My Killboard Usage

Now that I'm participating in PvP a whole lot more, I am drawn to a tool that was always neglected before.  That tool is the Eve killmail, which can be accessed in your combat log, or your corporations war tab under kill reports.  While these are ways to access your killmails in game, killmails are also processed via api on several sites.  I've found this bit of information to be highly educational, but also misleading.  The way the killmail system works is that if you take some sort of aggressive action towards a ship, even though you may have done nothing damage wise, you will still end up participating on the killmail.  The reason this is very misleading is that the websites that process killmails keep track of your win/loss ratio in regard to ships and ISK.  So it is very easy to skew your killboard to be favorable.  Does this mean it's without its merits?  Nope, it just means that you have to pay close attention when analyzing the killboard for information that you are looking for.

Some people treat a killboard as the end all be all about a pilot's success with the ratio between damage in ISK caused, and damage in ISK received.  In part this is true but you need to take into effect that I could have lost 500 mISK in ships, but getting a pot shot off on a titan in a rookie ship could keep my ISK efficiency above 90% even if that is the only kill that I have on my board.  So while it is good to look at and compare with, you shouldn't treat it as having the last word.  Looking at public and my own personal killboard, there are a few main purposes in how I use that information.

• To see all the shinnies people have lost.
• To see how people fit their ships and whether to follow or avoid their example based on the circumstances of the fight, which I am able to determine.
• To see how fast I am losing ships and the cost that I am losing them so that I can measure that against my ISK income.
• To measure the success of certain fits in which I have gotten kills and compare that to the fits of my losses.
• To see if I am actually causing more damage than I am taking (not to be confused with whether or not that loss hurts my opponent but to see that if I'm fielding 21 mISK ships but I keep dying to 4 mISK ships I probably need to change something.  Whether that is with my current fit, or in my approach to the engagement.)

Of these five examples, there are only 2 that deal directly with ISK in direct correlation with me.  Of those 2, one is used for budget planning and the other while taking into effect the efficiency ratio of ISK dealt and ISK lost, is used as an analysis method to help me lose less ISK in the future.

While the information that is provided with the killmail is useful and detailed in some areas it is lacking in others.  A few more bits of information that I would like included on killmails would be.

• How long the ship lasted from when it was first shot/scrammed/webbed etc.
• How much of the total damage dealt was from active repair modules whether personal or friendly.
• Give a generalized sequence of events kind of like a condensed combat log.

I would like to see these bits of information to give more context into the fight.  I believe that this would help clarify a bit more on the success or failure of the fit, e.g. the ship is active tank fit but it never activated its modules doesn't mean the fit is necessarily bad.

So when you're looking at your own killboard don't always focus on efficiency because it can be very misleading, instead figure out what you want from the information and apply that scope to the killboard and you may be surprised at the different picture it paints.