Turret Accuracy at Optimal + 1/2 Falloff

Communications Center General Discussion
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I’ve been testing a couple Alpha characters during the Crimson event. All 3 turret types (Energy, Hybrid, Projectile), Medium turrets. No tracking/range modules, relevant skills trained to 3 or 4. Using ammo that gives roughly 12-14km Optimal and 11-16km Falloff, depending on the turret/skills/ship combo. Cruiser targets.

It used to be generally accepted that at Optimal + Falloff your hit rate (assuming tracking was sufficient) would be about 50%. (At least that is the way I recall it, let me know if that is wrong.)

At Optimal plus 1/2 of Falloff you expected to hit around 75% of shots. In this case, that means I should -start- hitting at around 26km distance, and hit fairly often at around 19km, and be hitting solidly at under 15km.

What I am actually seeing on all 3 pilots is I hit nothing at all until the range closes to about 16-17 km, and I don’t hit ‘often’ until the range is roughly Optimal + 2km (this on a gun with a 12-16km falloff).

The guns are generally the second-highest T1 meta.

I was just wondering if the accuracy formula has changed, or perhaps something odd about the Blood Raider ships, or maybe I just need to do more testing.

If anyone else would care to actually test their gun accuracy at ranges beyond optimal+2km, feel free to share your results!

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You are combining two different formulas. Optimal range formula and tracking formulas. And concluding that the Optimal is wrong because of it because you arent accounting for tracking and sig radius of target, which is a part of the ability to hit said target.

Your conclusion that Optimal + falloff is half correct and half wrong. The wrong portion is that you dont hit 50% you do 50% damage at this range and 0 damage beyond Optimal+ falloff*2.

Hit % chance isnt a portion of this formula at all. Turret tracking is combined with turret sig radius and targets sig radius and targets speed relative to your turrets tracking formula.

Complicated I know. But if your target is smaller than your guns its harder to hit and if its going faster than your guns can track and turn with it you will always miss. Hence you are noticing this. Often NPCs MWD or AB in on you and you do to them to close range. This makes that tracking formula very bad for you to hit targets, especially small targets. Once they settle into orbit range they will shut off MWD and AB and slow down as you also slow down as you are within range and this will allow you to hit more often.

Again Im generalizing here and Id have to dig to find the true math formulas as I dont have them immediately handy. Learning Eves math formulas will make you a better pilot in the end.

Good luck.

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Thank you for your reply, unfortunately it makes a number of errors and assumptions that basically match the answers I got in the Help channel… hence why I came here for more factual info / comparisons of actual testing.

From the EveU info, https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Turret_mechanics

"A gun’s optimal range is the range within which, if tracking and signature resolution don’t intervene – and, practically speaking they probably will (see below) – the gun has a 100% chance to hit. The farther away a target is from a gun’s optimal range, the lower the chance to hit.

Accuracy falloff measures how quickly the chance to hit decreases as the target moves beyond optimal range. At a gun’s optimal range plus its falloff, the chance to hit is reduced to 50% of what it had been had the target been at optimal range."

Medium guns, cruiser targets. Sig radius is not the issue. Target smaller than my guns is not the issue. Transversal velocity generally increases as the target gets closer, making it harder to hit. Thus, it is also (probably) not the issue.

To put it plainly: If the gun can track and hit the target at optimal, then it is also Sig/Size/Tracking capable of hitting it at Optimal+Falloff, just at 50% lower success rate. Unless the long-standing info on turret Optimal/Falloff has changed, or possibly the Blood Raiders are somehow hard to hit past optimal.

The information I am looking for is:

  1. Has the optimal/falloff formula changed in some way?

  2. Does it apply differently to Alphas, Medium turrets, Gnosis hulls, or Blood Raider Gauntlets? (the common elements in this test)

  3. Has anyone else actually tested Medium turrets on Blood Raider cruisers at similar ranges and found results different than mine?

Example: First room, 2nd wave, 1 BR Cruiser appears at 28 km. My Medium Energy Quad Anode Particle Beam turret with Microwave Crystal has (approximately, going from memory here) 14km Optimal and 15km Falloff. I should be hitting him at least some shots. He slowly flies closer so I get lots of test shots. Every single shot misses until he is 15km away, then they start hitting almost every shot.

Similar results were obtained on 26 cruiser targets in the first room, across all 3 turret types. (Cruisers in the 2nd room generally appear too close for this testing)

  1. What other effect could be causing these misses? (For instance, what Eternus8 said about the target MWDing until they get to a certain range)

If anyone else has been testing this sort of thing I’d appreciate some comparisons. Thanks for any info!

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Chances are it’s your skills. Once you have sharpshooting (can’t remember if that’s what it was originally called) and motion prediction trained to at least IV, your engagement profile is a lot bigger. Remember, being circled even at 11km is still pretty close and gives your turrets a lot of effort following them.

Also remember that lasers have a very steep drop off of accuracy after you hit optimal range. Hybrids suffer a little bit less than lasers in falloff range, auto cannons will always be engaging about halfway between optimal and falloff. It’s nothing to do with the NPC’s you’re hunting and everything to d with character skills and weapon choic

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I’ve completed dozens of Blood Raider Gauntlets in a Gnosis with medium guns and not had the problems you have encountered.

Optimal for me is 18km with falloff of around 31km.

I started each Cruiser wave with one or two MWD pulses and a press of ‘Keep At’ (set to 45km). I would stop once the distance to the Cruisers was around 27km allowing me plenty of time to take down all 5 before they could get too close and do any damage. They were typically engaged between 17km and 25km (well beyond optimal) and destroyed in 4-5 shots without fail.

I had range, was stopped, and they were forced to come in a straight line towards me. Ideal tactical advantage.

I noticed no problems hitting even if the range was at 31km (some of the waves warp in at different ranges).

I was actually surprised how easy the Cruisers were to destroy.

Problems only occurred with the Frigates, as to be expected. Completely missed them unless able to get to a range of 21km or more.

In all cases, having good range on the targets beyond Optimal made it easier to land hits because of the effect good range has on the ability of guns to track targets.

Should note I was using a Tracking Computer though (no script)

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Hi Dirk,

On first place - forget about “transversal velocity”. That term was coined to simplify the explanation, but actually made it more complicated… As is current “tracking” stat for turrets.

Formula is not changed (in the part concerning ranges), but tooltip has changed several times for the short period since it was introduced. I failed to find your

but my wild guess is you refer to Quad Anode Light Particle Stream I. I tried to mount it on Gnosis (another wild guess) and with perfect gunnery skills I found following tooltip:

Falloff range within 12 km
Optimal range within 11 km

When I apply Microwave M numbers change to:

Falloff range within 17 km
Optimal range within 16 km

So if you are not far with gunnery skills it is quite possible to have your numbers around 14-15 km. And that is what you observe during your tests.

At this point either you consider me a total idiot, or you already are looking at info panel at your weapon where it says (without Microwave lenses):

Optimal range ~11 km and Accuracy falloff ~ 1000 m

Moral of the story - on tooltip Falloff range within xx km measures Optimal + Falloff. :wink:
Mystery solved?

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Mystery/confusion on my part resolved, yes, TY. I was reading the tooltip wrong and thinking it was Optimal 14km, Falloff 15km, Optimal + Falloff = 29km. You are correct that the tooltip is already doing the adding and so the 15km already is the optimal+falloff, beyond which accuracy drops drastically.

I was probably misled by the fact that last time I played, I was Minmatar using Arty and got used to looong falloff ranges. (Also had 4x the SP of these Alpha test accounts.)

Thank you for the insight, time to go head back in and uncover the next gap in my understanding! :slight_smile:

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TY also Sindara, if Baygun hadn’t already given me the answer, your test results would prob have led me to figure it out eventually. Appreciate the info!

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