Originally by: Gartel Reiman

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It might be interesting to see the sig radius modifier implemented how I (and possibly many others) would expect it to work based on the description I first read on the tracking guide (I see they've changed it now). IIRC it was something along the lines of weapons only being able to 'see' in multiples of their signature radius. So the large rails could tell that their target was within the 400m square they fired at, and counted it as a hit, whereas the round could have landed within that square but missed the frigate which only took up a proportion of it.

Basically, sig radius today counts as a multiplier to tracking (so a stationary ship will hit any other stationary ship in range, regardless of size). What if it was instead used as a final multiplier to hit chance? That is, assume that all battleship weapons (with a 400m sig resolution) fire their shots at 'random' points within a 400m circle around the target, so they will only ever have a maximum chance of 10% to hit a 40m frigate? (The illustrations on page 2 of the current Tracking Guide still imply it works this way).

Now this will make battleship-class weapons almost useless against frigates except for lucky shots - which I daresay should be the case. A battleship could still use light drones as a counter, but anti-frigate platforms which specifically sport small-sized weapons would be much more in demand. As signature radius became more of a factor, we might see afterburners being used more in PvP too as the MWD's sig radius penalty becomes more relevant.

I'd expect some vocal resistance to this (after all, 'standard' medium weapons will have at most 30% chance to hit a 'standard' frigate); but this is how I assumed sig radius worked when I started playing, and I daresay it would make it more relevant and increase the use of both smaller ships in general (esp. with the nerf to heavy NOS) and correspondingly anti-frigate roles like the destroyer. It would also make large engagements more interesting as there would be more tactical opportunities, such more frigate-on-frigate dogfighting, and cruisers focusing on enemy destroyers in order to give the friendly frigates more freedom to operate.

As it stands now, it's pretty easy for large weapons to hit just about anything, especially if they're webbed. Giving a flat chance-to-hit modifier based on sig radius would certainly 'make sense'; I'm not sure how balanced it would be but I think it could be interesting.

Thoughts?

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