Warfare & Tactics

What if you don't bring along loltastic FOFs or are not flying a missile ship?
And what happens if you're an a fleet? Your buddies won't appreciate you firing FOFs at them.
Finally, not a huge degree of ships in EVE use missile launchers, anyway.

Furthermore, in your little engagement, the Rook did not lose. Even when you bring along FOFs and the situation is perfect.
When can a Rook lose solo? Not too often.

Have you tried shooting the ECM boat?

Moved from "EVE General Discussion".

Uh, yeah, those 5 Canes will skullfuck that Rook, 9/10.

Even if he did bring along FoFs, they would just hit the Rook's drones first, because they suck, giving the Rook and its gang ample time to kill your jammed out, helpless Tengu.



Alternatively, I'm being a good fleet Rook by staying out of standard drone control range where their drones can't do anything, forcing the hurricanes to waste good time MWDing towards me while any friends I have make their way over and shoot them up, causing a flawless victory.

(Hint: Nowhere in the OP did I say the Rook was solo, just that I was inspired while trying to find a good solo Rook fit. If it was solo you'd see such novel things like a point.)

Even if I do miss a jam or two in the ensuing battle, I'm still as fast as your typical 'Cane and keeping a good range away from them. What can autocannons do to me at 60km? Barely scratch me for 0.1 damage?



No, because the point of ECM is that you don't really have a chance to shoot it.



Solo? Sure. Unless the Rook is an absolutely perfect pilot, he's screwed. But in any situation where the Rook has friends, it's going to be jamming out 3 of said Hurricanes, easily, and the other two will be instant-primary for your gangmates as they slowly and hopelessly try to burn to your Rook.

@Mal Darkrunner:

I never said that there was a 91% chance of jamming all five Hurricanes, just that each Hurricane will be jammed 91% of the time. Nor did I ever say that all five Hurricanes would for sure be permajammed. But even jamming three out of five, or four out of five for the entire duration of the fight, all while keeping 60km away and burning around, is simply unbalanced compared to other types of EWAR.

I think it's a combination of having both versatility + strength - versatility in the sense that it has long range, the counters to it are "meh," and it's useful in virtually any situation - and strength in the fact that it works, and works well, in most situations where it's used. It has better effective range than any other type of EWAR (especially on a Scorp) and its effects drive other kinds of EWAR to be somewhat obsolete. (Why do you need tracking disruption when your target can't lock? Why do you need to damp something's range down when it's already jammed 91% of the time?)

So, either nerf its versatility (reduce range, give it some better counters) or reduce its strength. As it is, it's just too good.

Each hurricane has a 91% chance of being jammed per cycle - not quite the same as will be jammed 91% of the time, since we're talking about chance (which does not apply to other forms of EWAR as their effects are always applied to the target if they're in range). Each hurricane may be permajammed, or may be jammed less than 91% of the time, depending on the will of the RNG gods and the duration of the fight (specifically the number of jam cycles employed). Longer fights (more jam cycles) are likely to average out towards 91% of the time overall, but over a short space of time the variation can be larger.

Putting aside the semantics, let's consider some of the assumptions you've made in your model:

You're assuming that you know ahead of time what the racial composition of the opposing gang will be, and have fitted the optimal set of jammers for dealing with it. I'm sure this does happen in PvP, but I'm also sure that you would not be able to do this for most engagements. Most ECM pilots I've come across fit a mixture of jammers (either rainbow or covering the two/three main races they expect to encounter). Either way, in a real fight it's entirely possible that one or more of your jammers would not be the correct type for your opponents, reducing the chances to jam accordingly.

You're assuming an ideal opposing gang size (no more than 5 ships). An extra ship could make a large difference to the outcome of the engagement. Of course this point can go both ways (i.e. an extra ship on the side of the Rook or fewer hurricanes than expected would balance the outcome in the Rook's favour). Still, in a real PVP encounter, this is not something that could necessarily be counted on (for either side).

You're assuming the Rook starts the fight a fair distance from the Hurricanes - a close in engagement could work out differently, as if a single hurricane gets a scram/web on you early in the fight then it may be more difficult to get away from the gang (I haven't checked speed/manouverability differences, so I'm making an assumption here too )

You're assuming the opposing gang has no EWAR of its own. If one of those hurricanes was an ECM boat or a Sensor Damping boat then the outcome could be very different. Sensor damps work very well against ECM (they also support ECM very nicely by increasing lock times in-between jams).

Also I'm sure that if a hurricane gang came across a perma-jamming Rook constantly kiting them from 60km away, they would simply warp off as they would not be scrammed...

Now, are some of the points above nit-picking? Yes they are. However, hopefully I've made the point that your numbers and your conclusion are based on assumptions that pit an ideally-fitted Rook against ideally-fitted (from the Rook's perspective) opponents. Of course the Rook is going to perform well in that perfect theoretical situation. Now, is that ideal situation likely to occur in real-universe PvP? My experience suggests that it won't (YMMV). Since the real-universe performance of any ship depends on a lot more that its EFT stats, is it fair to judge it based on theory that potentially over-estimates its performance?

Lastly, if the Rook really was as OP as you are suggesting, why isn't everybody flying them, instead of the hurricanes, drakes, cynabals, vagabonds, dramiels and so on that I keep seeing?

TL;DR - X is probable is not the same as X will always occur with that frequency. PVP does not occur in a bubble (even in the Alliance Tournament), and ideal theoretical conditions are unlikely to be encountered when PVPing.

ECM boats:

Neuts suck.

Drones are the f**king debil.

An Eagle can kick your ass. A lolEagle.

Being driven off or dying to FOF is ridiculous.

Being jammed by lucky ECM drones is ridiculous.

Everyone hates you. Always primary. ALWAYS.

Some tard (not) will always have some ECCM or be a tad lucky, or both.

Pilots would rather be scrammed, neuted and ranged than suffer a single ecm jam cycle.

You must be wise (a pus**) and let others appear/engage first, so you can live a few seconds longer.

my falcon jammed two canes and a HAC simultaneously and for 3 minutes straight. And this was without racial-specific ECM's. Good times had by all (except those three pilots)

Yes, I get the picture. You have never flown a Rook before.

Can't tell if this is a troll or EFT Warrior post...