Tackling 101

Greetings to Tracking and you - spiral! - thanks to Una Cerveza

Eve has a scale of ships. Large ships have large guns that struggle to track small ships. These small ships can 'get under the guns', meaning their large guns cannot track a small ship. A frigate can kill a Naga pretty easily when it gets under the naga's large guns.

There are a couple opposing stats here. Each gun has a 'tracking speed' and every flying ship has a 'tranversal velocity' or an 'angular velocity'. If their tracking speed is low and your transversal is high, they won't be able to hit you. If your 'signature radius' is low, that makes you even harder to hit. If you're running a microwarp drive, your signature 'blooms' and you become huge, making you easier to hit. In the end, speed is more important. :smile:

When you see a target, you have four general things you can do.

1. E and click and you'll keep at range. This is worst case. You'll approach them, then stop, going zero speed, zero transversal.

2. Q and click and you'll approach target. If they are shooting at you, you most likely will die because you have zero transversal, huge sig, their big guns track you perfectly.

3. W and click and you'll orbit at your default. Again, you're mostly going straight towards them, so bad.

4. Spiral!

Note, drones and missiles don't care about these mechanics and will generally be able to hit you anyway.  Drone use turret mechanics, but they have good tracking, and there is often 5 of them.  Just out running these two is often 'enough'.

So, Spiraling in on a target is something that every tackle pilot has to grapple with. Spiraling is just a skill you practice with. There a couple ways to do it.

1. Double click in space, nearer and nearer. Until you get close, then click orbit.

2. Orbit at a high amount, like 30km, then move closer and closer using the radial menu. Note, this can lead to disaster because your ship can stop to change orbit.

So, want to practice? Orbit a ship in standing fleet, see if they can shoot you. :smile:

Edit: thanks to @tzophiayah for this description on tackling.

For ranges in general there is point kite (~20km), scram kite (~7km), and brawling (~500m). When flying tackle for a fleet you aren't worried about your own damage application so you always want to be orbiting. Against launchers you want your own velocity to be as high as possible (typically a wider orbit), against turrets you want your angular velocity with respect to your target to be as high as possible (typically a tighter orbit or at least getting under their guns), and against drones you want to maximize the angular velocity with respect to each drone which in practice means own velocity as high as possible. Whether all that means voluntarily leaving your MWD on and taking the sig bloom or not depends on your ship, your target's weapons, and if there is anything else targeting you. Then there are factors like staying out of smart bomb range, getting into your optimal nos range, etc. Finally there are techniques like manually piloting into the orbit to keep transversal up against turrets, drive-by scrams, avoiding getting sling-shotted, trying to stay aligned and able to warp out (vs. suiciding your ship) etc. All that being said, clicking orbit at 20km/7km/500m and burning right at them is fine unless you are getting locked up haha. Note that this is all mostly focusing on a single target. In a fleet/gang the ship you are trying to tackle isn't necessarily what is trying to force you off.