Warfare & Tactics

That's the problem. ECM is so binary and has a range that encompasses most of a theatre of solo/small gang PvP. There is not many ways to outmanoeuvre an ECM ship on the field once engaged. Unlike other forms of ECM that can be mitigated by positioning and control.

Damps can be mitigated if you get on top of the damp ship, another hostile ship, or you can for example still rep your friends by getting on top of them, and generally speaking you still have an opportunity to position well when damped unless you're facing against Skirmish Boosters, or Minmatar T3s/Recons since if nothing is within scram range of you, you can MWD, and if you get scrammed you can lock and engage that ship.

Tracking Disruptor's can be mitigated by changing position or target, since tracking is relative to traversal. Sure, you might not be able to hit a target orbiting you tightly while you are tracking script disrupted, but you can swap target to someone who is lower traversal, try to pull range, shoot someone further range as they generally have less relative traversal, or shoot a bigger target. and can still use all your electronic warfare modules and remote assistance modules perfectly.

Target Painters can't really be mitigated aside from trying to increase your traversal to lower their effect, but they are shortest range and don't bring any real disruption to your ship aside from reducing your ability to mitigate damage.

With ECM you can't do anything except try to escape from the ECM ships range. Which is effectively 60km+ going into the realms of 120km where it starts dropping off to the point of uselessness, and you will never escape a bonused ECM ships range by burning away from it. ECM basically means you have to either run, or hope you don't get jammed next cycle. Since ECM is absolute as well and prevents any retaliation at all, it also means you're likely going to be scrammed/webbed and even ships which should be punished completely, like a Vagabond 1km from a Brutix, are instead rewarded since they can apply maximum damage.

When I die to other EWAR types it feels much more like my opponents outplayed me or had a strategy that they used effectively such as kiting me with damps or kiting with range scripted TDs, or getting on top of me with tracking scripted TDs etc. There is much more coordination needed to use the other ewar types effectively, and things can go wrong if an opponent can catch you in a bad position i.e. as mentioned you get on top of the damp ship.

I think ECM IS balanced if you look at the big picture, but the way it's balanced is horribly contrived and creates anti-fun for both sides, the scaling on ECM is also terrible.
In small gang/solo ECM is the end of the engagement. Period.
in Medium gangs ECM is reletively balanced
In Large gangs ECM is weak and gets instantly killed.

Also as gangs get smaller, slots become more important, and generally speaking smaller and more mobile ships tend to be used, which have less sensor strength, less slots, and the slots they have tend to be non negotiable so fitting ECCM is very difficult when we're speaking small/solo gangs.

For ECM to be balanced all the specialized ships are absolutely terrible at everything aside from ECM, and the fact that it's a chance based mechanic can mean your 200mil Falcon gets instantly dumpstered 10 seconds into a fight because you got bad rolls, this also makes ECM ships themselves very binary, they bring almost nothing else to a fleet aside from ECM. And of course, on the same side of things, a guy can be completely out of a fight unable to do a single thing.

Spending 100 mil on lg spurs/jackals/grails/talons is already a huge sacrifice for the crybabies. It can only be done once a year.

As the thread has gone into trolling, I am locking it.

Thread closed.