Assembly Hall

I know, everyone's favorite topic I'm sure. But, where most simply complain about something, I'm here offering solutions as well as supporting arguments to my issue of choice. To wit:


ECM redesign-

ECM advantages: equally effective against all types of ships, negates target ship 100%, equally effective across entire operating range (effect doesn’t diminish or become more pronounced as range varies), no stacking penalty

Sensor dampers: massive stacking penalties, have to choose between lock speed reduction and range reduction, less effective against ships with long targeting range, unable to completely remove locking capability, target ships still have some ability to fight back

Tracking disruptors: only affect turret ships, don’t affect other forms of combat such as warp disruptors, drones, or neutralizers, have stacking penalties

Target painters: have stacking penalties, limited range, generally less effective than a web

Of the four systems, ECM, Damps and TDs are defensive, while Target Painters are offensive.

Generally speaking, few (if any) players complain about Damps, TDs or TPs. Almost everyone complains about ECM at some point. Even the ECM (Falcon) pilots. When a single system is more popular than all the others combined, it’s broken and needs to have its balance addressed.

Some ideas about reducing the “complete lockdown” effect ECM currently has:

1. Introduce stacking penalties. ECM is the only EWAR module that doesn’t have a stacking penalty. Each ECM additional ECM module (regardless of type, or which ship it is coming from) gets a 50% stacking penalty.

2. Increase cycle time without increasing duration: 10 second duration, 20 second “cool down”/cycle time.

3. Further reduce ECM jam strength. This allows the existing balance between ship signature radius, sensor strength and probes to be maintained. A 30% reduction in strength would be a good place to start.

4. Increase the heat damage per module cycle when overheated. When compared to guns with high rates of fire, and with defensive modules like shield boosters and armor reps, ECM have a long cycle time and as such can be overheated quite easily for a large performance gain with little to no drawback during a fight.

Currently, there are too many “knock on” effects that allow ECM to be far too effective when compared to all other EWAR systems. ECM completely remove a ship from a fight, ECM is functionally 100% effective and ECM have zero stacking penalties/drawbacks.

By all means, please offer constructive criticism, additional suggestions as to how to better balance EWAR and ECM specifically and share your ideas on how to improve the other EWAR types to make them more effective/interesting to use.

Please do not: troll, spam, whine pointlessly and post "HTFU" etc.