The Eve Fitting Tool (EFT) is a
great way to identify whether a fitting you want to use will actually work, and
tweak that fitting to your purposes.
That said, you need to keep in mind certain limitations of the summary window to the right of your fitting. For example, EFT consistently over-estimates
the amount of damage you can take.
Look at any kill mail, and plug
that fitting into EFT. For the sake of
argument, let’s use the “All Level V” skill option. The kill mail probably reflects about 1/3 the
damage EFT says you should take. That’s
because EFT lists “effective hp”, which modifies your damage by your ship’s
shield and armor resistances. The only
damage that matters is the kind that shows up in your Eve client in little red
numbers in the center of your screen. It
doesn’t matter if you have 53,000 ehp… if you’re taking 500 damage, that’s 500
damage off your shields or armor.
Also, keep in mind that EFT's summary about your tank
makes no reference to repair modules… you need to calculate the total effect of an active tank
yourself. And that 500 shield every 5
seconds will do you much more good if you’re facing a single opponent than it
will if you’re facing many.
But another area EFT fails at is
DPS. The DPS numbers you see are within
optimal range. Tell me… how many
opponents are going to fight a Gallente ship point-blank and let you get your
full DPS on them? If you fly a Minmatar
ship, you’re probably fighting in falloff range (if you’re doing it right),
which cuts your DPS down to between ¾ and ½.
It’s tempting to think that a
Hurricane gets 717 dps with drones, and think you can go toe-to-toe with
anything out there. But about 100 dps of
that is drone damage, which is delayed and subject to being destroyed, and the
rest is subject to falloff penalties.
Your real DPS may be around 400-450.
And we haven’t even gotten to tracking
yet. If your guns can’t track a target,
you won’t apply any damage whatsoever.
If your missiles can’t track, the damage they apply will be seriously
reduced.
But that’s a subject for another
post. Just don’t go thinking that EFT’s
stats are gospel truth. If you do,
you’ll be in for a harsh reality.
I love your blog. This post, though, I am dissappoint. EHP from EFT shows a simple calculation of HPxresists. Which is how it works in EVE. When you see 500 in red letters on a ship with 50% resist, be happy you didn't take 1000 at 0%. EFT reflects that. EFT also shows HP regen/sec, in addition to sustained HP regen/sec (sustainable infinitely as long as you aren't neuted). EFT also has a damage calculator which can show you actual DPS predictions based on target sig radius, transversal, etc.
ReplyDeleteEFT has a lot of great tools, you should talk about them.
EFT does have a lot of advantages, and I use it for every ship I fit. However, when going into a fight, it's better to underestimate your ship than overestimate it. I've seen a lot of complaints from pilots saying, "I had 40k ehp... why didn't I last longer?", and this post is meant to help newer pilots understand that. It's just that, when you see "xxx pilot does 500 damage with Heavy Neutron Blaster II", you're in much worse shape than it might initially appear from the numbers you expect in EFT.
DeleteAnd you're right about the DPS charts, but I've never seen a DPS chart in any ship fitting discussion. Players who post and discuss fittings assume readers understand all those considerations, when newer pilots don't.
EFT's great, but within certain limitations. Thanks for the thoughts, and for reading.