Warfare & Tactics

Oh tears.....and they won't stop!!!!

This thread won't be complete without quoting Fatal:

"Some capsuleers claim that ECM is 'dishonorable' and 'unfair.' Jam them first. Kill them last." -Jirai 'Fatal' Laitanen

And a spur set, and an eccm, and friends, and long range sniper boats, and friend or foe missiles, and damps or neuts, drones, speed in general, remote eccm, and boats with higher sensor strength.

Other than that... yeah just don't fight them.

the drones don't work, and the FOF missiles only work on idiots. I do have the spur set though.

If people didn't bother to look at the Incursus lossmail, go look at it.

Copy and paste from another tear ECM forum to this one: here my opinion of ECM

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.

The difference being, of course, that webs/neuts don't completely disable your ship like ECM. They only disable one aspect of your ship. Also, having to fit ECCM into a mid/low slot is a waste of a slot. Unlike the "counters" to nueting, which involve cap boosters which are at least a boon to all your other mods by virtue of having cap to use them. In addition, ECCM is also wasted should ECM never appear on field. In contrast, cap boosters still provide some effect by injecting cap even if no nuets are present.

Nuets can completely disable certain ships actually, if your perma nueted in a balster or laser boat your lucky to keep your tank running long enough to catch reps some times. And all too often cap boosters fail to keep up or run out of charges resulting in dead ships. Unlike ECM however which cannot jam smartbombs, FOF Missiles, or certain ships which can still be neuted.

Webs have no chance of disabling your ship of course but they do in essence shut down your ability to kite or keep range.

Also with the advent of mobile refit abilities theres no reason not to keep ECCM in cargo just in case you run into a jam ship or two. I travel with an extra rack of it all the time just in case even though i use ECM liberally i still prepare for the outcome of possibly running into more ECM than i have the ability to handle. Even if i give up my web to avoid being jammed it still gives me the ability to fight back more effectively than i would have trying to wait the cycle out and get another web on someone.

ECM doesn't affect movement, nor scanning, nor self repping, nor launching drones or F.O.F missiles - among other things...

The difference with other ewar though is you can still fight back. You are not stuck watching the porn screen for 20 seconds (a long time in pvp, and possible even with jerking off) as you are with ecm.

If neuted, keep shooting (if capless weapons), or send drones. Besides, typically it takes more than one cycle to be neuted dry, so try to get out of range, broadcast for cap, whatever, you still have options.

If webbed, keep shooting, send or assign drones . . .

If damped, fly closer to the damp ship or to another target. Damps don't damp you to zero. Or wait a little longer to lock if scan res damped. Lock someone close to you and remote buff them if you have such modules. You still have active options.

TD's affect is similar to damps. So the same piloting counters can apply. Watch angular motion, get closer to target ~

If painted, laugh maybe. It's usually not that serious.

But, if jammed, you can't take any actions as a player to mitigate the effect. You have to wait the full cycle and hope the successive cycle does not land. You may have FoF or your drones may have already been out, not targeted on anything else, and on aggressive. But really you have no way to direct those weapons.

It is the lack of any effective player directed counter or otherwise helpful to your buddies actions that makes ECM the horrible game mechanic it currently is.

That being said, the introduction of the sensor integrity skills and the successive ecm nerfs have helped reduce ecm to slightly tolerable. It would still be nice to not have so much of combat dependent on acquiring a lock. Or to have ecm be some other mechanic in the game, that would allow contemporaneous player directed actions either to counter or still be able to do something useful in the fight.

just get closer to the 8km/s hookbill? I didn't think of that