Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Currently, ECM is the only chance based ewar module, but at the same time it's the one which has longest cycle. It's pretty ridiculous both for the user and the target. In solo / small gang fights even one cycle in jam can mean losing, because fights are usually very fast and over in couple minutes. In so short time period 20s jam cycles means that you can't really trust in your calculations about how much targets you will jam, it's more about just pure luck. Also, ECM is currently very boring to use. Select target and press jam, keep your own boat in align. So, I propose couple changes that should make ECM use require more skill and dictate less in small scale fights. These changes can also help smaller fleets to fight against larger fleets in some cases.


First, let's cut jam cycle to 10 seconds (and cutting the cap usage also to half).

Buff either jam modules or ECM ship bonuses a bit, so that ECM ships get about 25 jam strength with racial jammers.

Give new attribute to every ship, sensor reconfiguration speed. It's multiplier which multiplies your ship sensor strength every time you get jammed. Low multiplier (~1.4) to logistics, normal (~1.7) to other ships and high (~2.5) for example tackle ships. ECCM modules should also give small bonus to this multiplier and little less sensor strength boost.

2-5min timer which puts sensor strength back to normal, to make pre jamming your own fleet less useful. Also jumping to different system or docking should reset your sensor strength.

So, after these changes, when you use ECM you can be pretty sure that every ship you target with it, first cycle is almost guaranteed to jam and second cycle probably also, but then you start getting really problems getting successful jams against ships with normal sensor reconfiguration speed. So, instead of jamming couple ships only, you should cycle your jams through enemy fleet. You should also jam people only when it really is needed. Don't jam people who aren't really in their optimal range yet. Jam logistics only when your fleet is in optimal range from target or FC ask you to do, jam tackle only when your fleet need to GTFO.

And most importantly, falcon alts which only do "uncloak and put all jammers to target at the same time" will fail hilariously after getting couple simultaneous jams and then getting no jams at all ;)

Sounds like what other mmo players call 'diminishing returns' on crowd-control. I think DR for the duration might work better than chance.

I doubt friendly preloading of DR would be extensive as long as the timer is short. (2m?) Could make ECM take the same 2m to arm after warp... that would make ECM more defensive in short fights and balance pre loading in long fights.

while this is an interesting idea, the problem is it moves ECM from being chanced based and annoying in a small (1-20 man group) to being absolutely necessary.

Imagine youre both in 10 man battlecruiser fleets with dual logistics and a single falcon uncloaks and starts to jam some of your ships. He has basically a 100% chance to jam 8 ships his first cycle, so he can jam out the logis and all but two of the battlecruisers.

The second cycle he has about a 60% chance to jam everything again! so for the first 20 seconds of your fight you are doing 1/4 of your DPS and receiving no reps.

in that 20 seconds you probably lost a battlecruiser so that frees up one of his jammers, the second cycle he is probably still jamming out one of the two logis and 4 out of your remaining 7 battlecruisers

this is I guess making the game less luck based but at the expense of making one ship basically necessary for PvP

Not a bad idea.
I can see the friendly falcons on all KMs already tho from people pre-jamming all their ships to buff their sensors.

But on the other hand, with current mechanics the falcon is pretty sure to keep those two logis jammed the whole fight and I think he is affecting more to the fight outcome by doing so. And what about two falcons at this scale? The whole fleet will have serious troubles to lock anything in the whole fight with current mechanics. With my proposal the second falcon wouldn't make much difference at this scale. Instead of flooding fleets with falcons, you should take only right amount.

Nevertheless, your example illustrates one thing that should be addressed: 100% jam chance. Something like 90% hard cap should be there to ensure that ECM still keeps some randomness even at the beginning of the fight. I think there already is some hard cap, because I have couple times failed to jam target who should have been 100% guaranteed successful jam.

I've tossed the idea around to a few guys who's input I value, and the general concensus seems to be that the RNG factor of ECM is something that we need to move away from. I don't disagree, but presently I just don't see a solution without the RNG. After all the balancework CCP is putting into the game, can we expect a complete redesign of ECM at this point? I'm not sure. None of the guys I've spoken to have outright dismissed this idea, and many share my enthusiasm for it.

The best thing we can do in my opinion is to keep the jam strenght at current levels and introduce the diminishing returns. ECM in it's current state is always extremely efficient in any engagement, and with this new idea ECM will still retain it's current efficiency in terms of mitigating fleet dps, but it will take a whole lot of ECM ships to permajam a hostile fleet. This will require a lot more skill and tactics on the ECM squad as well, and I don't believe we will see a big metashift towards ECM. I may be wrong here, I'm not gonna pretend to know what I'm talking about when it comes to largescale fleetengagements.

I do realize that this idea will indirectly buff logistics in lower numbers. Breaking even a small number of Guardians can be really tricky in small gang warfare, so I'm a little concerned for this aspect. Still you can at least attempt to battle against logistics. It may be futile in some cases, but at least you'll be able to actually lock and shoot stuff.

We have to continue to work in a direction that makes the game more fun for all parties, and I feel this is especially important for solo and small gang. I doubt people will bring out multiple squads of Falconsalts to permajam hostiles in solo and small gang engagements. I also feel it's important to emphasize that it will still be very valuable to bring a Falcon or Scorpion to any kind of engagement