Warfare & Tactics

I was wondering about the effectiveness of ECM, the results surprised me a little:

Chance p to jam is " jam str / ship sen str. "

A Griffin fit for this has 10.2 jam str.

the chance to fail with 4 modules is (1-p)**4

Some values for opponent ships:

Arazu

sensor strength 26
chance to jam 0.39
your fail chance for all 4 modules 0.13

Claymore
22
0.46
0.08

Ishtar
23
0.44
0.09

Lachesis
30
0.33
0.2

Sleipnir
20
0.5
0.06

Stiletto
10
1
0

Taranis
10
1
0
Tengu
18-20
0.5
0.06

So one griffin can shut down one of these ships with chances from 100% to 80% over 20 second cycle times.

Which means for me that not only is there no guarantee that this will work, there are diminishing returns if you focus a target with more than one ship and even if you succeed, you're at best preventing this one ship from killing you right now. Meanwhile you're comitting to your target for the next 20 seconds, which is easily enough time for you to do die, if someone else locks and shoots you, without a chance for you to change your ecm target.

It's not going to win you 1v1s because your opponent will just disengage, it's not going to help you in small gangs because you're just going to die to a buddy of the guy you jammed and the same goes for larger fleets, just on a different scale where you're probably going to die a lot faster.

Any fitted defense or spreading of jams reduces your jam chances.

T2 or Cruiser variations increase your jam strength by 33% to 100% but even then you're not guaranteed to jam because of the diminishing returns. Most importantly you need all available mid slots minus one for a prop module to do it, if you don't your chances go down very fast.

So is there actually a use case for ECM, except if you want to break tackle target locks?

Why would anyone bring an ECM pilot if they could instead bring damage or logi?

Did I miss something vital or fail at math?

What's going on?

Thanks.

Disengage how? Are you assuming the griffin is 1v1 someone?
Cos Jam condors are the next rage inducing thing after dual damp condors.

It's not going to help you in gangs if your gang does not spread tackle like f1 lemmings waiting for the FC to call primary. Jamming key targets means they're off the field unless it's a drone or missile ship (who would have guessed).

Not that much different in fleet. And all EWAR ships are at risk in fleets. With the attitude you describe there is no point to fly EWAR in fleets at all.
No. Those ships are so cheap and easy to skill into you bring packs of them. Because otherwise winning the fight is a DPS race and a matter of bringing more people than your enemy has. Pilots are a resource and unless you can just magically spawn more ships to outblob a blob (you can't), having that 1 griffin out of 10 jam a guardian or some other cap logi means the whole cap chain goes down.

A jam cycle can accomplish a hell of a lot when it lands on a ship that happens to be a logi, which happens to be crucial to a cap chain, especially if that logi is already being scan res damped, extending the duration of the jamming effects well past the ECM module's cycle time, and also if there happens to be some neuters on field who have been waiting for any window of opportunity to cap out a destabilized logi chain and win the fight. So yeah, when one successful jam can lead to taking the field in a major brawl, it's probably best that ECM is not more powerful.

I have to admit i never tested it explicitly, but I suspect it follows the same rules as e.g. getting jammed by an ECM rat which happens to die during the jam cycle. In that case the jam effect stops the instant the source pops. Therefore I think your jam is going to break in case you warp off grid, but would like to have some final clarification on that myself.

Mother of God...

This man wants to buff ECM.

The opposite of this was actually what I expected from it.

A set of modules that if you fit for them multiply your chances against very specific setups. I would have expect that if a fleet FC bothers to bring 5 Falcons/Rooks against a Tengu fleet, that the Tengu fleet is severely disadvantaged and has to run or not engage because the 5 EWAR ships make 25 or 30 effectively useless and I expected those 5 Falcons/Rooks to be completely useless against non Caldari ships.

I personally like dampeners because they are at least 'you get what you fit' and not RNG based. But I fully understand that decreasing the lock range is huge. I mean I have a maulus that costs maybe a million probably less that can screw nearly every ship at 120km+ range because of signal amplifiers. On the other hand it can also only take out one ship at a time, just like the other ewar systems.

Eve is a game where you have to bring friends and or make them to achieve something but I do feel ewar should offer an exeception to the "just bring more" metality if you're smart about it.

For example if you're slightly disadvantaged with 4:3 numbers, if a portion of those 3 are ewar, they should win if they're properly fitted and are smart about it. Being smart about it also consisting of antificipating their opponents setup and not just going into anything with omni resist tank missile ships with all ammo types.

ECM is broken. Accept that and live with it. They will not change it anytime soon.


Dampeners have something wrong with them too.

It is rather ironic that Dampners are best fitted to Caldari ships that are designed for long range engagement rather than Gallente Blaster boats (the idea was to make the enemy draw in close - I get it).


ECM was broken from the start. That is why they nerfed it (heavily) then buffed it (coz it was useless) then nerfed it again and set specialist ships to use them.

The fact that ECM modules have a staking boost (rather than stacking penalty like all other modules) is just one of the clear signs that there is a problem.

All examples given before, here and thereafter are situational and most ECM fitted ships swing from absolute game changing (one extreme) over to inept ineffective and useless (other extreme).

A Griffin can be used in novice and small FW complexes with a massive (albeit still chance based "all or nothing") effect.
A Scorpion can find itself in a fleet and it does not get time to lock as it is alpha'd off grid.


The argument people use about Caldari ECM boats having no tank are all flawed (because if you only fit three ECM mods there are plenty of slots left for an equivalent tank). The hulls might need a little tinker to improve tank and dps as they were weakened during one of the ECM nerfs.


There are few ideas and suggestions out there on how to improve the situation, hence my original line. Consideration of changes needs to include, ECM modules, ECCM modules, Backup Array modules, Sensor Strength attributes, ship hulls effected and more.

Personally, I think they should investigate along the lines of heat damage and drone bandwidth effects for ECM.

good luck with 100% change to jamm... as there is no such thing.

ECM is fine. It represents the ultimate risk/reward potential. It is very powerful, but only under extremely specific conditions, and utterly useless any other time. You only get a 1 in 4 chance of having a module that accomplishes anything at all in that slot.
You can 'rainbow' and cover your bases, but for most ships that means one each of the racial ECM, leaving you unlikely to counter much more than kitchen sink fleets. Or, you can focus jams to one or two races but be a waste of a ship if you pick the wrong racial. Unless you know exactly what the enemy has, that is a risky proposition.

It is much like tracking disruption. It's either useful or useless with little in between.

Painting and Damping effect all races equally. Damping out-ranges ECM as well. Damping can do more to force logi to become vulnerable. Jammed they just have to wait out the jam cycle, but damped they have to physically move closer to the DPS core ships to apply reps- putting them at increased risk of coming under direct fire.

ECM is pretty well balanced. Damps have become a more common EWAR type in many fleets. The CFC's FU Fleet is a good example of this. Damping enemies until they have the lock range of a near-sighted gnat works against any enemy ship, while ECM is hobbled against anything but a matching racial.

Turns what could have been an enjoyable and perhaps competitive fight into a gank.

Bad gameplay design and a common example of ECM as a conflict suppressor (there are few examples of ECM that portay it's use as a conflict driver).

You would think you we're playing a game?