As you can see in the screenshot, it is not equal to the “Signature” of the target. Same attribute can be found in PyFa when creating individual target profiles:
The 24m in this case are the radius, resulting in 48m diameter which would equal the “size” in the overview screenshot for an Atron.
I also tested with an Alt, whenever I activate the MWD, only the signature radius expands, but the size always stays the same. So it is clearly not used for locking or damage application.
Question: What is it used for? Hangars to store ships use the “volume” in m³. Acceleration gates the ship type, wormhole calculations the “mass”. Locking, tracking and missile damage / vorton damage all use the “signature”. Combat probing also uses the “signature” vs sensor strength. So why can we display it in the overview, it looks like a completely meaningless attribute in terms of “useful information”. It would be a lot more practical to have an option to display the actual targets signature there (which your board computer obviously knows, it is shown if you right-click the ship). Only thing that I could imagine would be “bumping” as it might influence the hitbox?
So, anyone have an idea what the purpose of this attribute is and why it could be useful to enable it in the overview? I think it is even enabled by default in the general overview when you install the game…
As far as I know the ships don’t have collision spheres, but rather rectangular or ellispoid hitboxes roughly matching the shape of the ship. For example you will need quite a large circle to fly around an Apocalypse front → tail. But you can fly a much closer circle up → down without colliding, so the collision box can’t be a sphere with the center in ship model.
I’ve always lived in the belief that it is signature radius with some small variables…
There have been multiple posts throughout Eves history about the topic and what i remember 100% surely seeing is some official statement on how the overview doesn’t apply MWD or other variables with the reasoning being that it gives away too much intel for pvp like shield extenders and shield rigs.
But you’re right it doesn’t still explain the difference in signature radius vs. size if it’s supposed to be without effects applied to the stat… I want answers!
EveUni claims that it’s just the size of the ship in meters. But thats wrong too according to the threat above and show info on ships vs overview. https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Overview_settings
It’s used to calculate distance .
The actual distance from two objects A and B, of position vectors Pa and Pb, of radius ra and rb, is
d(A, B) = | Pa - Pb | -ra -rb
with | a-b | the norm of the difference vector ( colloquially referred to as the distance between the two positions)
Example:
planet Auviken VI has radius of 5970km and the diameter is twice as much or 11940km
which equals the value in size column for the planet in the overview. The planet has a spherical hitbox a special case of ellipsoid that has both diameters of equal length.
I think for ships it may be the lesser diameter for their ellipsoid hit box. The Atron example from the op has longer length of 63 meters (measured across the “wingspan”) and maybe 40 meters in size columns is the length of lesser diameter measured across the bow to stern.
It would agree with the proportions visible in the picture taken in-game I attached earlier
I want answers!