A Signature Resolution

Ripard Teg over at Jester's Trek has made a couple of quite spurious posts recently. It started fairly innocently, with him stating in passing that a Ferox sniping with Spike effectively has worse tracking then a Naga sniping at the same range with faction ammo.

While it's true that the Ferox's tracking speed is worse, a number of respected PVPers commented that because the Naga's larger guns have a much higher signature resolution, it's tracking in practice is actually much worse. Ripard proceeded to double down on his mistake, claiming that signature resolution is not working as intended, and that it has little effect on the ability of large guns to hit small targets. He even published an entire second post to establishing his position that, while he knew that was how signature resolution should work, it was quite definitely not working in that fashion.


While Ripard occasionally takes up controversial positions, his posts have a reputation for being well informed and well reasoned - it's quite rare to find one that's clearly and demonstrably wrong, much less so two within the space of 24 hours! I'm not generally one for internet arguments, however Ripard is currently a shoe in for a spot on CSM8, and personally I like my CSM members to be well informed about how the game works. With that in mind, I decided to jump on the test server and prove Ripard wrong.

In Ripard's own words "The math is failing... And trust me, I know math".

Well Ripard you may know math(s), but I know Science!

How to Move a Capital Ship

This may seem like a fairly bland topic (and unlike most things on this blog, isn't directly PVP related), but from my own experience I know it's something that many newer players don't really understand. Given the potential consequences should you get it wrong, I think it probably deserves an explanation. Before I tell you how to do it right however, let me tell you a story about doing it wrong.

Back when I was relatively new to Eve, I was part of a small hisec carebear alliance. Our corp had some pretensions to PVP and lowsec, but realistically none of us really knew much outside of hisec missioning to the point where your faithful narrator, having been on the receiving end of a few uneventful hisec wars and with a whole 2 killmails under my belt, was the corp's leading expert on the subject.

I remember one of the other corps in our alliance recruited someone who owned a carrier, and they wanted to move it closer to our base of operations. Having never dealt with capitals before, we just found a quiet lowsec system and lit our cyno at a safespot to bring the carrier in, before having it warp to station and dock up. Looking back, this was a pretty dangerous thing to do - had anyone chosen to warp to our cyno it wouldn't have been hard for them to tackle our carrier, or at the very least kill our solitary cyno rapier. By blind luck nobody did so, and it wasn't until some time later that I realised just how bad an idea that had been. So how should we have done it?

Note that this article deals simply with moving capital ships in a non-combat sense. This is not a guide to hotdropping or using a capital ship in combat.

Nullsec Survival - Bubble Avoidance

In the first article of my bubbles series, I talked about how bubbles work. Bubbles are a major aspect of nullsec life, and one of the things that often worry empire dwellers when heading into the great beyond. However, understanding the mechanics is only only half the battle; in this article, I'm going to explain how best to actually avoid them.

We're going to start off with the relatively simple task of avoiding drag and catch bubbles. After that, we'll look at how to escape from bubble-equipped gatecamps.

Bubble Mechanics

When it comes to venturing into nullsec for the first time, you'll no doubt hear a lot of talk about bubbles. To a nullsec resident bubbles are a fundamental part of PVP, while to the daytripper they're often a confusing and deadly phenomenon that's best avoided at all costs.

While bubble are indeed a fairly complex subject, the mechanics behind them are fairly simple once you get your head around it. In this post I'm going to explain the basics of how bubbles work, as well as some of the ways they you might use them. This article will focus on bubbles in general; I'm also working on an article specific to interdictors, which will cover some of the ways in which you can use these bubbles to your advantage.

Damage Types in PVP

If you've ever done PVE in Eve (which let's face it, you probably have), you'll have learned early on which damage types are put out by which rats. When you have an idea of which opponents you'll be facing, this can be incredibly useful in ensuring that your tank is up to scratch. In PVP things tend to much less predictable, however there are still occasions when you might be going into a fight with a reasonable idea of what your opponent will be bringing (or at the very least, you'll know once you encounter them and will need to make a quick decision as to whether an engagement is a good idea or not). For this, understanding which damage types you're likely to face when engaging a particular player ship can be very useful knowledge.

Drones vs Frigates

A corpmate and I were recently discussing which drones to use for killing frigates in a bait cruiser. The ship in question had a 40m3 drone bay and he had until then been using a mix of mediums and lights, however I mentioned that a flight of light drones would probably still deal more damage even though the target was heavily webbed. The basis for this is that despite the target being almost stationary, the orbit of the drones themselves would cause medium drones to miss a large proportion of their shots, giving them a lower actual damage output than the more consistent light drones.

We quickly realised that while we each had our own opinions, neither of us had really tested it to find out for sure. To settle the argument once and for all, I decided to jump onto SiSi and do exactly that!

The Truth About Signature Resolution

One of the comments on my previous post raised quite an interesting question regarding signature resolution. The comment was this:

Include a graphic showing how the shots randomly hit within the signature resolution then compare it to the ships signature radius.

This refers to a method of describing how signature resolution works, and it's a method I've used in the past when explaining it to people. The fact is, unfortunately, that it is wrong. Since I may partly be to blame for giving people this impression, I thought that it was only right I set the record straight.

Video - Tracking and Spiralling

(Updated Jan 7th 2012)

For those of you who are familiar with Agony's public PVP classes, you'll know our PVP-Basic class covers a shedload of theory. A lot of it many of the students already know, and at around 5 hours it takes up a huge chunk of time which could be spent more productively by actually PVPing.

For this reason, we're currently undergoing a project to convert the whole theory portion of that class into a series of high quality video lectures, which students can watch in their own time. These will be publicly available, meaning anyone can watch them - even people who have no interest on coming on our classes.

Quick Tips - Undock Punting

I'm sure you're familiar with the following situation - your gang is docked in station, and there's a hostile camp on the undock. Maybe you don't all have undock bookmarks, or maybe the other guys just have fast lockers and you're not confident you'll be able to slip their grasp. Wouldn't it be great if there was a way to get your whole fleet out, risk free?

Well, I have some good news for you: There is!

Quick Tips - Cap Dumping

You enter a system in 0.0 where you have no bookmarks. The gate you want to warp to is off scan range from any celestial, and there are hostiles in local. How do you get within scan range of the gate without warping to it (and potentially straight into a camped bubble)?

5 Common Myths About PVP

As you probably know, I spend a lot of time talking to people who aren't very experienced in PVP. Along the way I hear a lot of the same misconceptions, and I'd like to take a moment to set a few of them straight (or at least, post lots of words about them in the hope that it helps somebody out!)

I originally had a list of about 10 of these, but rather than terrifying you with a wall of text I've narrowed it down to 5. Hopefully anyone who has taken a class with me already knows most of these, but for those who haven't, hopefully there's something in here for you.

The Rise of the Afterburner - Debunking the Myths of Speed Tanking

I hear a lot of discussion regarding speed tanking, especially from newer players. It seems like there are a number of myths regarding this subject, and I thought I'd take this opportunity to clear a few of them up.

When people talk about 'speed tanking', they tend to lump together two concepts which are in fact, very much seperate:

1. The ability to outrun your opponent's tracking speed.
2. The ability to kite, disengage and control range.

To understand why people make this connection, we need to look back in history a little.