Ships & Modules

I love ECM personally, Ive been perma jammed a few times myself, but i've also used it to great effect to save assets or turn a fight. Drop 4 falcons in and it really gives you some wiggle room with what you can do against a much larger gang, even kitsunes can do it and their cheaper, they just don't warp cloaked or take a Black Ops Bridge.

What most people don't realize is ECM is balanced quite well, here's why:

1. Sensor compensation skills - these reduce the effectiveness of enemy ECM aside from long range targeting or nav skills to counter damps or webs ( and these werent even desinged as direct counters but secondary counters ) this is the ONLY skill that reduces the effectivness of enemy ewar. THere are no "Protection from Nuets" or "protection from webs" skills

2. ECCM - Much like cap batterys or sensor boosters these help you overcome ECM like battery's help against nuets and Sebo's help against damps. Providing yet another layer of protection from ECM

3. ECM is the ONLY Chance based EWAR in the game, every other form of ewar works if your range 100% of the time ( but may lose some effect ) while ECM has a chance to jam, ive lsot probably a dozen falcons because i missed jams and was tackled or missed jams on a tornado and got alpha'd. It happens more often than you think.

4. ECM was nerfed a few months back reducing total strength of jams when not overheated, the result is now ALL Jam boats have to overheat to get the same strength as before, thus risking a burnout and loss of jams.

5. ECM only works on Bonused ships to any effect - Ever used a multispec on a Golem or on a Exequoror? Its not that great, same with ECM bursts on a typhoon and so on, sure your bound to get some lucky jams but without bonuses to their optimal, strength, or cap use its a horribly ineffective technique. Unlike all the other forms of ewar which still work just fine on their own. Hence why the meta is nuets on PVP ships and everyone runs with a web.


Now sure people will still complain when they get jammed, but at the end of the day its all fine where it is. Imagine if every form of Ewar had a chance to work, a chance your nuet burns cap and does nothing to the target, a chance your web suddenly wont slow a ship down and an expensive ship escapes or you lose an expensive ship because of it. There would be a general outcry to fix that if it were implemented.

You dont see very many falcon pilots asking for guarenteed jams every cycle if your in range, so why can't people settle for the current state of them when they really are fine as is.

Did the little frigate break your tank too? All by himself? Faster than your friends could back you up? Smart bomb?

How many ECCMs did you fit on your Raven before undocking?

The cruise nano raven wants a word with you

Comp skills trained to 4. Nor is it a "fact of life." This is a game in which the rules can be changed overnight.

Balance should not be determined by RNG. This is not World of Warcraft.

You have no concept of pvp. Please see previous response.

Jammed before my 15 second lock time allowed me to send drones. You are excused.

A man with sense! Had to sift through the drivel.

You make good points, particularly with scaling fleet sizes reducing effectiveness. I believe it should funtion differently, or even be the ewar counter to drones without much effect on ships. It makes sense Caldari would design such a thing when dealing with Gallente drones hordes. Yes smartbombs can work, but are difficult to pull off at times, usually worthless against sentries.

In my experience though, jams are difficult to keep up in fleets due to blackbirds and such always being called primary. They can wreak havoc on your logi if left alive, and can easily turn fights with a little luck.

Sensor strength needs to work a little differently so a frig cant just get lucky and wreck whatever it is you were flying, but that is one mans opinion.

I appreciate the rational response.

If that griffin was a maulus, would the result have changed?

This is an interesting concept. It's easy to write "ECM IS B0RKN, CCP PLZ FIX," but in its current implementation, I personally don't see an easy answer to that while keeping ECM's function similar to what it is now. It bugs me a little that, as I fly Caldari, I'm still using other racial eWar options.

But with drone boats now as powerful as they are, having an EWar tactic that would "hard counter" drone effectiveness would make sense, and as you said, fit with the tech lore, given Caldari's "Grrrr Gallente" stance. I think you might be on to something here.

I'll also throw in a +1 that EVE should not succumb to the allure of RNG mechanics in its fights, for whoever mentioned that, above.