T1 frigates, badgers, etc…

I never multiboxed and rarely used logi.

PvP Tutorial

This is the foundation of great maneuver tactics. Feel free to send questions.

Back when battleclinic was a thing, you could get a Mightymouse title for solo killing 10 cruisers with a t1 frigate. I was a multiple awardee of this title.

The hard part about developing a strong maneuver skill set is that you will want to fly small maneuverable ships… and few others do that anymore.

The good news is you’ll be easily able to fly anything well.

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The condor is a different animal altogether than the kestrel. It can hit 5k/s cold and be cap stable. It is not going to put down the numbers the kestrel will, but against any turret ship you can speed tank their guns and kite them infinitely. Bring a lot of missiles though…

Ok, but keep this in mind.

A speed ship that uses guns, chasing you at its optimal range, with small guns will be able to project 100% of its damage on you.

While you will be shooting at it with missiles that experience an enormous damage reduction at 3k m/s.

Essentially, any ship with guns that can keep up with a condor can easily kill it. Maybe if you short-orbit a jetcan you could survive… (assuming there is nothing else around that you need to outrun) but missile based speed ships benefit from a gun based speed ship escort… because they cannot defend themselves against guns at full speed.

They are, however, fantastic for harassing fleets from range as long as you’ve got a speed boat with guns to protect you.

I think I posted a tutorial discussion above about how to approach these mechanics

I want to start off with a huge thank you to all who have replied to my vague question I didn’t know how else to put it in words. But you have all mostly hit it on the head and all information here will be taken into account in my future engagements. I understand I should use MWD on more of the fits I use but always make the mistake of being too close and getting caught in a scram.
The chimera was just a stupid mistake and I deserved to lose that ship I probably should have spent a few more hours on the test server before risking my actual ship.
As far as when I run a blaster fit I normally approach, usually face hug and brawl with my common moa fit. That said blaster fits have been some of my favorite ships to fly. The vexor ship was trying a fit given to me by a friend I was chatting with I didn’t know what I was doing with that fit or best strategy for using it.
Again thanks for all the help, I hope to get better and start giving better fight’s

Another thing to think about is your signature size.

Yes MWD give you a huge top velocity, but at the same time makes your ship an larger target when its active, so while your still gaining velocity your enemy gains better chances to hit.

And if enemy can keep you in weapon range while you’re at full MWD the speed bonus is reduced, but not your signature, thus they gain more from your MWD than you do.

Something to think about. One reason some only use AB’s, sure they don’t get massive velocity boosts like MWD’s, but they don’t get signature ether. I know some who use next size up AB’s to get similar MWD velocity, though that requires a good fit and skill lvls.

Something to take into account.

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Recommendation from this old pirate:

Put Microwarpdrives on the back burner until you’ve got 50 kills. Maneuver skill is 3x as important when you’re in a MWD fit and things happen so fast it’s hard to really see what you did wrong.

Are you caldari? The caldari blaster tank series is good flying if you like close-up:

Try this merlin fit (may require downgrading some components or buying power grid implants, the faction AB isn’t needed, but it’s nice because speed is so important): A merlin I got shot off…

While you are on the page, you can check out the Gnosis I bagged with that merlin before I lost it.

Here is the story of that morning with some idea of what I’m thinking as I pick maneuver:
Saturday morning scuffles

Another story of me fighting some guys from a public Enemy in that fit: Mo reads it wrong

When you fly against fast boats, run back and forth and try to either swing them into yourself to put an overheated scrambler on them (turns off their microwarpdrive) or to get out of their disruptive range.

Garmurs have a ton of range, as I found out that morning… but most ships are pretty easy to catch with something as fast as the merlin.

For brawlers… you’ll find that the 10k EHP gives you lots of time to think about ranges and maneuver styles so you can find one that favors you.

Also, the neut will allow you to live long enough to turn off webs on brawlers who get ahold of you… but don’t forget to move to a range that favors you and not them once they’re capped out.

It’s a well balance boat. It’ll beat fast boats… it’ll beat brawlers, It doesn’t have a ton of dps, but the neut and some long range ammo combined with 10k EHP and solid passive recharge makes it hard to kill and tough to engage.

Read my tutorial, this build is powerful it its balance. Learn to fly this and select the right ranges and maneuver styles (approach, straight line in space, orbit, or orbit jet can) and you’ll be lethal to small boats.

Here is a walk through of how maneuver affects maneuver I wrote some time ago to try to illustrate the eloquence of maneuver fights:

The good fight, maneuver walk through

And don’t forget, a good 4K orbit or keep at range can disable most frigate brawlers… so if you carry ammo that shoots that far and a neut you can really fistribute frustrations.

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The condor has enough mids and cap to run a td, mwd, and point. Faction light missiles will hit just about anything that isn’t also doing 5k. If it can hit you then you just leave. If not you grab your popcorn and wait for the km. :slight_smile:

I know a lot of people love that setup.

Its only major weakness is fast gun boats (as long as you have the twitchy finger speed to keep it out of scram range without dropping the disruptor)…

If you encounter a gun based boat that’s as fast as you are… run for your life.

If it disrupts you, your best bet is maybe to try to slow it down enough to make your missiles good… maybe jettison something and orbit it at 500 (makes you harder to track than running or sitting still).

If they’re long range you may slow them down enough increase missile effectiveness… and two fast boats like that orbiting that close are bound to challenge gun tracking.

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Specially a Trig one…

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If the gun boat can even sling you into scram range you just lost a condor.

For the damavik you switch to the range script and they can’t do anything. If they are mwd fit they’ll be cap’d out in seconds, overheat prop and stay away. If they’re ab you will eventually kill them. You run from kiki’s.

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If you see the Trig AF on dscan heading your way, just run, don’t even toy with idea of taking on.

Though in saying that I’ve seen some stupid fits on Zkill.

I haven’t toyed with the trig af yet. It’s on my todo list though.

Oh you’ll enjoy them, specially the Assaults.