In other words:

Would it make sense, or be remotely feasible, for the signature resolution of a gun to be changed to an *angular* resolution, and then apply this as a scaling factor directly onto the hit-chance formula rather than as a modifier to tracking?

So, instead of a gun having a signature resolution of "40m", it might have one of "5 minutes of arc"/"0.0015 radians" (numbers pulled firmly from my rear end); it would start to miss a 40m-sig target at a distance where that 40m constitutes no more than 5 minutes of arc from the gun's POV, i.e. at about 26.7km. (I should really be using diameter for this, but I'm using radius instead since sig's an arbitrary construct anyway, ~dealwithit~)

A 400m-sig gun would have a resolution of 50 minutes of arc/0.015 radians, and would start to miss a 400m-sig target at a distance where that 400m constitutes no more than 50 minutes of arc from the gun's POV - again, at about 26.7km.

However, the small gun wouldn't start to see sig-based misses against a 400m target until past max lock range, whereas the large gun would start to see sig-based misses against the 40m target at 2.7km - at which point, the small target should probably have enough transversal tracking would take over.


I'm not sure if this would cause issues by having two separate limiting factors on range (raw range limit, i.e. projectile just petering out/laser diffusing, plus sig-res based misses), but seems to solve the zero-transversal problem while not causing the "hit a mosquito with a sledgehammer and it survived, wtf" problem. Would probably require substantial balancing to see how it impacts subcap play (in particular, it seems like it would be a blaster buff, since at blaster ranges everything would be such a "big" target as to render the extra miss chance irrelevant).

tl;dr Changing gun sig res to "angular" resolution rather than a flat radius decouples sigres from tracking without causing "hit that rifter in the face with 4000mm artillery and he survived, wtf" issues, and also makes physical sense.

EDIT: Would also have the comedy result that a titan can blap a frigate, but only if that frigate is holding still and literally touching the muzzle of the cannon - which I find perfectly acceptable :P

This is a really strong argument. I'm now leaning away from using damage scaling as a general solution to this issue in future, and towards messing directly with the damage formula. That's not a commitment, but I buy the argument about too much RPS and not enough player skill.