EVE General Discussion

I have flown a jam griffen a few times recently and as such everyone on grid seems to hate me. I have been primaried by cruisers that had other cruisers to shoot at because of it and been called names for flying it but my question is this, why do people hate ECM so much? I have landed only 2 jams on targets total and neither of them changed anything, the actual largest contribution I have made to a fight so far was having an arbitrator pull his drones out of a cruiser brawl and away from my fleets cruisers to kill me on landing before I could remember to align out. By comparison, and I have checked the numbers.
The griffen with max alpha skills, meta racial jammers, tech 1 ECM strength rigs and highest named distortion amplifiers will have 7.5 jam strength, or about a 60% chance of jamming a tech one frigate (or enough to permajam a rifter because it has a scan strength of 7)
A Maulus will reduce that frigates lock range by about 75%, or to well within unbonused faction scram range
A crucifier will reduce it's weapon range by about 70%, IE give a light missile condor a max range of about 6 km. Or it can make it have application problems on destroyers and probably even cruisers. Or vs a gun boat can bring an omega clone sniper cormorant down to under twenty kilometers with three scripted tracking disrupters or it can just make it incapable of hitting a battleship with the other script.
Target painting is not really the same thing but a couple of bonused target painters can blow a frigate up something fierce.

It gets even worse as the enemies get bigger.
Imagine trying to fly a barghest with a 20 km lock range- an alpha clone maulus can do that
Or the same ship where you can't apply damage to other battleships- that's the crucifier
Or even just having a sig radius of a about a kilometer- this is a vigil.
On the other hand an alpha clone griffin has a 1/5 chance of jamming that battleship, and you can bet that he will get a torpedo in the face the first time he tries.

I am not complaining about ECM being weak, I am just wondering why people hate it so much. As far as I can tell it's mostly a paper tiger unless you have a hundred griffens on grid; and even then it may not be as good.

Because there is no counter-play.

If you are sensor damped, you can close range to your opponent and still lock them, mitigating the effect of the damp.

If you are tracking disrupted, you can close range or reduce your transversal to mitigate the effects of the disruptor. In addition, many of your other offensive modules - such as your web or scram - are unaffected.

And a target painter just gives them a damage boost. It's practically not even ewar - it's like they used a midslot as a damage mod.

ECM, however, completely shuts down all your offensive modules, and nothing you can do following the successful application of ECM changes the duration or effectiveness of the ECM. It's combat by random number generation.

People get annoyed when their ships get reduced to a floating brick, which they then have to watch die. If you cant target lock, you can't do anything else, so people get frustrated. The only counter-play is in the fitting window and a lot of people don't like that. They want to play a game where their decisions second by second in combat have an impact.

I would argue eve has far too many modules which have no counter outside of your ship fit, and that this is worst in small group PvP where you field a limited number of ships. Things like logi and ECM become mandatory, and if you don't field them you can expect to lose to someone who does. Very formulaic.

ECM is one of those things that makes total sense in large fleet fights, a lot like the old links did.

I think the people that spit the most venom at it are the true one character/account soloers .. no offense if you're a multiboxing neckbeard.

Well like real life, if you are being jammed, kill the jammer, or just get out of its range.

Jammers in EVE are not over powered like some people think, they have a limited range, and a good sniper ship can pick them off long before they come in jam range.

There are counters to ECM, but they require the right ship set up ahead of time - unless you routinely carry around a Mobile Depot and can refit on the fly, there's not much you can do about it.

The real issue is in small gang play - with my Kitsune, I can jam out four ships at a time, nearly perfectly, from 70k away. In small gang frigate warfare, this is deadly, because
A) I'm not even range for them to lock me, even if they aren't jammed, and
B) with a small group of 4-5 people, I've just jammed out 80-100% of their DPS.

That's the reason people don't like ECM - it's perfect in large fights, where it impacts a smaller percentage of the enemy ships, and the enemy is more likely to have ECM of their own to counter act the impact. In small gang fights, it has a totally outsized impact in terms of force multiplication.

The concept of ECM is good. I think it's the implementation that really needs to be looked at - even speaking as an ECM pilot, getting perma jammed just blows.

As said, it's bad game design. Once the person activates the module, there's nothing either person can do. As soon as the button is pushed, the game plays itself, there is no more decision making to be made. It's such an unfun mechanic the only way we as players have to respond is to punish ECM players to the point where they don't even want to fly ECM any more.

The counterplay has gotten a lot easier tbh. since the omni sensor booster change in march. It is not so unrealistic to have a sensor booster especially on alpha ships, and then change skript if jammed. I think jamming is at an okay stage right now.

I think it was Ripard Teg who on his blog wrote that damping is actually the worst kind of E-warfare as you still think you have a chance That always stuck with me, and I think he was right on this one. The other E-warfare (target painter excluded) types are worse as they always apply, and make you helpless (not being able to lock anything constantly from damping is worse than occationally not being able to lock due to jamming)..

And let us not forget the unique piece of Lore CCP has given us in support of ECM
"“Some capsuleers claim that ECM is 'dishonorable' and 'unfair'. Jam those ones first, and kill them last.” - Jirai 'Fatal' Laitanen, Pithum Nullifier Training Manual c. YC104"

Fits the New eden universe

And yet that's the sort of behavior that makes me enjoy flying them. If they fixed it, I'd probably quit (flying ECM, not the game). Nothing makes me smile like some space hero having an apoplectic fit in local because he can't shoot me.

And now take an ecm module and make it a bait ship. It adds complexity to gameplay, one more reason they should leave it as it is.