Player Features and Ideas Discussion

whinge

Er, people do tank Falcons because an untanked one is just begging to be volleyed by a t3 BC. Have you not tried shooting them?

1) People don't tank falcons.

The do, they stick as much tank as they can on there. Hence 1600mm plate and DCU.

2) You cannot use an anti-falcon missile ship because you are going to be tackled to hell, have so many drones on you you can't kill them, and you still aren't going to have enough guys that one or two can remain unjammed.

Which just sounds like you're getting ganked by a vastly superior force with a better fleet comp. Not exactly an issue if you ask me.

3) That ECCM is unreasonable.

You only need to fit it on one ship. A falcon cannot jam a gang if one of the members, especially a ranged fit member, has ECCM. Either the falcon pilot would need to remove jams and place multiple jams on that one target, or he isn't going to jam you and you can kill him.

4) That you cannot put drones on a falcon due to lock times and range.

This is simply BS. Most falcon pilots will operate at 60-70km, meaning you have to burn ~10km to assign drones. A falcon cannot decloak, lock targets and properly spread jams in that time.

5) You forget that all recons have a role.

See this post.

The falcon is good for small gang fights. That is pretty much it, and even then it is limited and has known counters.

Spoken like someone who's never actually used FoF missiles, which is what I assume you mean by 'defender'. Then again, judging by your other posts, I wouldn't put a lot of faith in your ability to understand game mechanics.

If you'd ever actually been in a position to use FoFs you'd know they have a tendency to shoot the Hobgoblin Is orbiting you and not the no-tank falcon jamming you, or, even better, bounce between nearby targets and never actually hit anything. They are virtually always worthless unless whatever's jamming you is the nearest thing to you, which is almost never. "Burning at the falcon" is also only an option if the ECM gang in question doesn't have any hard tackle on you, which is also almost never. So basically your brilliant "counter" to ECM ships is only workable if you're in an untackled missile ship that's faster than a falcon and doesn't have any drones on it. Cool story Hansel.

There's a reason no one tanks falcons: because they rarely get locked, let alone locked long enough to have serious damage applied to them. The fact that a ship can be viably fit with no tank whatsoever is a pretty big red flag that something has gone seriously wrong with game balance. Another big red flag is that it's reasonable to expect someone to fit a mid-slot module that has no other use than to reduce the effectiveness of a single kind of EWAR, and isn't even very good at that.

I don't see how a single recon utterly disabling 4+ battlecruisers at very little risk to itself is in any way balanced. The only people who defend ECM in its current state are people who use it as a crutch for their badness, or who've never been beyond the protection of gate guns.



The suggestion that the alliance tournament is in any way representative of real PVP is hilarious in itself, but I really shouldn't need to point out that AT ships have no need to fit warp disruptors, thus freeing up midslots for ECCM.

Even if someone's bad enough at numbers to realize that ECM in all its forms is disgustingly overpowered, you should at least concede that it's a bad game mechanic at its core. It's completely un-nuanced and doesn't require any skill on the part of the gang it's supporting to be effective. Tracking disruption, for instance, is only effective against certain ships and requires your fleet to pilot differently to become effective, like orbiting close or kiting around, depending on what script is loaded. Dampening can force logistics to choose between not repping (and risk their fleet dying) or moving closer to their repping target (and risk dying themselves). These kinds of ewar change the fight in interesting ways and require the cooperation of your fleet to be effective. ECM is just a straight-up numbers game of "hurr durr my one ship can disable three of yours" and fatfingering F1-F7. They're even colour-coded for the thicksicles that rely on it.

There are so many ways ECM could be reworked into an actually interesting mechanic that isn't universally-applicable but apparently every idiot in EVE thinks that "pres butan, remove ship from fite" is really, really good game design so I doubt we'll see a change any time soon.

Plus any criticism of game balance will invariably be met with "HTFU noob ur just bad xD" so, there's that.

ECM is fine - It makes the game more complex - but complexity isnt for the simple people i guess.
You want fights easily predictable with no surprises? I dont!

Fit eccm, take a drone boat or use ecm yourself!