So, in the following scenario, we have an Astero (attacker) and a Venture (the target), pretty simple. What we need to calculate the targeting time, is Astero’s scan resolution (620 mm) and Venture’s signature radius (40 m).
By doing the calculation above for this scenario, it results that the locking time would be 0.04 seconds, which is totally wrong.
I want to find out how to calculate correctly the targeting time.
Does anyone know how it really works?
I just put that formula into excel, and it gave me 3.36 seconds using the Astero locking a Venture example. Also tested using some of the other example in the graph on the E-Uni web page, and it seems consistent.
The excel-formula I used was =40000/(B6*ASINH(C6)^2)
Where B6 is the scan resolution (in mm) and C6 is the Signature Radius (in m).
It is important to remember to round up to the next second with lock and warp times due to server ticks.
So, the calculated lock time of 3.### in practice means you lock it in four seconds if you have low ping.
Alternatively, and because a tie goes to the runner, so to speak, and again due to the way ticks and commands are dealt with, the Astero can lock any venture which takes five seconds or more to warp, assuming each actor clicks their respective commands (lock, warp) on the same server tick.
The server tick issue is also why if you can get to warp under two seconds, and again assuming good ping, you won’t get caught by a losec gate camp no matter how many sensor boosts that Ashimuu has.
Because thats the time of a server “tick”, it only processes data on each tick, its why anything with a sub 2 second align time is considered an instawarp because regardless of scan res it takes 2 seconds for you to lock and actually activate a module on a target as anything under a second is rounded up to a second, and lock time doesn’t use distances, it uses signature radius, aka how fat the target is, the lower the sig the longer the lock time and the higher you need to boost your scan resolution for it to counter that difference
Just came upon this thread and saw people mentioning how if you warp sub 2s you’re apparently safe from getting locked, keep in mind that’s not true.
If you have sub 2s (but above 1s) align time, you can still be locked, pointed, and caught before warping if there’s someone on the gate with all of high enough scan resolution, quick human response time (and proper overview setup to help), and also very importantly, low latency to the server. With a setup like that, you can semi-reliably catch everything unless it’s cloaky (since that’s done at the 1st tick/second, not after 2s, so you’d need to decloak them by proximity too), or it has sub 1s warp (which very few specific setups have).
