Player Features and Ideas Discussion

There are a few problems with your comparisons.

Jamming is unlike any other ewar in existence for a few reasons:

1. There is nothing I can do to mitigate its effects; with TDs i can determine what script youre using and either close range or modify my flying to reduce transversal. with SDs i can just close range to make them less effective.
2. Jamming is much more effective against smaller targets, other forms of ewar are less effective for practical applications. EG TDs only effect small ships against ships their own size, frigates can usually still hit a larger ship despite disruption, also frigates generally have to be close anyway, so range is usually less of an issue.
3. The "counter mod" for Jamming has no other application; you would never fit it if you werent expecting jamming, but sensor boosters decrease lock time and tracking computers/enhancers are widely used.

All of these things are not addressed by your fix however I do like the idea of removing the randomness because randomness in a competitive game is universally bad

One thing commonly overlooked is what ships will jam, td and sd you.

SD bonused: Celestis, Arazu, Lachesis. All of them can be quite meaty and will easily survive a few hits.
TD bonused: Arbitrator, Curse, Pilgrim. Once more - Arby and Pilgrim can have surprisingly mean tanks and unless you're missile/projectile fitted it's likely you're not firing back at a Curse anyway. (Or, for the matter, at a Pilgrim if you let it get too close). They also have means of fighting back - drone based damage.

And last, ECM Boats:
Falcon, Blackbird, Rook. Barring the rook, they're paperthin. Due to their ability to lock ships down with ECM (and with the proposed mechanic it's no longer 'probable' jam, it's definite jam) they're often primary targets in fights and if someone can keep lock long enough they're probably dead.

ECM boats also don't really have a way of fighting any attacker, short of jamming him and legging it from the fight. Given the jam being chance-based, it's a gamble - with this proposal, breaking points would become trivial. So would be breaking logi chains.

(It's also worth noting that ECM doesn't scale that well with numbers, best shown with the recent shift to dampening fleets from ECM support.)

So... overall the idea is not that great, given the guaranteed lock-break would make jamming itself insanely overpowered on unbonused ships (Hauler under attack? Align, ECM, leg it. Fight going wrong? Align, ECM, leg it - there is no chance to miss the jam. It'll always force the enemy to relock. Especially with the idea of scripted ECM.) and either make bonused ones extinct (if jams aren't staggered you'll be blasted off the field in those ten-fifteen seconds it takes the jammer to cycle) or even worse than today (unavoidable perma-jamming)

It's the durability coupled with an unreliable effect of said ECM.

It'll only be worse today with the new HACs, they're going to chew holes in ALL ECM boats now. One might think they were made as a specific counter...



edit: @OP: What about ECM drones?


Edit 2: @OP: A decent linky for your assertion that ECM in of itself, is not OP: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=3550436#post3550436

ECM drones. A flight of lights will pretty much permajam any target and have 100% chance of breaking locks or tackle. Even 1 drone will break tackle with a 100% chance.

So - no to your Idea.

Part of the reason for unifying ECM under a single module with scripts to take over the racial aspect was to incentivise fitting tank over jammers. Because you don't need to fit 4 jammers to be effective anymore you can fit 2-3 and still be effective while fitting a decent shield tank. 2 LSE, 2 Invul, 2 jam, MWD on a falcon would rock. You would get tank and still be effective. Perhaps weapons upgrades in the lows to boost your DPS since signal distortion amps won't exist anymore to help bring your DPS up to help kill frigs or whatever. You don't see Huginns with 4 webs and no tank. You don't see Lachesis with 4 points and no tank. Why would you see a 4 jam falcon with no tank? The only reason you see it now is you need 4 jams to be effective. This change makes that thinking obsolete.

As far as ECM drones... That is tough. Perhaps a jam strength rebalance to something like .25 for lights and maybe .30 for mediums. Then you sum the jam strength of the drones and then that is how strong the jam is. The theory would be you are jammed for 1 second with light ECM drones. Maybe 1.5 seconds with mediums. You could even extend the jam cycle time to 30 seconds from 25 to really make it a choice between ECM drones and DPS drones. It is balance-able. It is definitely a big nerf from each drone having a chance to jam you for 20 seconds.

First of all, you know if this change went through, people would just go for the perma jam, and in this case, it would be a guaranteed perma jam, so you'd still be left with nothing to do.

Again with the knowledge that everyone is just going to go for the perma jam, you need less jammers to perma jam a frigate vs a battleship; also a frigate can do less in the time it is unjammed than a battleship would. IE a single battleship volly or a single battleship sized neut is way more effective than the amount of neuting/damage a frigate gets done in that amount of time.

That logic is post hoc ergo propter hoc. An alternative explanation is that ECM is perceived as overpowered and therefore people are more likely to employ the one module that at least in some way mitigates the overpowered other module.

You can bring a Falcon with 2 jammers and perma jam a frigate. Be my guest. It is IMO a total waste of a Falcon. If I am going to put the effort in to bringing a Falcon to make a difference in even a small or large gang fight pretty much any other ship is worth more for me to jam than a frigate.
If you want to fit 4 jammers to a Falcon to try to perma-jam a single Logi while ignoring every other ship on the field be my guest. You are limiting your potential effect by attempting to do so. With 2 jammers you could prevent 2 BS from putting down DPS for 10 seconds. At 1000+ DPS over the 2 BS for 10 seconds that is 10+k damage you could prevent. Or you could try to jam more than one logi and allow your DPS a chance to push the target beyond the point at which Logi would save them. This kind of creative thinking will make perma-jamming obsolete as a tactic in all but the most unusual circumstances.

You can continue to waste a falcon to perma-jam a frigate. You are still stuck under the assumption that such drastic changes to ECM as an effect and how the module functions/change to single jammer with scripts for racial effects will cause no change in how a Falcon pilot operates. I can tell you right now there will be people that will stick to the old thinking. They will die more often and have limited effect on the battlefield because of their choice. Those that adapt to the changes will reap the rewards as their Falcons can tank and cause broad guaranteed effects across multiple ships. I think you will find that a Falcon is far more devastating in a fight if it disrupts multiple targets over attempting to perma-jam a single target. Get used to the thinking that perma-jamming is no longer the best way to run a Falcon if these changes go through.

What if the target loss didn't happen instantly...
Under the target icon, you see a bar indicating lock strength that decreases, when it hits 0, the lock breaks. The higher the jam strength/the lower the sensor strength, the faster that bar moves (ie the sooner the lock breaks). Double jam strength, halve the time it takes to break a lock.
The more ECMs targeted at you, the faster the lock breaks *and the additional ECMs are stacking penalized - so that 7 ECM modules don't break a lock much faster than 5 ECM modules. Then ECMs might be used in volleys, or dispersed rather than staggered.

Then, allow the player being jammed to do something to re acquire the target lock before it breaks....
Perhaps if you 1) have a free target slot open and 2) are being jammed, you can "double lock" your target.
If you can acquire a 2nd lock before the first lock breaks, then no effective jam. - The target would show up twice in your overhead, and its just a matter of making sure that one is selected, and reactivating your modules on that target. A ECM modules starts to removes 1 target lock at a time for each locked ship - so double locked ships will first have one lock broken, then the next lock will start to break.

The bar continues to decrease for the duration of the ECM's cycle, and the 2nd target lock automatically begins degrading after the first one breaks, providing there is still an active ECM targeting the ship.

This "double lock" feature is only available after a jam has started (otherwise, everyone would double lock their targets)
ECCM modules would enable double or triple locking before a jam has even started (truly being backup sensor clusters like the name suggests). You can "multiple" lock a ship for as many targeting slots as your ship has available when being sufficiently jammed/fitting sufficient ECCM.

BS's thus may have more target locks to break through, and due to higher sensor strength, the locks break slower, but due to worse scan res, they take longer to establish (keeping in mind that without some form of ECCM, you can't preemptively start multi-locking)

Support units (ie logis) that lock up many friendly fleet members would have few if any target slots open, and would not be able to double lock many of their units before their first set of locks get broken.

Thoughts?

What about a disruption field?

An ECM module that effectively made the signature of the ship unlockable, and in turn the ship using it could not lock anything else either.

I would limit this, so that the opponents could use signal boosters to overcome this effect, and lock the target despite this.

I would further twist the effect, and say the ship using this ECM could also use the same signal boosters, so they could also lock other ships over the interference that they generated.

Here is the kicker: as mid slot items, the ECM takes up slots used for shields and other items.
As low slot items, the boosters take up slots for armor and other items.

We already have these. They call this sensor boosters, remote sensor boosters, skirmish links, information warfare links, and x-instinct combat boosters. All of these either reduce your sig rad thus making you harder to lock/hit, or increase scan res thus allowing you to lock faster.

And that is the domain of sensor boosters and sensor damps. Not ECM.