Day 3: Pirates in an adventure with scientists

“We're not really scientists. lt's us, the pirates. See? Masters of disguise”
- Priates in an adventure with Scientists (Aardman Animations)

Thinking more about that Heron, I started wondering if my Imicus could achieve the same result. It has one less mid-slot than the Heron and that means losing the sensor booster as all of the other modules are essential. And that got me started on some full-on EVE maths. As has often been said, EVE is just a giant spreadsheet with slightly better graphics.

Eve University has a detailed article on targeting which includes this rather scary equation for calculating lock time.

I don't think I have ever knowingly deployed an arcsinh before, let alone squaring it. However, some fancy footwork with Google sheets yields the following insights.

		Scan Resolution
Ship	Sig	430	715	860	1,070
Probe	38	4.96s	2.98s	2.48	1.99s
Magnate	39	4.90s	2.95s	2.45	1.97s
Heron	40	4.84s	2.91s	2.42	1.95s
Imicus	41	4.79s	2.88s	2.39	1.92s

Eveil's Heron fit has a scan resolution of 860, which gives a lock time of between 2.39 and 2.48 seconds (depending on the signature radius of the particular T1 explorer being targeted). For comparison's sake, the base scan resolution of the Heron is 430. As the table above shows, the increase in scan resolution halves the lock time.

As the game works in one second ticks, the commonly accepted wisdom for align time is that there is no advantage in reducing it unless you can get it under the next whole number (eg reducing from 2.9 to 2.1 is still three game ticks and hence a waste of fitting). I am assuming that the same logic applies to targeting time.

My calculations - if they are correct - show that in order to get a sub-three-second lock time against any of the T1 exploration frigates, I need a signature resolution of greater than 715. To get it under two seconds, it needs to be over 1,070, which I don't think is achievable with my current skills and budget.

After doing all the math I tried a sample fit only to realise that whilst the Imicus can field one more drone than the Heron, it only has a single turret slot. With my current lack of drone skills, this leaves its DPS far too short to be a viable option. So that take me back to the Heron.

Well that was fun. Pirates can do science!

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