Ships & Modules

Not really. My carrier frequently gets jammed out by EC-300's or a single falcon, even when i fit it its entire low slot and mid slots with nothing but ECCM. And yes i did this, i was undocking / repping people playing station games and even with all my low/mid slots full of ECCM i was still being jammed out perminantly by EC-300's alone. Not even a falcon

The butthurt is strong with this one.

The blackbird: the ultimate killboard padding ship for "newbies"

Nope.

Guys let me tell you about this one time I got jammed for 2 cycles in a row and then ran like a monkey with it's tail on fire to the forums to complain about being "permajammed"

ECM is OP if you compare it to other forms of EW.

Other EW forms are :

Neutralizers

You can avoid neutralizers by staying out of range (29.4km for faction heavy neutralizers, maybe 32 for officier heavy neutralizers), you can also have a cap injector (If you cycle it correctly, you can avoid or at least reduce the neutralizers' effects. You can also have projectiles/missiles/drones, they don't care about capacitor. The defense module (Cap injector) enhance the ship even when no tracking disruptors are in effect.

Tracking Disruptors

You can avoid tracking disruptors by using drones and missiles, you can also reduce their effects by using tracking-bonused ammo, and tracking enhancers/computers. The defense modules enhance the ship even when no tracking disruptors are in effect. Not sure, but I think stacking penalties applies to those modules.

Sensor dampeners

You can avoid sensor dampeners by keeping the distance between you and your target lower than your targetting range (Depends on what your ship is, but if you have a targetting range of 20km, stay within 20km of your target, and you're still able to fight). You can use sensor boosters to reduce/negate the sensor dampener's effect. The defense module enhance the ship even when no sensor dampeners are in effect. Stacking penalties applies to those modules.

Target painter

You can't really avoid this one, but it doesn't affect your ship's ability to fight.

And then you have ECM :

You can't avoid ECM (On bonused hulls) because except if you're a capital ship (Or a heavely ECCM'd logistic), you'll probably end up permajammed. You can launch your drones ONLY if you manage to target and engage the ECM ship before you get jammed. It completly shut off a ship for 20 seconds + the time it will take the target to relock something. It shut off projectile weapons, hybrid weapons, laser weapons, missile launchers (Except with FOF/Defenders, but seriously...), neutralizers, other forms of EW or remote modules. You can't really affect ECM ships' efficiency by moving around (Except if you really leave their operationnal range, which is 120KM max). Defense modules (ECCM and Sensor backup arrays) are only usefull against ECM jammers (Not ECM drones, after some testing on TQ), and they don't enhance the ship when no ECM jammers are in effect.

That's why it's broken, in my humble opinion.

Moving around doesn't affect jammers. Bonused hulls are so powerfull you can permanantly shut off everything that is smaller than a BC, and almost permajam a BS. The ECCM module is of no use against ECM drones. ECCM modules are ONLY usefull when you encounter an ECM ship, they don't enhance anything on the ship, when a cap injector is still usefull even when you don't encounter neutralizers, or when a sensor booster is still usefull even when you don't encounter sensor dampeners.

Let's talk about drones.

Neutralizing drones are useless, except maybe when you want to keep your target's capacitor at 0 between neutralizer cycles.

Target painting drones are useless.

Sensor dampening drones are useless.

Webbing drones are slow, only in large size (for now, that will change if you consider what's in the last singularity data dump), paperthin (And I mean, really PAPERTHIN) and generally useless.

And strangely, ECM drones are the most used drones along with Warrior IIs and Hobgoblins.

My proposition to fix ECM :

-75% to small ECM drones duration, -75% small ECM drones strengh.

-50% to medium ECM drones duration, -50% medium ECM drones strengh.

-100% NON-RACIAL strengh on racial jammers. Minmatar jammers won't jam Gallente ships, no matter what. If you want versatility, use multispectrals.

-25% Optimal/Falloff for jamming modules

+100% sensor strengh increase from ECCMs, +200% sensor strengh increase from Sensor Backup Arrays

ECCM needs to affect a ship's parameter, something that will still give a bonus to the ship even when the module isn't used to protect from jamming. I don't really know what kind of parameter would it affect yet, maybe the number of allowed targets (I really don't know what else it could enhance that is not already the job of another module). But it definitely needs to add something that makes you think "I should fit an ECCM, it will help me doing this" and not "I should fit 3 ECCMs, just incase a lone falcon decloack near me".

ECCM now have two modes. Unscripted, they'll affect the local sensor strengh. Scripted, they will be just like Remote ECCMs.

A cycling ECCM module should have a percentage-based chance of stopping the ECM cycle midway. ECCM modules duration = 5s.

You now have a EW system that can be effectively countered without completely crippling your fits with 2 ECCMs. You can counter it by staying out of range (With the -25% reduced range, they are more vulnerable to long range medium guns, for example). ECM drones are now balanced (Small drones will jam frigates and eventually cruisers, medium drones will jam cruisers and battlecruisers, maybe battleships sometimes, heavy drones will perform like they are supposed to do against battleships), they don't have a 20s duration (Which was a massive pain in the butt or a easy victory, depends on which side you are). By reducing the jammer's range, you increase their vulnerability, you also increase the need of putting a not-paperthin tank on Falcons and such, this will effectively reduce the number of jammers you can fit, and thuss force players to choose between racial jammers or multispectrals.

Though, ECCM modules really needs to enhance the ship in a way or another. This is really recquired. Or else, the module is USELESS if you don't encounter falcons/scorpions, which means, no one will fit it except if they know what's coming.

I don't mind falcons. The ECM system and its defenses needs work.

Agreed entirely. ECM needs to be brought into line not so much just to nerf it out of some type of misdirected anger, but to enable other EWar platforms an equal opportunity to be used. As it is, ECM is just so good on bonused hulls that other platforms are dismissed because they aren't nearly as effective.

Yes falcons are powerful but paperthin lock set ur drones after it ur whole fleet does it watch it melt also falcon is like the biggest prinary boat in game

well, I can't agree with that.

here's why:




best bet would be to boost the other ewar. ECM as it is, is only really OP because it's compared to TD's (meh), dampners (LOL) and painter (ROFLOL).

QFT!!!