In a previous post I have discussed how chosing the right projectile ammunition is important. In this article I’m going to look at the issues of range and tracking and their effects on hit quality.

Lets start off by discussing the simplest part of this equation, the range. Your guns have two attributes that affect their range: optimal range and falloff. If a target is inside your optimal range you will always be able to hit it for full damage (tracking aside). Outside of your optimal there is a decreasing hit chance with the probability of hitting reaching 50 % at optimal + falloff and diminishing to practically 0 % at optimal + 2 x falloff. The formula for this is:

0.5 ^ ((max(0, Range To Target - Turret Optimal Range))/Turret Falloff)^2)

The plot above is for a gun with a theoretical optimal of 1 km and a falloff of 1 km. You can see that the damage drops off rapidly as the range reaches the edge of the first falloff region but the initial decrease is pretty gradual. If we plug in some numbers we can see that at 1/4 falloff you do 95 % of your theoretical maximum. At 1/3 falloff you still do 93 % and at 1/2 falloff you are still doing 85% but by 2/3 falloff this has decreased to just 73 %.

Most Amarr and Gallente pilots don’t really worry about their falloff. Amarr pilots just switch crystals to keep their targets within their optimal range while the Gallente usually hit approach and aim to get right on top of their target. The Minmatar, though, make great use of their falloff to get the most out of their speed and maneuverabilty. Let’s use a Hurricane as a standard ship and take a look at the damage it does at various ranges.

[Hurricane, Shield]

Warrior II x5
Warrior II x1

The graph above shows the relative ranges of RF EMP/Fusion/Plasma, Barrage, and Hail. On the face of it Hail makes for an excellent close range ammunition with EMP/Fusion/Plasma providing a good mid-range choice and Barrage being the long range muniton of choice. For a kiting ship like this Hurricane a key range is 13 km, that of an overheated web. Up to about 16 km we can see that the high damage faction ammunitions out-damage Barrage. Beyond this range Barrage becomes our best choice until we consider the resists of what we are shooting. Versus T1 armour tankers Barrage is probably still the best choice at these ranges but what about the most ubiquotous of battlecruisers, the Drake?

[Drake, Fleet]

Warrior II x5

Effective HP: 102,161
Tank Ability: 210.31 DPS
Damage Profile - (EM: 25.00%, Ex: 25.00%, Ki: 25.00%, Th: 25.00%)
Shield Resists - EM: 66.04%, Ex: 83.02%, Ki: 79.62%, Th: 72.83%
Armor Resists - EM: 57.50%, Ex: 23.50%, Ki: 36.25%, Th: 53.25%

For this fairly standard Drake we can easily see that EMP rapidly becomes by far the best ammunition choice right out to 21 km. In fact, with the exception of when we move to the very edge of tackle range, the faction ammunitions almost always do better damage than Barrage.

So far I have pretty much dismissed Hail (and by extension the other close range ammunitons) out of hand. Now we’ll look at why. The second part of the hit chance equation considers the tracking of our guns.

0.5 ^ (((Transversal speed/(Range to target * Turret Tracking))*(Turret Signature Resolution / Target Signature Radius))^2)

Republic Fleet EMP	Barrage	Hail

The three graphs above show the how range and transversal affect the ability to hit for each of the major ammunition types I’ve already discussed.

As before, lets take a Drake as an example target and look at what happens when we shoot it with EMP (because we have already learnt that this is better than shooting it with Barrage, even if we kite it). The Drake is a good target example for this because against a missile ship you want to be doing your maximum possible velocity while doing as much damage as you can to punch through its passive tank. You also, most likely, want to avoid getting into scrambler range so that you can disengage with relative ease. The Drake I have used in the example above has a maximum velocity of 1,038 m/s compared to our 1,434 m/s. Depending on how the Drake flies, our transversal will most likely be somewhere in the 500 m/s to 1000 m/s region so we can zoom in on that section of the graph. If we are confident that the Drake isn’t fit for close range tackle or just decide that we want to get in and do as much DPS as possible then it is likely that we will drop into a close orbit without our microwarp drive and we can look at this as well and see where our sweet spot lies.

The graph we generate in these situations show us that despite what you might think, you do not want to get right in close against the Drake. In fact, we get better hits between about 7,500 m and 10,000 m at most practical speeds. Of course. No situation is this simple and we have to take the Drake pilot’s actions into account. Maybe he fires up his MWD and tries to burn for freedom. Maybe he goes into a counter orbit and tries to maximise the orbital velocity so you find it harder to hit him. There are lots of other situations that we can look at to decide what, exactly, is the best thing to do but I hope that the message you take away from this is that it is not always the best thing to get in as close as possible and that pulling back into the falloff region can actually help increase the damage that you are able to apply.

The plot above shows what happens if we load Hail instead. What we can see here is that while we do have a reasonable amount of range, even a very small amount of transversal speed seriously reduces our damage output. If you can be sure that your target is going to be stationary then Hail is possibly a good choice against armour-tanking ships. In almost all cases this isn’t true and the movement of your opponent will mean that you are not landing the best quality hits. A ship that would use Hail well is a dual web Hurricane.

Another good example of this is to imagine a Rifter fight and look what happens when the two frigates are orbiting each other with either Barrage (left) or Fusion (right) loaded. If both ships opt to orbit at the same range then the transversal velocity will be about 1 km/s and then will drop depending on how they are actually manuveuring. This, in fact, is a good demonstration of why using “keep at range” to minimise your transversal is often the best approach if you can’t be sure of getting under your opponents guns. While the sweet spot for Fusion does more damage, Barrage allows you to more consistently apply damage at range and speed. The Rifters I used in this example are my favourite afterburner fit with two ambit extension rigs to maximise flexibility.

Its worth a note here that I really don’t like the term transversal velocity. The key number in turret tracking is the angular velocity, measured in radians/second. The point is that the transversal velocity does not take into account the range. What might seem like a low transversal at 18 km becomes a very high angular velocity at 1 km. Transversal velocity has become a key part of the Eve lexicon, however, and I am going to continue to use the term here. If you need a visual aid as to what constitutes transversal and how to increase or decrease it check out this old CCP Flash site.

So far in all of this discussion I haven’t included wrecking shots. These occur whenever Eve’s dice roll 0.01 or lower. For every gunshot fired in the game, Eve rolls a die and generates a random number between 0 and 1. If the dice roll, X, is greater than the chance to hit, the shot misses. If the shot hits then the quality of hit is given by X + 0.5. Using this information we can calculate the actual DPS that our ship lays down using the following formulae:

AvgDPS = Base Damage * [ ( ChanceToHit^2 + ChanceToHit + 0.0499 ) / 2 ]

So, EFT warriors, take note. The EFT DPS is pretty much never actually applied and hit quality becomes the key thing you should think about. More often it is better to optmise tracking for better hits than it is to optimise for raw damage numbers. As you fly the ship and get used to it you can use your own experiences and the combat logs to decide exactly which fit works best for you. As an example I had a conversation with a corp mate who was telling me that a railgun Daredevil would do 98 DPS against an orbitting inteceptor with Spike loaded into 150 mm railgun IIs. I then proceeded to show him that the actual DPS that would be applied in this situation is somewhere between 1 and 8 DPS, not enough to scare the inty off.

If you want to run these calculations for yourself and see the numbers for your own circumstances then there is an excellent calculator at the Eve Geek web site.

As a closing note, this disussion has been almost completely about projectile ammunitions. The main reason for this is because I have wanted to demonstrate why the faction ammunitions are absolutely the best choice in almost all circumstances. When it comes to close range guns blasters and pulse lasers do not have the same degree of choice and are simply stuck with selecting range. You can use this same methodology to compare long- and short-range fits such as railgun frigates and to understand why fitting beam lasers is pretty much never the right answer.

In future posts I will build upon this discussion to look at the strengths and weaknesses of various fits and the tactics used to get the most out of them.

So last night was one of my Wednesday evening gangs and all was set to go as usual. We were going to form up in Hurricanes and Drakes and go visit our friends in Geminate. I got logged on nice and early and opened up the map to see what was happening. There was the usual hot spot in O2O-2X and a few hot spots around Geminate and Vale of the Silent. All in all it looked like things were good. Then my connection died.

I came back on and we began to form up. Various amounts of messing around, people arriving late, and general faff later we finally got underway. Sa’Haira reported a wormhole linking Molden Heath to Melmaniel but by the time we arrived in Kadalina it had already been collapsed, thwarting my plan to go west. Unfortunately the situation in Geminate was changing pretty rapidly and the hot spots looked just to be fleet form-ups. By now there were about 1,000 people in one system and everywhere was emptying out. We made our way through Etherium Reach and into EOA- but nothing was showing up. Using the map I tried to steer us into systems with what looked like reasonable activity but Dian kept reporting empty space or clusters of battleships waiting on titans. Things were not looking good.

In TVN-FM we ran into a VOLTRON Maelstrom gang with heavy logistics support. Dian had reported them on the station but as we jumped in they had moved to our in gate. Their bubble went up and I picked an align point and got people to burn away from their heavy tackle. In the mean time I called their Sabre primary, hoping that we could volley through their logistics but they managed to pull him back from about 25 % shields and there was nothing we could do. Masty had been snagged by their Huginn and Lachesis and there was nothing we could do to save him. The rest of the gang warped off and we waited around for them to lose interest before heading down the pipe to P3EN-E.

In Y5J-EU Dian found a Sabre but he dropped a bubble and jumped out before we could give chase. As our warp drives activated a Manticore decloaked and followed us in warp. Caught in the same bubble as us he dropped out of warp right on top of our gang and before he could do anything about it he had been evaporated by 720 mm artillery shells.

We continued down the pipe towards low security space and somehow, upon jumping into P3EN-E I had what can only be described as a “spaz attack”. I just seemed to lose my ability to do anything and ended up aligning my ship off in a random direction, shooting a gate, warping off when I meant to realign, and somehow (although I didn’t discover it until later) setting my default warp range to 70 km. I eventually managed to pull myself somewhat together and we jumped into Obe.

Obe sits in a low security pocket of half a dozen systems that connect Vale of the Silent and Tribute to Empire space through P3EN-E and M-OEE8 respectively. There are lots of Northern Coalition pilots in the area and we spread out looking for them. Sa’Haira had got seperated from the gang because he was too busy looking for a spoon to eat his Nutella with. As he tried to find us he reported that he had been tackled in Hakonen by a Tengu and called for our help. We quickly burnt back to the Obe gate and jumped. 30 % shield remaining and we still had to cross Obe to get to the Hakonen gate. Thankfully it was a short warp and as we landed Sa’Haira’s Hurricane was just going into armour. We jumped and deployed ECM drones just as the Tengu decided to deaggress. It was a race against time as overheated artillery cannons and missile launchers span into action. His shields were dropping slowly and then all of a sudden more rapidly. As he entered the last few percent of his shields I lost lock and began to swear as I though he’d successfully jumped to safety but then I realised that the shear power of my last volley had punched clean through his armour and hull leaving him as just a smoking wreck. A nice kill and well played to Sa’Haira for getting us it.

We dumped loot and formed up in a safe spot. My plan at this point was to spread the gang out and explore the pocket looking to see what we could get. Before we’d managed anything much a pair of GCC’d Hyperions were reported and we moved to engage. I aggressed one of them and pushed both of them through the gate where Dian was waiting for them. Somehow one of them got away but the other fell to our guns.

At this point I get a bit hazy on the details. I have no idea how but I seemed to have taken GCC again while the rest of my gang were okay. (In retrospect I think I must have docked in a CONCORD station.) It seems that the last vestiges of my little break down in P3EN-E were still hanging around and I spent most of my time futilely warping around trying to avoid sentry guns while the gang called targets and began to take people down. It was a true Gunpoint Diplomacy moment as, from the chaos that the gang had become, killmails began to appear. First a Rapier, then a Tempest, Abaddon and Armageddon. By now I was feeling completely useless and thought I was probably more of a hindrance than a help at this point. It was suggested that we dock up to let everyone’s GCCs resolve and get things back on track. I took the opportunity to stretch my legs and get a change of scene. In fact, I enjoyed my change of scene so much that I didn’t really want to come back to the computer and when I did half an hour later it turned out that Suleiman Schouaa had come along to join us and had taken over the gang. Thankful to be relieved of command I apologised for my absence and decided that logging off was the best course of action for me. It seemed to work well for the gang, too as they killed a Stabber Fleet Issue in Taisy before going to what looked like a good fight in M-OEE8 followed by a Raven kill back in low sec.

So what went wrong? Well, I could blame the fact there was a big fight going on and all the locals being CTA’d into fleets but I don’t think it was that. In all honesty my heart just wasn’t in it. I’d offered to lead the gang so I logged on and did it but all day in front of a computer had just killed my passion for sitting at it any longer and my performance suffered. It probably didn’t help that I had a couple of beers but when we docked up in Nalvula I was really pleased to be able to step away from it. Thanks to Sulei for stepping up and taking control of it and also thanks to Ari for reminding me that this is just a game. Sorry to everyone who I abandoned but I was already less than useless by that point and would only have got worse. In retrospect I should have done what I normally like to do and go set up shop in someone’s home system rather than roaming and getting frustrated. I think what I really need to do is tag along to a few more gangs lead by other folk and pick up my confidence a bit.

What have I learnt? Well, the sun is shining, and the days are long. Its time to get outside more and not log into Eve just because its something to do. Especially if it means that I am going to die stupidly like I did this morning messing around in M-OEE8 with my arty cane. It is, after all, just a game. So yes, there’s going to be less ship spinning from me, more focussed killing and getting good instead. Right, time to go ride bikes…

Congratulations to Hallan Turrek, winner of the Angel Patrol lottery with ticket 79 (dice roll). His prize of a Cynabal and three Dramiels is up in Jita.

The full ticket number list was:

1. backyardempire
2. Temuil
3. Woody McDirt
4. Toecutter Helsson
5. Dirty Protagonist
6. Cle Demaari
7. Kishin Hattori
8. Planetary Genocide
9. Araquiel
10. Araquiel
11. Araquiel
12. Araquiel
13. Darth Skorpius
14. Sakineh
15. Kheign
16. Bragha
17. KampiPL
18. Lord Zekk
19. Suleiman Shouaa
20. Miura Bull
21. Ravenaire
22. Bel Amarr
23. Myrhial Arkenath
24. Jev North
25. Taediosus
26. Lhorenzho
27. TheSlicker
28. Morphisat
29. Lord Nase
30. Major JSilva
31. Major JSilva
32. Kaeda Maxwell
33. Kaeda Maxwell
34. Kaeda Maxwell
35. Ellios Rile
36. Kano Takanda
37. Kano Takanda
38. Kano Takanda
39. Kano Takanda
40. Kano Takanda
41. Kano Takanda
42. Kano Takanda
43. Kano Takanda
44. Kano Takanda
45. Kano Takanda
46. Gwydion Voleur
47. Gwydion Voleur
48. Gwydion Voleur
49. Gwydion Voleur
50. Gwydion Voleur
51. Mille Bourne
52. Thandormi
53. Thandormi
54. Thandormi
55. Thandormi
56. Thandormi
57. Thandormi
58. Thandormi
59. Thandormi
60. Thandormi
61. Thandormi
62. Thandormi
63. Thandormi
64. Thandormi
65. Thandormi
66. Thandormi
67. Tai Maac
68. Kahdath
69. Khurghan
70. Khurghan
71. Khurghan
72. Rak Vard
73. Rak Vard
74. Hallan Turrek
75. Hallan Turrek
76. Hallan Turrek
77. Hallan Turrek
78. Hallan Turrek
79. Hallan Turrek
80. Hallan Turrek
81. Hallan Turrek
82. Hallan Turrek
83. Hallan Turrek
84. Hallan Turrek
85. Hallan Turrek
86. Hallan Turrek
87. Hallan Turrek
88. Hallan Turrek
89. Bragha
90. Bragha
91. xiaxe
92. Bragha
93. Bragha
94. Darth Normski
95. Darth Normski
96. Darth Normski
97. Darth Normski
98. Darth Normski
99. Ariartus
100. Ashnazg

Thanks to everyone who entered. Better luck next time to those who didn’t win anything.

Despite being best known as a Rifter pilot the truth is that I very rarely fly the AK47 of Eve. The simple reason is that the prevalence of Dramiels and their ilk has just mean that they don’t have quite enough about them for what I want to do. I no longer do low security pirating and do almost all of my hunting as solo roaming 0.0. I tend to head for populous areas and stir the locals into giving me a fight. This means that I am usually outnumbered but I at least get fights on a fairly regular basis without having to embark on huge roams. There is a general rule of thumb for solo frigates in these circumstances, you need to have at least 200 DPS in order to be able to take people down fast enough to get out before their friends arrive. I can squeeze 165 DPS out of a Rifter with some basic implants (3% small projectile and 3% turret damage) but this is still somewhat short of ideal and leaves me low on EHP.

[Rifter, Rifterceptor]

Small Projectile Burst Aerator I
Small Projectile Collision Accelerator I

To this end I have been flying a lot of assault frigates lately and having a lot of fun in them. One of the first assault frigates that I began to fly regularly was, rather surprisingly the Enyo. The combination of fiendishly cheap hulls and high DPS blaster weapons seemed like an excellent place to start. The fit that I am currently using is blatantly stolen from Prometheus Exenthal and then slightly modified because I am by no means a fitting guru and his fits are always a good starting place.

[Enyo, Enyo Face!]

Hobgoblin II x1

Without implants and with overheating this comes to 309 DPS with Wensley’s skills. You can drop down to a T1 Burst Accelerator rig but they are so cheap these days. This entire fit comes to just 25 million ISK. Even though I fly pretty much exclusively in null security space I rarely fly without implants these days. For the Enyo I tend to opt for:

• Zaniou ‘Deadeye’ ZGS1000 – 5% small hybrid damage (8 million ISK)
• Inherent Implants ‘Noble’ ZET300 – 3% structure hitpoints (300 thousand ISK)
• Inherent Implants ‘Lancer’ Delta-G1 – 3% rate of fire (21 million ISK)
• Inherent Implants ‘Noble’ ZET500 – 3% armour hitpoints (9 million ISK)

These implants bring the total damage up to a stagger 333 DPS and increase the EHP from 7,494 to 7,690 for a total cost of approximately 40 million ISK. While this might seem like a lot, the total cost of my Enyo fit is 25 million ISK or so and I find that the extra damage proves invaluable. I very rarely lose my pod, even when fighting Sabres and other interdictors. Of course, the choice is yours but I personally find it to be worthwhile. You can always run a cheaper set by just using the ZGS1000 and ZET300 implants. I often run with a Eifyr and Co. ‘Gunslinger’ AX-1 in slot 7 for tracking bonuses when I fly railgun Taranises but that is for another post.

So, how do you fly a frigate with just two midslots? I hear you ask. The answer is pretty simple. In general you are not looking to fight solo pilots like I used to in low sec. Instead you are hunting for more inexperienced pilots who are used to flying in a gang or even fleet. Often they will let you draw them away from their friends or be over-confident that they can take out your ship. The Enyo is actually the only assault frigate to benefit from a tracking bonus which helps to overcome the lack of web, something that the Tracking Enhancer on my fit aims to capitalise on. Most targets in null sec are fit with microwarp drives rather than afterburners so a warp scrambler is usually plenty of tackle for what is required. The Enyo also has an excellent range bonus with 10% optimal range per level of the Assault Frigate skill (I have it trained to 5). This means that, once again with the Tracking Enhancer’s help, I have an optimal range of 2 km and a falloff of 3.9 km with Antimatter and an excellent 4.8 km optimal and falloff with Null meaning that I can do good damage all the way through warp scrambler range.

In general I assume that my opponent is not going to try and out-range my blasters and use Antimatter as my default ammunition. This is a pretty risky approach but I have found that most ships don’t try and pull range, even well-fit Sabres, and allows me to melt people pretty quickly. It is probably advisable to use Null unless you are completely sure. Although you do have good tracking, the point of this fit is to apply the maximum DPS as quickly as possible. You have pretty decent EHP so the best tactic is usually to set “keep at range” to something inside your optimal (or optimal + 1/2 falloff if you plan on kiting your opponent). This allows you to pummel your opponent hard and get the most out of your DPS. Unless you are fighting a cruiser or artillery/rail/rocket frigate you have little to gain by orbitting and the faster you can defeat your opponent, the faster you can get away or move onto the next target. Your guns are your tank.

One of the key things to do in a blaster frigate, especially one without a web is to make sure that you don’t overshoot your target. Once both ships are scrammed the speed difference between the two is usually only 50 m/s or so. If you can grab your opponent at point blank then they will be dead before they can pull range. This applies in particular to high DPS ships like Sabres. The trick is usually to make it look like you’re running away and let them chase you. If you burn towards each other at 3 km/s you are guaranteed to overshoot but if, as they close, you start to burn away from them and then apply your scrambler when they are at your optimal then you can dictate range very effectively. The good thing is that in general the frigates and interdictors that you encounter will assume that they can either kill or tackle you. Let them think this and you have the upper hand in the fight.

Your general tactic should be to roam around, checking in to station systems, and generally stirring people up and getting them interested. They will quite often undock ships to try and kill you and while most of them will hug the undock they will often bring out frigates to try and tackle you. Pull these 100 km or so from their gang and you can engage them pretty happily. Often you will get swarmed and running away is a key skill to practice. Once you have their interest they will try and camp you in or chase you as you try to leave. Bounce around celestials and gates, warp in at various ranges, and microwarp around. Your aim is to split them up and get yourself alone with their tackle for long enough to kill it before the heavy support comes in. It is one of the most satisfying feelings to know that the ship you’re fighting is bait or tackle and kill it and get away just as his friends land on grid.

You will die. A lot. Don’t get disheartened. Have a stock of ships at hand and as soon as you die head back to base and grab another ship. I had a black week a little while back where I got very frustrated at the losses I was racking up without any kills but I managed to pick myself up with a little help from my friends and an excellent thread on Scrapheap Challenge. Don’t be afraid. Engage anything. Have fun!

There are still plenty of tickets left for the Angel Patrol lottery, your chance to win a Cynabal and three Dramiels. To buy a ticket simply send 5 million ISK to Wensley with the reason “Angel Patrol Lottery”. If you want more than one ticket just send multiples of this amount. As soon as all the tickets are sold the dice will be unlocked and the lucky winner will receive their ships.

Angel Patrol Lottery Tickets

The ticket tracking issues have been resolved and everything is running as expected now.

ECM drones are pretty much the bane of my life. So many battlecruiser brawls have been ruined for me because my opponent carried ECM drones and they got off a couple of jam cycles, putting me in deep trouble and costing me the fight. This wouldn’t bother me so much except for the fact that it is always light ECM drones that cause me these troubles. Why can a flight of frigate sized drones lock my Hurricane out of a fight so effectively?

Let’s take a look at the ECM drones available to us:

• Hornet EC-300 – Jam Strength 1.0
• Vespa EC-600 – Jam Strength 1.5
• Wasp EC-900 – Jam Strength 2.0

So what? Those jam strengths are pretty puny when compared to best named multispectral (2.4 jam strength) and racial (3.6) jammers. Why am I getting my knickers in a twist, then? Well, in short its all to do with the way that ECM stacks, or doesn’t as the case may be.

Take a random spaceship, let’s say a Rifter, and try and jam it with an EC-300 drone. The Rifter has a LADAR sensor strength of 8. Therefore the chance of a single ECM drone jamming it is 1/8 or 12.5%. That seems pretty reasonable, don’t you think? Well, let’s see what happens if we add a second drone to the mix. There is a 87.5% chance that the first drone didn’t jam our Rifter and an 87.5% chance of the second drone not getting a jam off as well if that happens so the chance of getting jammed is now 1 – (0.875 * 0.875) = 23.5 %. If we continue this maths for the next three drones the total chance of our Rifter getting jammed is 1 – (0.875 * 0.875 * 0.875 * 0.875 * 0.875) = 48.7%. That seems fairly reasonable to me. These are frigate-sized drones and the Rifter is a frigate so they should be effective against it. A flight of Warrior IIs would make short work of it after all.

The formula for calculating the chances of getting a jam from multiple drones is:

1 – (1 – jam strength/sensor strenghth)^n where n is the number of drones.

Let’s look at how our flight of ECM drones fairs against some other ships:

What this table shows us is that even versus a battlecruiser frigate sized drones still have more than a 25 % chance of getting a jam. The thing that really stands out to me, though, is that versus a frigate EC-300s have a 49 % jam chance but EC-900s only have a 39 % chance against a battleship. Surely battleship drones should have the same relative effect on their equivalent class as frigate ones do.

The big problem for me is that no other type of electronic warfare drone is this effective. There is no point in flying with tracking disruption drones or sensor dampening drones or, heaven forbid, target painting drones. There should be no question that these things are imbalanced and need to be brought into line.

Either way, it means that a flight of EC-300s can seriously affect the outcome of a fight, even against much larger ships. One of my favourite fights is a good old battlecruiser brawl but in Great Wildlands pretty much everyone I fight has ECM drones and I pretty much always lose these fights if I get into scrambler range. Obviously if I stayed out of scrambler range and put my own drones on their EC-300s it would even things out a bit but I won’t lie, I am terrible at multitasking. So what options do I have other than just to get better?

Well, obviously one option is to carry my own ECM drones. Usually I prefer damage drones because I think they get me out of more hairy situations, more often than not with a killmail. My biggest concern is getting scrambled by a frigate under my guns and because of their excellent tracking most frigate pilots can easily shake off a flight of EC-300s. Warriors, however, usually get the job done. Especially when they are already under pressure from a neutraliser.

Instead of, or at least as well as, getting better at Eve I am looking at another idea. I usually fly with a nanofiber in one of my low slots. This gives my Hurricane very nice speed and agility but it is a property of the ship I have not really found myself having to rely on so much. Instead I am considering fitting a LADAR Backup Array II. This means that I lose some speed (1,470 m/s to 1,344 m/s) and some agility (6.93 s to 8.23 s align time) but I gain sensor strength (16 to 24). This means the chance of EC-300s jamming me goes from one in four to one in five. It might not be much of a gain but in battlecruiser and ECM heavy space like Great Wildlands I rarely need my maximum speed but every bit of ECM resistance helps.

Of course, like all experiments this might end in failure but I think its worth a shot. Sure, its not much of a difference but until ECM drones get the re-balance they deserve I’m going to try every little thing I can to increase my chances in these fights. Oh, and while in Great Wildlands I will now be carrying my own ECM drones just in case.

Edit: Jackal sets were mentioned to me on Twitter. A low-grade set would cost me about 100 million ISK or so and boost my sensor strength to 23 on a regular Hurricane and 34 on the ECCM Hurricane. Interesting. Very interesting.

Edit the second: No post on this blog would be complete without a graph these days so here’s how jam chance varies with sensor strength for a flight of EC-300s:

Last night officers of the Molden Heath Police Department formed up for a patrol into lawless space under the command of Detective Inspector Wensley. The fat cats at City Hall have launched a new initiative to tackle reckless piloting in the Geminate and Vale Regions. In all eleven officers and cadets gathered in the Teonusude precinct where they requisitioned standard issue MHPD patrol vessels.

As soon as we began our journey towards the north western suburbs we met with our first criminal. Constable Willem Revolati was attacked by a known criminal but was able to evade the attack with only minor damage to his patrol ship. We left the criminal to local law enforcement because we had more important things to do. Willem was swiftly promoted to Sergeant for his valiant role in our first contact with a perp. The patrol moved at full speed through the safe districts of Molden Heath, Heimatar, and Metropolis until we pulled over on the border of Geminate, home of several gangs and mob families. Motivational speeches were made and propoganda materials distrubuted before we decided that the most sensible thing was to stick together and the patrol jumped into EOA-ZC en masse. The area was oddly quiet except for a suspicious Tengu that looked to be a cut-and-shut job but resisted arrest. We moved into UBX-CC where we encountered our first criminals. Several unlicensed Drakes and a Tempest with an expired tax disc were loitering 100 km off the EOZ-ZC gate and the decision was made to apprehend them and check their vehicles. I’m pretty sure at least one of the Drakes had a faulty indicator light. The patrol warped to a belt, aiming to warp back to the criminals and make our arrests. As we initiated our warp back to the gate we saw the suspects landing behind us, and odd maneuverer but the criminal mind works in mysterious ways. We waited on the gate, expecting them to return to the scene of their crimes but they decided to make a break for it and left the area. Probably went to go check on their drug ring or some such. While we waited and Purifier with insufficient tire tread uncloaked amongst us and the diligent officers of MHPD made a quick arrest. As we moved on about our beat another bomber decloaked much to the distress of WPC Ariartus who yelped “BOMB BOMB BOMB!” even as the fleet aligned for warp. Thankfully no-one died despite people microwarping all over the grid at the time. “Bomb bomb bomb!” is now Constable Araiartus’ nickname.

We proceeded on our way and patrolled the mean streets of Geminate but found no more criminal activity. In the usual hot spots of L-HV5C and AP9-LV all of the hoodlums were obeying their curfew for once and remained withing the safety of their station. Unfortunately we did not have the warrants required to board the stations and search their quarters but such is the bureaucracy of the modern force, preventing the beat bobby from performing some good old fashioned police brutality.

The second district on our target list was Vale of the Silent, home of the notorious R.A.G.E. gang. We set course for the heart of R.A.G.E. operations in ZLZ-1Z and officers were ordered to lock down the neighbourhood and search all vehicles for contraband. Constable Dirty Protagonist made the first arrest when a Sabre pilot attempted to shoot at his police vessel. Our officers poured into the system, quick to respond to the “code 998” that Constable DP broadcast. The suspect was apprehended and police justice was quickly rained upon him. An accomplice appeared in a Rupture space vessel and this too was seized for inspection.

With all officers safely into the area we then proceeded to set up traffic traps on the major routes and perform inspections on any vehicles that came through. Unfortunately our traps were badly placed and several vessels were able to dock in the station and evade our officers. A Bestower, at least, was not so lucky and we were able to seize his illegal cargo.

At this point the police systems went down and we took an enforced break while the software rebooted. Once we were back online we quickly set up new check points, this time in the correct location. A couple of shady-looking Drakes undocked and we opened fire because they looked to be packing heat. Both battlecruisers retreated and we stood down for a while, manning the check points and waiting for traffic. Several ships began to undock including two carriers and an Onyx but we were unable to make any arrests due to their superior firepower so we remained on our check points. Soon two untaxed Hurricanes appeared and we pulled them over. While our officers went to work on one of the ‘Canes the criminal elements began to move closer and used radio scramblers to interfere with our police vessels. With half the patrol unable to activate their ship’s defense systems we beat a tactical retreat and decided it was best to patrol another neighbourhood.

We set course for S6QX-N where we found a Thanatos that was illegally parked. Unfortunately all that we could do about it was issue a ticket and warn him that we’d be forced to take more serious action if we saw him repeat offending. While we wrote up the citation we did what no uniformed patrol would be complete without. Yes, we formed a Comet conga line. Unfortunately I didn’t take any pictures.

By now it was late and, despite the standard issue coffee and exotic dancers, our officers were getting bored and tired. We set course for home and made best speed for our Oddelulf headquarters. On the way we failed to apprehend a speeding Rapier and Hound as well as a Prowler that was almost certainly carrying contraband. In Atlar we found the upstanding citizen Migrond Aramath being set upon by a band of unwashed students. As good and dutiful police officers we like nothing more than beating up students and the patrol came to the rescue of the humble Tempest. The student dogs fled from the justice we offered to deal out to them but we managed to apprehend their suspected leader in his Jaguar.

It had been a long night with very few criminals out in space. Maybe it was because of the patch that was deployed to all pod pilots. I think there’s a mole in City Hall and they found out about our operation and laid low. Either way, our patrol was complete, criminals had been apprehended, contraband had been seized and now we had paperwork to complete. Thankfully I have secretaries for that and I was able to head back to my quarters with a female officer I found hanging around the corridors of the precinct. Hey, even the fuzz need to kick back sometimes.

Detective Inspector Wensley signing off.

Before I made my rather in depth ammunition post I conducted a straw poll of the #tweetfleet to see which Minmatar munition they tended to load as default. I thought that in light of the numbers revealed in my post I’d present the results of that survey.

EMP is the most popular by quite a long margin with Barrage following in close behind and phased plasma, my favourite, lurking in third. I’d be curious to see how much this has changed since my post. Maybe in a few months I’ll do another and see if its changed at all.

Due to the success of last week’s Faction Frigate Lottery I’ve decided to try another that will hopefully prove as popular. This time I’m offering an Angel Cartel patrol squadron consisting of three Dramiels and a Cynabal as the grand prize. Because of the increased value of this prize there will be 100 tickets on offer, each costing 5 million ISK. To enter simply send 5 million ISK to Wensley with the reason “Angel Patrol Lottery“. Please note that if you do not use the right reason then your entry will not be processed correctly.

Rather than run the lottery based on the UK National Lottery like last time I am going to use Somer’s lottery tools and Chribba’s dice instead. These are both trusted third party tools that are tied to my account API so you can be confident of a fair outcome. If you have any problems then either reply here, e-mail me, or send me a message in game.

Visit Angel Patrol Lottery to see the lottery details including the locked dice roll and ticket list.

Good luck!

Edit: Somerset Mahm assures me that the reason the ticket list hasn’t updated yet is that the patch day messed with it all and that things will work as normal soon. Don’t worry, though, I am logging all the wallet transactions to make sure no-one gets missed.

Edit 2: Somer has got a temporary fix working now. The API apparently broke in the last patch but we are tracking tickets correctly so all is good.

One of the great things about flying Minmatar ships is that you are blessed with a choice of damage types so you can try and pick apart the hole in your opponent’s tank. Of course, the Caldari have this option although because of the damage bonuses they get, its almost always better for them to chose kinetic ammo. Gallente drone ships get a choice too, but there are a lot of differences between the drone types and you only really see explosive (speed) and thermal (damage) drones on the field. With Phased Plasma, EMP, and Fusion all doing the same basic amounts of damage with the same range and tracking characteristics we Minmatar are blessed (or cursed) with real choice when it comes to ammo selection.

Let’s start this discussion of by taking a look at the damage distribution of Minmatar munitions. The plot above shows a breakdown of the damage done by the Republic Fleet variations of the various charges and also the advanced charges. For the sake of this discussion I am not going to look at range or tracking, that’s something for another time and I’m sure I’ll touch on it in the future. The obvious thing to take away from this chart is that there is basically a choice between EMP, thermal, and explosive damage with no strong kinetic option and no charge delivering a pure damage type. For the remainder of this post I am going to ignore the Hail column. This is because its range and tracking penalties make it all but unusable and in almost all practical applications it is out-damaged by the Republic Fleet variants. I will make a post with more detail on this in the future.

In the two charts above I have looked at how these munitions stack up against the raw T1 resist profile for shields and armour. Its pretty obvious that EMP is the best choice against shields and Fusion the best choice against armour. What happens if people patch up their resist hole, though?

With the EM hole patched then Phased Plasma becomes the default choice against shield tankers. Even after just one anti-EM screen reinforcer rig it is better to shoot with Phased Plasma. With two EM rigs and a thermal one things level out a touch but Phased Plasma still edges ahead so it is always a good choice against Caldari ships and other shield tankers who are likely to have patched their hole even with a single rig. That means things like Dramiels and shield Hurricanes for starters.

If we look at armour tankers then once again we see that with the explosive hole plugged, Phased Plasma becomes the best option. Because there is no ammunition choice with strong kinetic damage it doesn’t matter if they look to patch their second hole instead. So, against armour tankers that are likely to have patched their explosive hole (think dual-repair Myrmidons, battleships) then Phased Plasma becomes the best choice unless they have a thermal hardener as well.

In summary, then, Phased Plasma is an excellent ammunition choice against T1 shield tanking ships because it does excellent damage, even if they have made an effort to patch their EM hole. Against armour ships the choice is a bit more complicated and I would still usually opt for Fusion initially and then switch to Phased Plasma if you have a hard time breaking them or suspect an active hardener. For this reason I usually roam with Phased Plasma in my guns as a default load. This way I have a good chance of being able to deliver damage against any target (especially Dramiels and Sabres) that I might come across and need to fight in a hurry. Things get a bit more interesting when we look at T2 tanks, though.

Let’s start with Minmatar ships such as the Vagabond and Jaguar. These ships get a bonus to their EM and thermal resists to counter the Amarrian lasers they are designed to face. Because of this, Fusion is the best choice against a vanilla Minmatar T2 tank. In general advanced Minmatar ships favour a kiting approach and view their tank as just a hitpoint buffer so more often than not the holes are not patched. If they are though it is usually done by adding a kinetic and explosive resistance rig. Even if this is the case, Fusion is still your best ammo choice and you should load it up anyway. The only caveat that I will add here is that obviously these ships are fast and rangey so you might want to look at the extra range that Barrage offers while still having good damage if you are not confident that you will engage in Fusion range.

The Amarr are the natural enemy of Minmatar ships and as such their T2 ships have strong resistances against explosive and kinetic damage. You can clearly see how they counter-act the vast majority of the Minmatar munitions choices but they are still very vulnerable to Phased Plasma. Cruiser-sized and above ships are very likely to patch their biggest resist hole and with a single thermic hardener the advantage switches to EMP and this is a good choice against Zealots, Sacrileges, Guardians, etc.

Gallente T2 ships have very high kinetic and thermal resists making Phased Plasma completely useless against them. Instead Fusion becomes the ammunition of choice although if they opt to plug this hole then EMP takes over. A lot of ships like Ishkurs and Deimoses will plug this basic hole so I tend to always chose EMP against T2 Gallente ships.

Finally we come to Caldari who have a similar set of resists to the Gallente but with a much higher emphasis on thermal. Because of the sheer size of the EMP hole it is a very good bet that there is at least a resistance rig or two if not an active hardener covering that hole. In this case Fusion is your friend and will do surprisingly good damage.

Even more so than against T1 targets, this quickly devolves into an attempt to guess whether your opponent has filled their resistance hole or not. If you have the time then you can check the killboards and see how they fit their ships. This should allow you to pick exactly the right ammunition. What I wanted to show you here is that the choices can be slightly counter intuitive with EMP often being the best choice against Amarr and Gallente armour ships while Fusion gives you good damage against Caldari and Minmatar shield tankers.

This level of choice can be both a blessing and a curse. I was inspired to make this post by my friend Suleiman Schouaa asking what kind of ammo to load before various fights. Because I tend to roam with Phased Plasma loaded and only change when specifically needed the response was just a puzzled silence and in the subsequent fight we lost a bit of damage due to people switching out their ammo for something different. In general, though, I think sticking with Phased Plasma would have been a good choice. We would have been able to put good damage on both the shield tanking ships and their supporting Scimitars without having to switch. If it had been an armour gang then things would still have been good with nice damage against Guardians, Zealots, and other armour ships.

So in conclusion I’ve just bombarded you with a vast array of choices and decisions to make but my take home message would be that in gangs at least flexibility and therefore Phased Plasma is king. If you’re not sure what to load you won’t go far wrong with it and the situations where it is a terrible choice are relatively uncommon. At the end of the day its all a game of rock, paper, scissors but remember that paper is usually a good choice. (Actually I could probably ramble on quite a lot comparing RPS strategy to Eve ammo choice so I better stop now.)