EVE General Discussion

They're always OP when they get a jam cycle, when they get none = "lol noub, owned ya"

If they introduce Warp Disrupting drones then yeah why not.

And then everyone who tries to prove me that Warp Disrupting drones are OP, I'll just answer "Fit smartbombs, fit warp core stabs" and all kind of stupid solutions until he gets bored and doesn't want to argue anymore.

Make ECCM not be completely useless when not being jammed and we might have a start.

It's said that ECM drones "take no slots" as in an implication that they are OP.


Sort of.


First, if you use less than 5 ECM drones, you really screw the pooch. Might as well be taking some spark plugs out of your car too to get an idea of how effective that is.

This means that a ship relying on drones for DPS is taking a huge hit, more so than a ship losing a mid slot to ECCM.

So while you can say that a ship sacrifices mid slots to ECM drones that the ship fielding the drones didn't have to lose a mid slot for, the use of the ECM drones, doing no damage, is like sacrificing some number of high slots.

Now consider that DPS is tank in many cases. Being able to remove DPS from the field is one way to tank. A risky way, and depends on a lot of things NOT happening. It's as much a gamble as speed tanking. If you speed tank, being webbed and scrammed is death. If you DPS tank, being jammed (and scrammed) is death.

Now we should also consider further that ECM drones only come in one size. This too is a huge headache. Take the Cyclone for example. a 50m drone bay. if you are up to skills on drones and use 5x medium scouts you get significant DPS especially with a low slot going for a drone damage module. Use a drone link computer in the mids to make them faster and you can extend the range (lest you have to abandon them or keep them within 20KM at all times because they are slow compared to lights).

But in the case with 50 and 60 meter drone pays, if you want to use 5 ECMs, you're done. In a Cyclone or comparable drone bay hull the use of ECM drones means you go to 5x light combat and 5x ECM. Good flexibility yes, but your DPS just took a huge hit. You can tweak the speed of mediums, with good rigging and/or skills, and get considerable DPS, but in a case like this, you have to drop to light drones because you want ECM drones and now YOUR ship will be the only one taking damage from ECM drones because the DPS drop costs against the DPS as tank factor leaving smaller ships in the field to do more damage to your own ship.


If you are using a ship that has 25m or less, then you just tossed drone DPS completely and ECM drones in such a ship is a "travel fit". But there you can go ahead and "sacrifice" a mid slot to an ECM module and have drone DPS back, and a small ship fielding 5 lights with the same support modules and skills is a killer. So here we see the converse case where using a mid slot INSTEAD of ECM drones can be the advantage.

So when you really take time to think about this sort of thing, OP is not as OP as one originally figures.

Still it's a good point though that none of the other electronic attacks have such a permanent lock up feature. There's much rage to be seen in people getting perma-jammead in Guristas complexes, and even more frustration to be seen in PVP where you don't even get off a shot. Still damage drones and FOF *could* help if people would not be afraid to use them, but this is a matter of now being concerned about being laughed at by someone who blew up your ship anyway. (somewhat contradictory at best) or being afraid at what Battle Clinic trolls might say.

Oh, I'm on board with that idea. Unlike the others.

Maybe if one of them was a falcon instead.

Too bad most players are Caldari and Caldari ships are largely based around ECM. You can say different as often as you'd like but ECM isn't fundamentally changing. Not without greatly redesigning Caldari ships anyway.

Maybe someday!