EVE General Discussion

Did I miss a memo? Since when is winning a fight not considered "good" or "fun" ?

Yet again, the ECM drone defense crew is here.

"Train your skills"

"Use smartbombs"

"Fit ECCMs or Backup Arrays"

See, ECM is annoying, but ECM ships are reasonable to counter.

It takes effort to deploy a Falcon/Scorpion/Blackbird. Someone is flying it. And there are counters.

You can just avoid them.

You can neut them if they're close, and recons have terrible cap.

You can just burn away from them as it will lower their jamming effects.

You can fit ECCMs because that's how you counter those specific ECM ships.

Now let's take a look at ECM drones.

They cost almost nothing.

They can be deployed by pretty much every ship in EVE except some frigates.

There are 5 of them, you have to lock them all and because they are small, they take a while to lock.

They don't really care which race you are, they'll jam you anyway.

They don't really care how far you are from anything, small drones you know.

They die to smartbombs, except when you're in a ship that can not possibly fit one.

FoFs ? Ahah nah seriously dude.

Their only counter (Other than "shoot them with your own drones", that you can only do when you don't get INSTAJAMMED FOR 20S) is ECCM/Signal Backup Arrays. So what, am I supposed to fit those slot-consuming modules in order to counter super-cheap drones that can come out of any ship ?

No sir, that is bad gameplay. ECM as a whole is pretty bad, but specific ECM boats are sort of alright, the problem comes from the mechanic itself.

And the mechanic itself combined with light drones that can be used in literally every ship in EVE becomes the terribly annoying anti-goodfight tool that we all know.

Just delete them until you find a good way to fix them. Period.

I take it you mean stuff like this --> http://www.raf.mod.uk/equipment/alarm.cfm



if ccp changed ecm to work differently, then the whiners will just start crying that some other ewar aspect is OP

scrablers/disrupters stop you from running way ... nerf them
neuts leave you incapable of running modules .. nerf them
etc etc

bitches to need to man up

Show me an Ewar that prevents you from using every and all targetted modules and prevent you from controlling your drones.

There is none.

Sensor dampening just reduce your lock-range or lock speed, which you can counter by moving closer to your targets, neuts leave you incapable of running modules except when they are passive modules, except when you have a capbooster, except when you have a NOS, oh and max neut range is about 37km on Armageddons and Curses.

I don't need to go on for hours, my point is, ECM drones are **** and should be removed asap.

No, the problem is that having 4 kinds of heavy ecm drone in your bay is too much room. No subcap can hold a full flight of each.

They're just "run away" drones. And sooner or later, someone is going to escape who should have died, and ruin a good 1v1.

i came up with an idea a while ago on how to fix ecm.

Step one.

remove the ability to break the lock of ship.

step two.
Because ECM no longer works as a chance to break lock anymore we need to change what sensor strength actually means.

My proposal is to overhaul sensor strength to have a direct affect on applied damage from turrets and drones.

Optimal range tracking falloff you here about this all the time but what do they all boil down to? well its a number somewhere between 0-1 thats it.

and this number is then rated against X which is also a random number between 0-1

x is supposed to be the randomness of a fight that would make a hit go from miss to perfect strike.

I personally think this random factor should be manipulated by the ships sensor strength.

Ok so how does this tie into ecm/eccm and sensor strength?

now your ships sensor strength will directly affect how x is calculated.

example of how this would work:

i am in a black bird and i use white noise ecm on a minnie ship.

as long as the minnie ship has positive sensor strength x can never reach 0 which means you cant get a perfect strike on the ship.

but as soon as you use enough ecm on the minnie ship and his overall sensor strength goes below 0 then x can no longer go as high as 1. which will mean as long as your chance to hit number is higher then the highest possible number x can reach you will always hit.

i would then add sig resolution to ecm mods. give it a resolution of 300m which would mean frigs and crusiers would have a reduced overall affect.

Thanks for your response, CCP Rise.
So far I usually fit damage drones too, because often when you're fighting outnumbered you need to burst down targets rather quickly.
ECM Drones may not be "OP" per se... but I believe they are not fun and thus should be reworked .

I know the feel, bro. :(

This. The unfun is not in losing. It's about situations like this. It's about getting a bored seeing the same setups with their same Falcon alts each and every time. Predictability and repetition make for boring PVP. Sure, we all like winning and I fully agree you should do everything in your power to win. I just find that one specific tool given is too prevalent and scales badly. Getting rid of disincentives to PVP is always good. I wouldn't mind if it was changed to a mechanic that scales better.