I am trying to understand the impact of ship agility on manual piloting maneuvers. I understand agility affects align time when you need to gtfo, but how does it affect the tactics used in manual piloting? I think it would have the most impact when trying to slingshot, but does it have any noticeable effect when engaging in other, less turn-intensive maneuvers, like feathering? I am curious how valuable a small change in ship agility would for manual piloting, say a difference in align time from 4.17s to 3.92. This helps with warp-out time given server ticks, but I’m wondering about the impact on manual piloting. Any help is appreciated.
Not sure what you mean.
But at the end of the day, the stats reflect a perfect order being issued to the machine, I can only speculate that manual piloting would reduce/increase (which ever is the bad one) these stats due to human reactions.
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Ah ok didnt realise it had a name.
I dont think youll get better results on manual but if you do Id be fascinated to hear.
https://oldforums.eveonline.com/?a=topic&threadID=723019
k = 10^6/A, where A is the inertia modifier.
v = Vmax . [1 - e^(-(10^6.t)/(m*A)) ]
Better agility allows you to accelerate faster and do tighter turns. So definitely beneficial if you want to do manual piloting, and it is the reason why nanos are often picked over overdrives since the extra agility is worth more than the small amount of extra speed.
Higher agility also tramslates into tighter orbits at higher speeds.
Slingshot.
It’s when you bait a kiter into sticking behind you at high velocity, where you - with your superior agility - snap the trap, turn around, approach and suddenly sit on his neck before he manages to slow down and turn around.
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What’s important in the formula I linked, is that your ship is subject to a “drag”. Your ship is subject to a constant force from the engines, that means at max speed the drag is the same as your engine force. When you go back ward to slingshot, your are thus subject to twice your engine acceleration (because just before you were going at max speed). this means your acceleration = ( engine+drag)/mass is double your acceleration from being still. But only untill on the moment you go backwards, after that it reaches 1.5 when at half speed, 1 at 0 speed, etc.
Perfect, that makes a lot of sense. Thanks everyone for the help.
Manual piloting is a generally a myth. I heard it when I started out too.
While there are a few scenarios (trying to hang someone up against a station who is orbiting you, pulling someone into a gate, etc…) they’re pretty rare.
Agility allows you to turn faster, which increases angular against an orbited object (so it can be used to help you get under someone’s guns).
Also nice for align times on gates… let’s you hop faster.
Selecting maneuver is functionally mostly confined to these options:
Fly straight line in space
Sit still
Orbit a jettison can
Orbit target at selected range
Keep target at selected range
Approach target.
Picking the one of these that gives you the most substantial advantage is trick, and requires some thought.
Read this tutorial, let me know if you have questions.
Tutorial on mechanics
After chapter 6, I talk about selecting maneuvers. Read it.
Thanks for the advice and the link, it was really good info.
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In pvp it is not. There are a few situations where manual piloting is pretty much mandatory, such as when you’re spiralling in to get under someone’s guns, or slingshotting to pull range on someone.
This is effectively what manual piloting is.
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If you don’t believe in manual piloting then you need to see Tikktokk fly a Slasher and kill any other frig with it
I don’t buy it.
Now, I don’t know TikTok and maybe he’d clean my clock. I like anyone who rolls hard in a T1 frigate and a preference for that clearly establishes that he understands maneuver… but that doesn’t really imply manual maneuvering.
I’ve flown at the top of this game multiple times over the years. I think it’s myth.
I’ve heard about it and heard about it and heard about it… but I’ve never met someone who claims to do it that could beat me.
I select maneuvers based on the relative advantage of my tank and dps vs theirs… and considering all of that I can’t see more than a few outside scenarios where you would manually pilot the craft in any manner besides a straight line command or a stop command.
Read my tutorial, I know my stuff. What maneuver can you do manually that isn’t adequately covered in the maneuvers I listed above?
I killed a thorax and two Cormorants at the same time once in a griffin. No manual piloting involved, but lots of adjusting what I was doing and fanning the prop.
Command of maneuver does that… but manually clicking in space… don’t see the value.
LOL OH REALLY?
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I’ll make this easy for Ghost:
Imagine two hostile ships sitting 20km apart from each other fitted with blasters and scrams, you have a ship with 25km optimal and a warp disruptor.
You click orbit 20km on the first ship, your autoorbit will send you right into the warpscrambler of the second ship.
Manual piloting means doubleclicking in space. If you know the very basics you can manually create your own circle around the first ship, while not getting into scram range of the second.
After killing the first, you can then click orbit 20km on the second and kill it aswell. There you go, if that was to complicated for you manual piloting will indeed stay a myth.
There are hundreds of situations like that, another common one is kiting into one direction to pull big gangs apart and let slower hostile ships fall behind while tacklers separate. You want to manual pilot to stay in optimal and not separate from your friends instead of flying a straight line.
To answer OP:
While agility is important, it just ends up with how comfortable you feel with the ship in practice while doing turns, compared to other ships you usually fly. All manouvers can be done in any ship, all that matters is having a better speed/agility then the enemys you can’t kill fast enough. Making the agility difference bigger just makes the manouver easier while applying your guns becomes harder.
In general speed is more important.
When fitting ships it’s usually not the question of how big the difference in agility is but what else you can gain out of a slot, and ofc if it would save you a servertick alignment (without prop) if you roam around alot.
When fighting and you suddenly have to warp out you can also do smth i call overturning, by manually taking the turn way harder then you actually want to do it, since the last 15% of an alignment take exponentially longer. Once your vector is aligned with your warpout you can then activate the warp.
This is really becomming relevant with oversized propmods. You can also see me doing that in my last video at 1:13 in the retri or at 10:20 in the 10mn Kiki: https://youtu.be/kjD2VCDOEWo
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Thanks for the info. I think experience will be the best teacher for this question, as you say. I also hadn’t considered that better agility would negatively impact my dps application. Very helpful.
I’m sure you are a very good pilot, however Tikktokk can kill ships over which there is no disernable advantage just through superior manual piloting, utilising the figure of 8s to drop transversal for his arty volley and be too quick to hit until its time to volley again, a thing of beauty. That is proper manual piloting and it allows a ship to punch far above its weight.
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