Player Features and Ideas Discussion

ECM is fine, you want to counter a falcon. Bring out another falcon.

Use modules that boost your ships resistance to it.

Fit a smartbomb or auto target missiles and ram the jammer

Fit target range dampners.


There are so many ways to counter ECM it's ******** that you guys are complaining that it's "OP"


You all just want to play EVE your way. Tough **** EVE is a sandbox, learn to deal with ECM it's not that hard.

This suggestion would completely destroy ECM. If the enemies can still shoot you, your screwed. I've flow many ECM ships in my day and seen its counters.

Counters to ECM that don't include ECCM

Bring friends.
Drones.
Attack from range.
Fleet with high alpha damage.
Fleet with same racial ships.
Some ships have high natural sensor strength (usually Ewar ships)

Now CCP has ruined ECM with the skills and insane buffs to sensor strength because of whiners to the point where I don't use it anymore.

ECM is not overpowered. Shut up and learn to play.

Master Technique, the problem posters like myself and Aliventi are addressing/arguing is that ECM itself is not overpowered. It's not, you cannot argue that.

The mechanic is iffy, I agree and there should be a couple more softer counters.

Trouble with threads like these is that people get all narked because its annoying - something being annoying is not a reason to utterly neuter the mechanic. I've yet to see a mechanic change that would be worth ever undocking one of these ships or that is simply not rage induced ranting about making it worthless.

One thing I would change though, immediately, is the requirement to re-lock; that's just a kick when you're down for no real use. Once the ECM drops, just pick targets you had locked back up instantly.


Also, all the new HACs are going to murder every single ECM boat in the skies so....there's tomorrow's counter I guess. Against something no other recon/ewar boat faces.

A falcon is nowhere near safe at 70km. It is safer, but far from safe. With CCP buffing so many long range weapon systems and all the drone ship buff there are more ships than can kill a falcon at 70km than ever before. Also, people are just as likely to not engage due to Logi as they are to not engage due to a falcon in small gang PvP. A logi is a highly effective ship that can rep from 71.4km that you can do things to to remove its effectiveness and force it from the field or kill it. Wow. That sounds just like a falcon. Where are all the nerf Logi threads? Oh wait. Just a like a falcon, Logi is balanced.

You idea is terrible. It violates every metric that makes ECM balanced and effective. Replacing one chance based system for another chance based system is terrible. Not only that but you are nerfing ECM. Part of the reason ECM is so powerful is it is far from a guaranteed hit. So when it does hit it needs to be effective for all the times it didn't hit. With your system it is likely to be just as ineffective when it hits as when it misses. "Wow! I turned of 2 of his guns!" Yeah. That was so worth the months of training in to a specialized ship to only turn off two guns. Why do that when I can TD all of them? Or just scram off his MWD? Or just neut off all of his cap using active modules which on gallente and amarr includes guns? Your idea is a less effective rehash of other EWAR and will make ECM less used than even TPs are currently.

The replacement for ECM needs to have these three characteristics: Non-chance based, effective and balanced. Your system has none of them.

Agreed, here is my proposal.


New ECM effect:
Releases a sensor negating energy burst which releases target locks of the enemy ship after identifying target frequencies, it functions like the locking mechanism except in reverse.

When you initiate an ECM module it will begin locking off your opponent, any and all sensor strength boosts on the enemy ship will prolong the lock off process(think reverse for dampeners);The higher the sensor strength of the ship the longer time it takes to succeed for the lock off, eventually it will succeed unless the process is stopped somehow.

Lock off is guaranteed for the ECM module and will succeed every time, only the frequency and time to lock off varies.


- Follows the guarantees given to other E-war of always functioning.
- Not chance based.
- Unless you get many ECM modules on you simultaneously properly chained you will as the target of ECM warfare usually get a lock for a while.
- Multiple modules on a target will keep locking off the target locks and thus make his day a really bad one.
- Sensor strength no longer becomes a near chance based immunity and instead is counterable by larger numbers of ECM modules chained.
- Single ECM ships will not be able to lock down small gangs, you will need to combine with damps or more ECM ships to do that.
- The higher your sensor strength the longer it takes to lock you off, but when you have a high sensor strength you're probably in a ship with lower scan resolution(slower lock times), so it all evens out: Frigates lock fast but get ECM locked off more often, BS lock slow but get ECM locked off slowly, it will all be about chaining modules properly and having fast lock times/sensor strength as a counter.
- ECM drones will be locking off targets very very slowly compared to ship modules and as such isn't a guaranteed GTFO free card nor is it a guaranteed block used with drone blobs, they will be more of a distraction over time or when properly micromanaged they could be made into a devastating lock off chain, but that takes huge amounts of time and such effects for such prolonged activities are justified.

Let's replace ECM in that statement for missiles and correct EWAR to weapon system:
"Right, Missiles is the most used weapon system. That sounds like it is whether very easy to use, which means anyone in a fleet can do the role or it is far more effective than any other types of weapon systems, which means it has to be changed."

See how foolish that statement sounds? Just because something is used heavily doesn't mean it is out of balance.


Heaven forbid CCP put some effort in to it.


Alright. So if the chance of ECM hitting is 45% over and infinite number of tries it is going to hit around 45%. That is correct. That doesn't mean ECM needs to be change. It proves that ECM is working as intended and the chance based balancing is working. That still doesn't mean that your new ECM system is effective and will be used. I have modules at my disposal that will disable certain modules on my enemies ship without any chance of them failing. Why would I use a system where I don't know if it will even jam a useful module? The answer: I won't and probably very few will.

I'm just going to say this once and I'm not going to post in this thread ever again.

ECM is the killer of solo/small gang PvP


Let's say for example, I'm in an Arty-Kitey Wolf. I fly around and I run into a gatecamp that I think I can kite away and take on. Say it's a Stiltto, Flycatcher, Thorax, and Hookbill, just as an example. Ok, I get the first move in this fight, so I'll just burn straight away in the direction furthest from the Stiltto. The Stiletto will probably go down in only 2-3 volleys, and the Hookbill will probably go down in a similar number of volleys (depending on his fit). Flycatcher and Thorax will not be fast enough to catch me. Alright, I can do this. I burn away, and put a volley into the Stiltto, wiping out his shields. Then, a Falcon decloaks, and perma-jams my frigate. At this point, the Falcon has enough jams on me to make sure that the chance that I will get a lock on the Stiltto and kill him, is next to 0. The Stiletto catches up to me, scrams me, then waits for the rest of his friends to come up and whore on my killmail. There is literally nothing I can do to save myself, I am officially screwed. They call in a Sabre while they hold me down, and I loose the pod as well.

A doable fight turned impossible by a single jamming ship. If it were damps, I could have just let the Stiltto in closer before blapping him. If it were TD's, I'd just have to change my flight path to lower transversal with the inty for a single crucial second. With jams.....I die. Explain to me what I could have possibly done in this situation to save my ship.


Aliventi makes the argument that the Falcon pilot trained for months to fly that ship well. Well, I trained for months to fly my Deimos well. Should I still get jammed really often? Also, that Falcon can appear at any moment. I often don't know going into a fight that a Falcon is going to decloak and insta-win the fight for his friends. Don't make the argument that I could have fit a mid-slot ECCM module on my Deimos, because that ship only has 3 mids as it stands. And I need a prop mod to survive, a scram to kill things, and a cap booster to run my reps (or an LSE if it's a shield Deimos).

ECM drones are just as OP. Far too many Vagabonds have escaped the grasp of my Scram/Web in a 1v1 by getting a lucky jam with ECM drones. Don't make the argument that I could have destroyed the ECM drones, because guess what, sometimes, they jam on the first cycle. A perfect example of even if you aren't perma-jammed, 20 seconds can make-or-break a fight.

As a person who has been solo PvPing almost every day he plays EVE for over a year now, I can say that ECM has ruined more fights for me than any other thing in the game. I can fight the blob. I can't fight my ship not doing anything.



I approve of OP's proposed new mechanic.

Replace 'falcon' with 'pilgrim' or 'arazu' above and tell me honestly you think it would be different. In the end result I mean, not in irritation.

Furthermore, using an 1 vs n scenario to call something out as overpowered is a bit....out there.


You also neglect to address that a falcon pilot spends months to maybe do something - no other ships have that burden.


Again, the mechanic is poor but it is emphatically not imbalanced.


So again we're back to finding something that's not random and binary, is worth using compared to other ewar and is balanced. And can properly neutralise logis.

I believe my suggestion covers all of that, I'm sure.

It is unfortunate that the hulls would indeed need some work however I don't think you will find a more balanced solution than what I suggested, ECM will still be extremely strong albeit not the absolute immediate lockdown tool it is today.

If you only want stronger E-war than the current sensor dampening, which is very strong already when used correctly then I believe you're just looking for overpowered solutions with little to no weaknesses, the point is to get balance and introducing a weakness or two to ECM is just what is needed.
My suggestion introduces both weaknesses and strengths, the new absolute reliability is a huge improvement to ECM, don't underestimate the value in it, no longer would dice decide if you manage to do your job or not.