Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Sry no, reducing lock range and speed is for remote damper, i do not like anykind of cross side effects only for the sake of balance.

They would simply replace damper because the acutal ranges where PvP fights usualy takes place is so close together every KM would make a difference and then ECM could fill 2 EWar typs in one Slot.

Im proposing something without randomness, and yes im proposing an alternative to your idea to have jammers also effect lock range and speed.

Im proposing that jammers make it more difficult/impossible to lock smaller ships, so in the end you have this:

Dampeners make it so you cant target stuff that is far away no matter the size.
Jammers make it so you cant target small stuff no matter where it is.

I had thought of the griffin and kitsune as potential problems to the design as they are themselves small ships and thus a large enough group of them could be invulnerable.

My thought was to balance them by making them lack capacitor to maintain a steady jam IE they wouldnt get a cap bonus to ECM or a cap capacity bonus and their current cap recharge rate would be effected negatively even more than it is now.

This would make it nearly impossible to perma run their ECM making them hit and run machines.

They would be incredibly annoying, but not altogether deadly, and certainly no worse than they are right now.

How about a role bonus which increases their max capacitor and decreases their capacitor regen? Say, double and half. They will be able to maintain jams for a while but not indefinitely without a capacitor booster (takes a mid slot) or NOS/cap logi support. One could be built to run a significant amount of jammers permanently without support but it would need so many cap modules/rigs that it would be basically naked--no defense or agility modules.

edit: I just realized that tracking disruptors make it difficult to hit small targets already. Don't we need some kind of EWAR that is beneficial to larger ships?

To start with, I would drastically lower the ECM strength of all jammers. Next, I would also lower the duration of the jammers Probably to around 10 seconds. Then I would change it so that you build ECM strength on a target over time. Each time the ECM cycles you gain ECM strength on that target equal to the strength of the ECM jammer that has just finished its cycle. When the ECM strength is equal to, or greater than, the sensor strength of the ship, you successfully jam that ships sensors and force it to drop all target locks while preventing it from acquiring any additional target locks for the duration of the ECM module. Once a target has been jammed all ECM points are reset, and the cycle begins again.

So for example: We have a test Griffin fitted with 4 multi-spectral ECM units. Our Griffin is attempting to jam out an Omen with a sensor strength of 15. Our Griffin's multi-spectrals have an ECM strength of lets say 2. Our Griffin really wants to jam out this Omen so he uses all 4 jammers on him. Each time his ECM cycles he gains 8 ECM strength against the Omens 15 radar sensor strength. This means on his jammers first cycle he only has 8 ECM strength, not enough to jam the Omen, but on his second attempt he will gain another 8, putting his total up to 16, beating the Omens sensor strength, and jamming him for 10 seconds, every other cycle.

Second example. Our little Griffin is in a small frigate gang now and they find and engage a small group of Rifters. Our Griffin now has a choice. Remembering that our Griffin has multi-spectrals with a hypothetical strength of 2, a Rifter has a base sensor strength of 8, so our Griffin could jam 4 rifters for 10 seconds, every 4 cycles. Lets say for whatever reason he does this. One of the Rifters burns off from the fight to try and tackle our Griffin. /o\ Ohnohs! Not to worry, our Griffin already has 2 ECM points on this Rifter so all they need to do is put another 2 of their jammers onto the offending Rifter. Bam, next cycle he has 8 ECM strength on the Rifter. But wait, the Rifter still has target lock? Turns out this pilot trained their sensor compensation skills and has 9.5 sensor strength, not 8. Our Griffin is caught without any tank and destroyed.



Those are just some hypothetical numbers of course. But I think that the principle is sound. There could even be rigs and mods added to reduce the cycle time of jammers. This would mean a faster build up of ECM strength, but shorter jamming duration.

Personally, ECM could be removed from the game and I don't see myself shedding many tears over its loss. But if we're brainstorming here for ways to remove the RNG from it, this is how I think I would do it.

I personally loved ECM back when it wasn't chance based, the original ECM mechanics and original Falcon added a flavor to EVE that CCP unfortunately removed.

I advocate a compromise solution: Bring back the original ECM mechanic, but add anti-radiation missiles.

In the real world there are classes of missiles that do not lock a specific target but just home in on activate radio sources, such as the jamming station (any jamming system is going to put out a lot of noise and be very, very, very easy to lock onto even if you can't lock onto anything else) and fly to it and blow it up.

We could add a class of missile that doesn't need a lock and just homes in on the strongest radiation source on the field, which 9/10 times is going to be the ECM ship jamming everyone. It would be like FoF missiles except useful.

It would be realistic though.

Besides missiles are already underpowered compared to turrets ever since they added that whole signature radius thing, back in the day before the nano nerfs a raven with torps could 1 shot any frigate.