I think players especially new players would benefit a lot if their gun icons included a tracking indicator light for whatever target they are locked/applied onto.
I thought maybe green for tracking inside optimal; yellow for fall-off and maybe orange for outside of fall off (and blank or clear for when not in use). I believe this would really help players to gauge how well their weapon outfits are performing or might perform in various combat situations. As it is, in practice, I find I had to combat test my ships and try to review the combat log to get an idea of how well my outfit was doing in various situations but even then it was difficult to really know as the combat log doesn’t tell you ranges when fired or anything. I think this feature would help a player learn faster in real time how different weapon systems work especially turrets. It might also help players get an idea of the potential extremes or limits weapon load outs might be capable of.
My concern here is that there are two different factors to tracking.
Tracking score or angular velocity.
Optimal / Falloff.
You would need to represent both somehow on the icons to reflect this, then add in weapons like autocannons that are designed around fighting in falloff and you might even get misleading indicators.
I think it’s a good idea though, but might need to think harder and actually do UI mock ups to make sure the information can be given clearly.
I think the color coding might help with the inside/out of optimal range concern. And actually I think if players see they are doing plenty of damage and destroying targets even inside of their fall off will help them to learn that it’s okay or safe for certain weapons to be used inside of fall off . That they are still practical.
I think it would also help players to relate the tracking score to practical circumstances and not just assume artillery, for example, will only track or be useful against big, slow ships. As it is it is pure guess work to get any idea or how a weapon system might perform in various situations.
I understand the concern : having a way to find out what is target it is worth shooting would help.
Ingame you have the angular and distance, which should allow you, using the estimated signature, to guess the hit probability h = 0.5 ^(radial*40000/sig/tracking + (distance-optimal)/falloff).
Of course the reality is, it’s not practical.
However a big issue to integrating that data in the game, well there are two :
you don’t know the signature of the target. so if the target activates the MWD the hit chance h will actually be much higher ^^ . Or if it fits extenders.
It’s not practical if you have at least two weapon systems. eg sentries + missiles.
The first one requires to either give the signature radius of the target, so the client can compute the hit chance ; or to accept to have a high variation, making that information useless.
The second requires the ability to select one’s weapon system. Typically in the overview, "primary weapon system : " followed by a list of the installed armaments.
I see. So I think what you are saying is that even if such a feature were included, it would still be potentially confusing or misleading because of the number of variables? For example, the fact you were only tracking because a target had an active WMD or was using shield extenders? Well, I guess that’s fair enough. Thanks for the replies.
However I totally agree that the game would be better if that was possible.
Just, maybe it’s not, and maybe it would be so misleading that nobody would use it.
I mean, it’s a good case for discussion. I see only issues, but maybe someone else could find a solution.
And it would seem unrealistic if a gun “knew” it was tracking something because of some internally installed module on another ship (like presumably a shield extender would be). In reality, presumably, one would only find out by the surprise that it actually hit when fired in a situation where it ought to have missed.
That’s not how it works.
What is important, is to know what is your percentage chance to hit.
This one can be known by having the highest hit quality( smash, grazes, etc) from a turret on a target in the same amount of time. eg if you have only crits, that means you have less than 1% chance to hit. if you have smash, that means you have >75% chance to hit. see Turret mechanics - EVE University Wiki
Then you need to take into account the grouping .