i dont do PvP first of all, so no, i dont know the wonders of using an arty Machariel or something like that.
but there’s something that i found pretty weird while using a set of 1200s with a tempest i had bought for L4s.
are large arties supposed to be that bad shooting smaller targets? i can understand frigates evading fire but even cruisers seem to take forever to bring down.
i dont have those issues when using medium arties in a proper sized vessel. in those cases a frigate comes down in 1 or 2 hits if shot a proper distance.
shouldnt be that the case for the large ones? i mean, bursting down up to cruiser sized vessels (perhaps chances to take down a destroyer in the right conditions).
heck, even battlecruisers which are a size under take a lot of time to kill for that supposed 2K-3K alpha the weapons are supposed to have.
i dont get. can someone explain me that weakness? (i have large projectile up to lvl 3 if anything and was ausing 2 tracking computers with tracking scripts).
Well, those large guns are meant for damaging large ships from long range. Your Drones should be able to take out Frigates and Destroyers. Course there’s a lot of Gunnery support skills that will help projectile weapons. For good results they should be trained up to at least lv 4.
Motion Prediction = 5% bonus per skill level to weapon turret tracking speeds
Sharpshooter = 5% bonus per skill level to weapon turret optimal range.
Surgical Strike = 3% bonus per skill level to the damage of all weapon turrets.
Trajectory Analysis = 5% bonus per skill level to weapon turret accuracy falloff.
Rapid Firing = 4% bonus per skill level to weapon turret rate of fire.
Large artillery guns have low tracking. They have a hard time hitting orbiting cruisers and frigs. You can hit fast things moving in a straight line toward your ship and slower ships like a battleship orbiting you. In level 4s the npcs sometimes spawn 50+ Km away. During the approach to their optimal range cruisers and especially frigs charge you head on. During the approach they have near 0 traversal velocity so your large guns will have no trouble hitting them.
When I used them I split the groups of guns so I had 3-4 pairs or so. Lock all the frigs first and set two guns or so for each frig and just volley them off the field. You have to play with them as your skills determine how many groups you need to drop them efficiently at range.
And a Maelstrom may be a better choice than the Tempest for mission running.
There is a significant difference between Medium and Large artillery in-terms of tracking.
Poster above me explains it best. Especially to alpha the frigs/cruisers out before they get moving. Sometimes just ignore the frigs and let drones handle them. Also keep your own transversal down. ie: stay immobile as much as possible.
all about that tracking. Probably want 2-3 tracking mods, and might also want to manually pilot to lower transversal to get better hits. On arty ships I almost always find a tracking comp scripted with tracking speed to be better than optimal range.
Train up your turret tracking to max, use tracking modules with tracking scripts, you also have rigs for range. I don’t play arty but seems to work very well for cruise missles and large hybrid guns. Also, since I don’t do arty ships I might be wrong about it, but isn’t there some arty ammo that adds to tracking ? I switch to precision missles all the time to pop all small targets 1st then go with high damage for the larger ones. Works great. if anything does come closer then 50km I pop it with drones.
outside of controlled bursts and trajectory analysis all my gunnery skills are close to V (alpha limitations).
i was using an armor tank so couldnt add damage mods to be able to keep up under fire. perhaps i could have gone shield instead but still.
2601 alpha damage from Meta4 1200s while using phased plasma against gurista rats for a particular case. battleships were getting either half of that damage or less and repping it after.
it doesnt make any sense when a battlecruiser can deal roughly half of that alpha with Meta4 650s against rats of the same size and faction while using EMP. with better chances to shutdown smaller vessels like frigates or destroyers (cany say the same to elite spawns but yeah, those are just cancer for any weapon).
would have going shield with triple gyros and 2 tracking enhancers worked better in that case? because its either that lack of damage mods or the rats are overtanked. even for L4 difficulty
While you CAN absolutely rat with arty, I can’t see why you ever would.
MAYBE multiboxing. Get 3-4 accounts into a site, which you warped into at 50-100, and start popping things. The slow cycle time would make multiboxing easier, but you’re still switching between each screen with reckless abaddon (cough).
Arty are almost exclusively a PVP weapon, used in alpha-strike fleets whereby 50-100 battleships all hit the same target at the same time to turn them into confetti before logistics can do anything about it.
yeah im not new to tracking but i still find weird that large guns have such a problem with that. or at least arties. im gonna tackle the tempest again with a different fit once i’ve saved enough…
They work fine, but yeah perfect gunnery support skills wont hurt and generally you should be moving away from the small rats (so that they are coming at you in a straight line), and be at least 50-60km away. MJD is your friend if you desire to use arties. Generally though, you should fit AC’s. With gyroes and tracking enhancers they get an effective range of IIRC something like ~45km or more, depending on skills and rigs, which is more than enough for most missions and are more reliable at hitting frigates/cruisers, though same “tactic” of moving away from whatever you want to shoot (unless they’re too far away for effective damage) is useful with them too.
turn tactical overlay on, you will notice a blue arrow pointing out the front of your ship in whatever direction you are moving, the longer the arrow the faster you’re moving.
what is so cool about the overlay is that your target will also have that blue arrow when you have them selected, what you want to do is make your arrow the same as the targets and try stay at your optimal range.
signature resolution of your guns will be much higher than cruiser size signature radius, this is a simply a balance mechanic, you can’t expect to have full accuracy on smaller ships with bigger guns.
what that page that I linked points out is how efficient target painters are, maybe you could try that.
your doing it wrong, fly away and kite your targets, I 1 shot battlecruisers with 1 gun, and 1 shot anything small coming at me too because of 0 transversal.
Keep them in optimal range, fly away in straight line away from targets to not allow them get close to you, snipe them from long range, keep transversal low (that means make them fly straight towards you and dont orbit yourself around them).
Small frigates are the fastest, kill them first, then if anything small survives and is close to you - finish them from up close with small drones. Meanwhile keep shooting at destroyers, then cruisers, then battlecruisers and then battleships. In that order.
Or use typhoon and cruise missiles, its shield tank is very good and missiles always hit, and are bonused for kiling smaller, faster targets.
[Typhoon, Typho]
Capacitor Flux Coil II
Capacitor Flux Coil II
Capacitor Flux Coil II
Capacitor Flux Coil II
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Dread Guristas X-Large Shield Booster
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
’Stalwart’ Particle Field Magnifier
’Stalwart’ Particle Field Magnifier
’Stalwart’ Particle Field Magnifier
‘Arbalest’ Cruise Launcher I
’Arbalest’ Cruise Launcher I
’Arbalest’ Cruise Launcher I
’Arbalest’ Cruise Launcher I
’Arbalest’ Cruise Launcher I
’Arbalest’ Cruise Launcher I
Large Capacitor Control Circuit II
Large Capacitor Control Circuit I
Large Capacitor Control Circuit I
Yea, I honestly think that fully trained missles are the best weapon for PvE, since usually tidi is not an issue, they dont use cap, and you can easily switch ammo types. Whenever I use cruise missles I run with 1 enhancer, 1 computer with precision script, and switch between Fury and Precision missles since the reload time is only 10 seconds. Granted some launchers such as RLML etc. have really long reload times, but its still perfectly doable.
Add to that I use a dedicated jump clone with simple generic +5% implants for missle flight range, velocity and explosion radius bonus and its actually really good.
Their only negative is that you lose some ammo due to flight time, but that is negligible in the overall gameplay.