Player Features and Ideas Discussion

To cut straight to the chase, ECM would benefit from players jamming only a single target lock per successful use of a ECM module, instead of removing all the target locks upon a successful application.

This would allow for a lot more granularity and less reliance on random chance as a balancing mechanic.
Assuming we want ECM to be able to handle 5 target locks the same way it does right now. First, the activation time could be reduced by a lot, from 20 seconds we could go to:

- 4 seconds: If we want the removal of a target lock to be highly reliable, with a percent chance around 90%. In that case, not removing a target lock would happen very rarely.

- 2 seconds: If we want the removal of a target lock to be more affected by chance. ECM players would have more ECM applications, which mean being able to potentially remove all the locks of a target really fast, but at the same time they could be hit by a string of bad luck and fail to remove a lock consecutively. In a way it mirrors the way ECM works right now.

In either cases, the goal here would be to add granularity to what is a very binary system, frustrating when luck is not on your side and overbearing for the target when you do what you are supposed to do.
Here the target would still have some locks available, he can re-target someone as soon as he loses a lock and thus would not be rendered entirely useless for 20 seconds. More importantly, he'd have more time and chances to react to being jammed.


Plus this works great with the idea one of the devs had of an ECM script that would remove control of drones to the target. Here instead of the target suddenly losing control of ALL his drones, he loses control of one and see a gradual reduction of its dps instead of a total shutdown.


Finally, it would allow to give more power outside of the ECM itself to ECM ships. Better defenses, or should I say less fragile hulls, more damage capabilities, etc... Right now ECM can be so powerful that the entirety of the hull is geared so that the hull is terrible at anything other than ECM to avoid those things going solo.

So yeah, tell me what you guys think of it. I still hesitate on how the feedback part to the ECM player could be handled. Maybe the jamming icon could show a number indicating the number of locks removed since the module was activated on the target, or the removal of a target lock could be publicly broadcasted?

So...

What happens when you jam someone who doesn't have a target locked? Would they then be able to lock up to thier maximum targets, less one for that one jam?

In which case, you'd need two ECM boats for every opponent you wanted to shut down, making it by far the weakest form of ewar...

Closed.