Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Fit ECCM.

ECCM is even more useless than this entire thread

Personally, I'd like to see ECM changed so jams are never 100%.... Perhaps each jammer would have a max jam probability of 90%...

Truth be told though, most ECM ships are very weak, and easily dealt with. Additionally, I think they plan to buff other ewar though, so any ECM changes should be balanced apporpriately.. (meaning no change is necessarily needed).

Jamming is a lottery, and its ruining the essence of the game. You can prepare, you can train, you can test fits,
control the way you fight, win or loose a fight because you were not sufficient prepared.

The only way to control ecm atm is to avoid fights where ecm is present.

Every other form of electronic warfare is predictable, has this effect and can be countered by a mod that has
the opposite effect.

Either change jamming to a predictable form, either change the other electronic warfare to random, like warp disruptor
has a chance to disrupt warp, etc...

I'd support that. E-war needs more dices.

Well, I guess the chance for disruptors would be fairly high. 90%? 85%? You know, mainly for the feeling "Wow, I was so lucky, his disruptor failed!" then making it into a story and telling that to friends in all channels and bars.

I would kinda like to see ecm have more of a deterministic effect, however I don't really have any suggestions how to change it from how it is.

The issue lies within the concept behind ECM overall.

Let's look at each racial electronic warfare capabilities, and compare them:

Amarr:
Energy Neutralization:
Punishes anything with excess cap usage (Active Tanks, Lasers, Hybrids). But it has hard counters like Cap Injectors, which work very nicely against it. (Even if your Harbinger is neuted by a Bhaal, you can still fire your guns and keep points on) - cap easy ships (Minmatar in particular) are nearly unaffected by this.

Tracking Disrupting.
This directly affects gun users, but does not completely block out their damage. Also countered by tracking computers/enhancers/links.


Minmatar: Webs/Target Painters. First one is an annoyance at best, it simply slows you down. Hard countered by MWD and oversized ABs. Second one is a beautiful tool to increase that missile damage, and vastly increase damage against ships that employ a sig/speed tanking technique across your fleet with just one single module alone for example.


Gallente: Scrams/Warp Disruptors. Long points are nice. Extra long points are cool. They merely prevent warp off in case of the point, and also shut down MWDs for the Scram. Again, this is countered by getting out of range. Also, Warp Core Stabilizers do exist (though somewhat situational, but they exist nevertheless)


Caldari: ECM. Works for everything, except local modules. Also, the only counter - ECCM - is relatively weak.

Let's put this into actual real world numbers:

Falcon has a 65% chance of jamming an Archon.
Falcon has a 65% chance of jamming an ECCMed + Remote ECCMed Guardian.
Falcon has a 75% chance of jamming an ECCMed Bhaalgorn.
Falcon has a 96% chance of jamming an plain Bhaalgorn.


And ontop of that, it can do that at 80km Range. Beyond that he will simply lose some chance of doing it (which means sitting at 120km, he can still jam out that plain Bhaalgorn with a 50% chance).

This is sick. Against unbonused sub-cap ships, a Falcon can practically perma jam anything. And it hard counters *any* of their targeted capabilities, unlike the other E-War stuff, which tackles very specific capabilities. Once you add more ECM on the field, it just gets better since there are no stacking penalty. Each single jam has it's own seperate chance of going off.

It affects *all* targeted modules, while *all* other E-War attacks very specific attributes of a ship. And it's far too strong at that. Then add a ridiculous long time of 20s if a jam goes off.

The mere fact that Jamming ships is always on the top of the priority list demonstrates that. When ships need to be killed off the field above anything else almost no matter what fleet composition either fleet has, then there's something wrong with that ship.

To conclude this point:
* Chance based without stacking penalties means the more you have, the merrier.
* Chances of a single bonused jamming ships are far too high. They can pretty much jam anything sub-cap with ease. If they fit * ECCM and get remote ECCM, they can still jam you with a 40-60% chance.
* Unlike other E-War it affects *all targeted modules*.


Combine these three points, and it's obvious that the whole concept ECM is just plain broken.

Shifting chances around won't change any of that in any meaningful way.

The only sensible thing to do really, is by removing it and replacing it with something more sensible. For example (and this is just a random idea, not a suggestion - though I do like it!) a "Resistance Nano Disruptor" that directly disrupts a targets resistances in some way.

I agree that the cycle/jam time is too long and that ECCM could be more than near to useless, but other than that, I don't see a problem. ECM doesn't affect all modules, it only affects most of other e-war, most remote reps/links/etc and most attack modules.It doesn't affect drones that already do what they are supposed to do (e.g. attack the Faclon/Kitsune), tank, speed... I'm sure there is more, but I can't recall right now as I'm at work looking for my boss to come any minute.
ECM ships are paper-thin, any fleet can get rid of them fast enough.

By the way, how exactly did you get the numbers?

Please refer to this article for the formulae:

http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Electronic_warfare_guide

And use PyFa/EFT/EveHQ to determine sensor strength/jamming strength for various combinations.


It only affects *all* other e-war, *all* remote reps/links/etc, and *all* attack modules (Please don't get me started on F.O.F missiles).

Does not leave much. You can warp off, fly around, rep yourself, have command processors/warfare links running - but other than that, you can not contribute to the fleet in any other way whatsoever. Right, this is not a problem?

Drones yes, I grant you that. But as you pointed out yourself, they will only do what they were told to do the last time. And attacking the Falcon/Kitsune with drones will be impossible if he's 80km away (drone control range!). Especially since a Jammer will have you locked and jammed long before you can acquire a lock on him, not just because he's likely to have a much smaller signature radius than you, but also because he has the advantage of surprise with the cloak in a Falcon.