Aligning

Definition

To align a ship means to set it in motion towards towards a faraway object, usually done in preparation for warping to it. A ship is aligned when it is moving in the direction of the object and is traveling at a velocity of at least ¾ of the ship's maximum speed. When these conditions are both met, issuing the warp command will cause your warp drive to engage immediately.

The equation defining the time to enter warp is:

TimeToWarp = -ln(0.25) × Mass_kg × Agility / 1000000

The ln(0.25) element means this equation is actually finding how long it takes to reach 75% of the ship's maximum velocity, given by the remaining terms.

If you give the warp command without aligning the ship in advance, the ship will attempt to align itself automatically. Automatic alignment may be hindered by the presence of nearby obstacles (such as other ships or asteroids) which must be negotiated before your ship can build up enough speed for the warp drive to engage.

How to

Prior to the Empyrean Age patch it was necessary to manually double-click in space near the intended destination in order to realign your ship. There is now the option "Align to" which will allow a ship to accurately align to most celestial objects which can be accesses either through the "selected item" interface or via right-click context menu. Note that there are many instances in which the "Align to" option is either undesired or unavailable for the target in question. In such cases it is a simple matter to double-click in the direction which you wish the ship to align to after having adjusted your camera facing. Regardless of the method used, the ship must be maintaining a velocity of at least 75% of maximum before warp drives can be initiated. Note that when a ship comes to a complete stop (zero velocity) it will tend to level itself to a horizontal plane and so it is generally good practice to maintain velocity when aligning towards most objects. It is for this reason that a ship isn't considered to be properly aligned unless it is also moving at at least 75% of its full thrust.

Aligning within fleets

While in a fleet, proper alignment ensures that all ships will initiate warp simultaneously when prompted by the leader's "warp fleet to..." command. This will not only help to maintain the formation of the fleet upon re-entry from the warp bubble (within the limitations of an individual ship's warp speed) but will also prevent less agile vessels from falling behind, making them more vulnerable to hostile attack.

It should be noted that ships using an active cloaking device will not automatically fall into a "fleet warp" formation and will be required to manually follow the main force. This does not apply to ships under the complimentary cloaking provided upon gate exit, however. Ships under such cloaking will immediately respond to the fleet warp command.

The "slingshot" technique

Many large ships, such as freighters, industrials and battleships are less agile than their smaller escorts and require a considerably longer amount of time to realign to new bearings. This process can be facilitated using the mechanics inherent in a stasis webifier.

As the initiation of warp drives requires the ship to be travelling in a straight line at a velocity of no less than 75% of their current maximum, this process is hastened by simply reducing the maximum velocity of the ship in question. The stasis webifier affects its target by reducing its maximum velocity by a large percentage (generally from -50% to -60%) without affecting its acceleration. This effectively allows the target ship to achieve its required velocity in a proportionately shorter time. This "slingshot" technique is very effective and has been known to be used in evasive maneuvers as well as purely navigational ones.

Note that in Empire space, the use of a stasis webifier constitutes an aggressive act and will result in criminal flagging towards the pilot in question unless both participants are within the same corporation. In areas of low security this is usually immediately followed by a barrage of fire from the nearest gate sentries, but in high security sectors additional CONCORD intervention is to be expected.

'Passive' Alignment

Especially in larger fleet situations where a fleet would be positioned near a target for an extended period of time, such as a player owned station tower or other static target, it used to be common practice to have ships 'passive align' to a celestial. This practice is less common now, but pilots can still be seen to use it occasionally.

There is no benefit to the ship and how long it takes to get into warp; in EVE, ships are modelled as vectors, and the actual orientation of the engines has no relevance to the direction in which thrust is applied. Therefore the time to warp when passive aligned is the same as if the ship were pointing in the opposite direction but stationary.

Passive alignment can provide a visual indicator of where the fleet is expecting to warp out to, but this can be seen by enemy scout pilots and enable hostile fleets to spring a trap on the fleet's warpout position, so the technique is typically avoided by most fleet commanders.