Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Disclaimer: I know nothing about null or how this may affect balance out there. This is aimed at lowsec PvP, so feel free to leave your vicious hate comments below .

As someone who flies ECM, I very much believe in both its viability (obviously) and its legitimacy (you won’t hear me whining about it being overpowered or whatever). But in real life, every weapon system eventually gives rise to a counter weapon system. I think it’s high time for us EWAR pilots to have something to worry about! Plus this would just be cool, that’s the main reason.

The way it sits right now, ECM piloting is all about target management and coordination with other ECM pilots in the friendly fleet to maximize effectiveness. If you get called primary, what do you do? Sit there and sweat it out while your hero logi saves the day, or die. Or, if you are fighting in familiar territory, you warp off to a tactical bookmark, breaking their lock, and repeat process. Got tackled? So the hell what? You have logi. Got tackled and primaried? Switch all jams to tackle and warp to tactical, then continue being an unkillable pain in the ass. Yes, all this requires some quick thinking and good piloting, but frankly, it’s still frustrating as all hell. Add to that the fact that a lazier (or, perhaps smarter) Blackbird pilot can sit at 200km and toss jams into a fight with relative impunity.

Now, before I make my suggestion, let me make clear that this is a very niche ship. I’d liken it to an interdictor: useless, except when it isn’t.

Introducing: The Wild Weasel

The Wild Weasel concept is a Tech 2 destroyer hull designed for the sole purpose of snuffing out the enemy’s pesky ECM in a small gang fight. By small gang I really mean any fight that is too small for an ECM boat to get blapped before it can get away or its logi can save it. In larger fights, ECM isn’t nearly as much of a hassle to get rid of, but the Weasel will level the playing field when the blappage isn’t necessarily optimal. Here’s how it works:

The Wild Weasel will have a role bonus that allows it to fit a high power module, unique to its class (similar to the interdictor), which I will call the Ferret module. It is this module that gives the Wild Weasel its functionality as an anti-ECM platform. The ship itself will focus on guns (for quick damage projection), featuring six turret slots and two missile hardpoints. The purpose of this is twofold: 1) lessens the damage coming from the ship (as compared to 8 of the same turret) in conventional combat when the Ferret isn’t fitted, and 2) projects instant damage with the guns but makes the missiles useless in the long range anti-ECM role (you will see why). I’ll leave low and midslot balancing to the experts.

Next, let’s talk about the Ferret module itself, beginning with its purpose. One of the most annoying things about a good ECM pilot is that he can bounce around to various tactical bookmarks, staying in the fight. The Ferret is designed to give the EWAR pilot a choice: stay and roll the dice, or leave grid altogether. This means that the anti-ECM ship can’t be ECM immune, so that the ECM pilot has a chance of fighting back if he wants to risk it. However, the Weasel will have very good sensor strength, forcing even a Blackbird to use a disproportionately high number of its jammers to jam out the Weasel. This will make the Blackbird less effective, albeit not ineffectual, against the rest of the Weasel’s friends should it manage to jam out the Weasel. Now, here’s the fun part: since the Ferret Module is using the ECM signal to pinpoint the target, the more powerful the signal, the more accurate the shot. In other words, the damage bonus given (oh, by the way there’s a damage bonus) by the Ferret scales with the number of ECM modules the target has active when it is struck. So, if the Blackbird pilot wants to try his luck against the Ferret, he might say, “I will activate one ECM module on the Weasel so that if I fail to jam him, I take less damage.” Or, he might say, “I will activate all of my ECM to maximize my chance of winning, but if I don’t get the jam I’m pretty much going to get blapped.”

“But, Faith,” you might say, “how does this force the Blackbird to leave if he just sits outside the measly range of the Weasel’s small turrets?” Well, upon activation, the Ferret gives the host ship an instantaneous boost to turret optimal range (but not missile projection), the purpose being to put the optimal range of a small rail turret loaded with Spike at somewhere around 200km. The reason I say spike is that it is a low damage, high range ammo. If the ECM boat is at 200km, in order to reach him you still have to use the lowest damage ammunition, but he is no longer completely immune to peril. If the ECM boat is at 20km under his logi, however, feel free to load your Navy Antimatter and ruin his day. Activation will also give the Weasel massively increased targeting range (for the 200km case), slightly increased targeting resolution (to limit, but not completely eliminate, the Blackbird’s ability to bounce around), and increased sensor strength.

Or we can simply Jam the Blackbird with other ECM cruiser (Tech1) which is cheaper than a tech2 destroyer.

Never said EVE lacks a solution to ECM. I just think this would be 1) cool and 2) viable.

Couldn't one already also just load ECCM mods on a boat already? There is even Projected ECCM so one can try and harden the sensors of ECM targets.

Read about it being a viable tactic against "d*ckstars" to have a group of Domis with projected ECCM and assign drones to the one being ECCM'd.

I didn't read the whole thing but I like the name so +1.

The counter to Blackbirds and Falcons is ECCM fit Caracals or Cerberuseseses. Bringing one in your roaming gang pretty much shuts up any uncloaking ECM real quick.

Interesting concept, but iI think HAC's allready fill that niche with their battleship-like Sensorstrengh. Combined with ECCM, they are really good in hunting down and kill ECM-Ships.

Or just take a malus with u and dam it's lock range. Problem solved. I that's what I do

Perhaps the OP is unaware that sensor damping out-ranges ECM and is the hard-counter atm. You can simply reduce the lock range of a jamming ship so that it becomes useless (or needs to be in the middle of a fight where it will die in seconds).
Damping is also effective against the many sniper/alpha fits being used, as well as a nightmare for logi pilots. The Celestis is the new Blackbird, and most doctrines for the large PvP organizations reflect this. The FU Fleet of the CFC, for example.

We also have ECCM modules, both local and remote. So there already is a counter-ECM, just not a bonused ship for it.

ECM (all EWAR really, but ECM stands out) is a weapons system. Until Tiericide, Caldari were the only race to have dedicated EWAR ships in their T1 line up- making ECM as much a weapon for them as missiles or hybrids.
So ECM has always been powerful, especially compared to other EWAR...but that aligned with the fact that Caldari sacrificed a third DPS ship for paper-thin EWAR boats in the main ship classes.
Since Tiericide, this distinction was lost in the frigate and cruiser classes, but remains in the Battle Ship class.

ECM is the ultimate example of risk/reward in Eve. ECM is massively powerful...when you meet a host of conditions, and a total waste of a mid-slot if you don't.
- It either works completely, or doesn't at all.
- You have a 1 in 4 chance that any given ship will be the right race for the ECM to even work
- Even dedicated ECM ships must choose a rainbow fit that usually leaves only one of each racial ECM, or a dedicated racial platform that is useless if the fleet runs into anything else.

By comparison, all other EWAR works 100% of the time within optimal range, against all racial targets equally.

Ah, thank you. Very informative.