EVE General Discussion

ITT whiners gonna whine.

^^ This.

ECM ships are fine. ECM drones are not. Remove ECM drones. Buff Sensor Boosters / Signal Amps to also increase Signature Strength with specialized scripts ala Range or Targeting Speed. Remove ECCM modules as they're terrible and far too specialized.

When you get a chance, can you summarize whatever the hell it is you're trying to say? Or at least be more succinct and try to avoid references to World of Warcraft, whining, how cute I am and anything else that distracts from the point you're trying to get across. Application of some basic grammar to your reply will also go a long way to solidifying your "argument", whatever it is.

People whine about ECM because people think EVE is balanced around 1v1 and 2v2 and 5v5. I agree, in those situations it is probably quite overpowered. In EVE, no, it's fine.

What I learned from this thread: the people defending the current ECM mechanics are drooling imbeciles who can't assemble a coherent rebuttal to any of the arguments against ECM and resort to spewing out the same handful of replies ad nauseam.

The ECM whiners seem to be saying.

1. ECM is overpowered!

So why isn't everyone fitting an ECM module?

2. Falcons are overpowered!

So why isn't everyone flying them?

Because 1. It isn't 2. Situationaly very effective, but easy to kill if not.

3. There isn't a mod that defeats ECM.

True - but there are so many other ways to defeat it , many have been listed already in this thread. Simply pressing F1 can work.


So. Train ECM. Fly it. See for yourself.

…and that's fine — if ECCM gave a buff that was good enough to fit to the same extent as ECM ships are used, the whole thing might balance itself out. As it is, though, they don't and that means that the whole “fit ECCM” argument is silly and doesn't actually answer anything. Fitting ECCM does indeed gimp your fit, which is what the argument in question was all about.

The argument why ECM needs to be fixed is a completely different (and much simpler) one: ECM in EVE obsoletes other ewar. This fact alone is reason enough why ECM needs to be completely removed and reimplemented. It does what RSDs and TDs do, only better, and the small detail of ECM being chance-based all the time (rather than just some of the time as with the other two) is not nearly enough to validate this massive overlap in functionality.

———— Long Tippia Rant™, skip if you hate these things ————

As much as I dislike real-world comparisons, it's actually a good thing to reference to see what the problem is. Real-world ECM essentially does three things: it makes a target harder to lock, harder to locate with any precision, and harder to track (as in “identify from one sweep to the next”, not as in EVE-mechanics tracking)… or, well… it does one thing, and those are the three broad effects. RSD simulates that first function — a noisy signal means you have to sort through more garbage returns before a positive lock can be established, or you have to move closer to get a better resolution on the signal. TDs simulate the second function — the fuzzy signal means your pin-pointing is off and your guns are pointing in the wrong direction, and you can't spot movement as well because it's just a big blob of weird returns.

ECM… doesn't simulate the third function, and that's kind of where it all goes wrong. It just causes you to no longer have any kind of targeting functionality at all. If you can't target anything to begin with, difficulties in getting a lock and in figuring out to the millimetre where the target is become inconsequential. ECM should be complementary to those other effects rather than invalidating and superseding them.

Exactly how difficulty in continuously identifying a target could be turned into EVE mechanics is a different discussion, but I'm fairly convinced that it's that kind of complete revamp that is needed — nerfing and patching and stitching the current mechanics will not suffice because the fundamental overlap is still around and it's the overlap that is the design flaw (and this flaw is further compounded by the player psychology and frustration in having stun effects, as described earlier). The incomplete stop-gap nature of ECCM is just one of those flawed patches, and if ECM actually did something drastically different, ECCM could in turn be given a more general and beneficial functionality.

———— …you can stop skipping now ————

Basically, ECM needs to work in completely different ways from what it does now and desperately needs to stop being a horribly designed stun attack. Make the overview go wonky; make people lose their target information; remove the 20-seconds-of-non-action cycle; reduce the max target number; whatever. There are plenty of ideas already and that pesky real life thing offers hints about where to look for more. The overlap and ridiculous disability it creates needs to go.

We should nerf after burners and MWD's, and Stasis webs. There is nothing like getting locked out of a fight because you are unable to control range. You just have to sit there and twiddle your thumbs while the other player beats on you. It's the definition of anti-fun; it's such a broken mechanic.

What makes it worse, is that none of my corp mates fit afterburners, or mwd, or webs, because it gimps our tank. How is it fair that one player with an afterburner can effectively remove 4 of us from a fight?

/sarcasm

Your sarcasm skills are poor. Practice more.

Since when does afterburners/MWD's prevent someone from using target painters, sensor dampeners, shooting from afar etc. ect?

Too bad that there isn't one other than ECM itself, and that if “use X to counter X” is used as an argument, it's pretty much the final nail in the coffin since that's the quintessential proof that the X in question is completely out of whack.