Ships & Modules

broken or not, there is no "real" fix for ECM besides nerfing it into oblivion or complete removal from game. Decreasing cycle might be a better option, but you would need to work out on the ECM boats' cap or ECM cap usage a bit to make it bearable (shorter cycle = more cap needed), and even then you would still get people whining about being locked out of a battle.

Logi might as well get nerfed as it's very effective in small group fights.

Everyone's so scared of a falcon, the Rook, now there's a ship to fear.

I think what you fail to understand is that a chance based mechanic removes strategy elements from the game.

What if Warp scramblers had a 30% chance to jam the target? You could have 100 people on someone and they could theoretically warp out. They should die in that circumstance, no?

Assuming exact same fleet composition with ECM vs ECM, the side that gets "luckier" will win. If it was moved to a blanket reduction in DPS or something of the like, it would be the side that better applied the ECM to appropriate targets, adding to the strategy element of the game.

ECM in its current form deters fights. If you have a 10 man gang, and you find a 10 man gang with 2/3 ECM ships, the odds are stacked against you.

This in essence makes more blobs, and blobs aren't fun.

edit: i haven't been jammed in any of the recent fights i've been in, but that doesn't mean the mechanic is fine. I don't need to 'rage' over something to understand that it isn't in line with the rest of eve.

I like the idea that a ship targeted by ECM receives a hefty cycle time increase on any high slot modules.
Thus a said ship could still function instead of being entirely helpless like it is now.

I'm with Tippia, Nehpilius and whoever else on this one.

There are far too many threads out there where people point to a problem that doesn't exist and then go on to suggest things that are either too shallow, overtly complicated or heavy-handed to blunt - leading to simply making things worse. There may be problems, but it's not necessarily those you talk about.

It's not that you can't do things with ECM - there are alot of decent suggestions out there. Some are even good. It's just so transparent that many recurring topics simply stem from pulling a problem out of a single context and then you get this endless loop of people whining on brittle ground because they lost to ECM and other people retorting on the same level. This thread is high complexity, low impact and only limitation-minded.

Understand that "fixing" should mean improvement and making something more enjoyable - not the kind of "fixing" you do to a dog. There's also the always useful detail of having experience flying- or at least being well versed enough in the ship you talk about to be able to make leveled description. Point out how your ideas affect both facing and flying the ship in question. Let that fill some room in your posts. That's what balance is about after all.

The only thing the OP got right is that from a design-perspective, ECM is a poor mechanic.

Well I started off the OP by saying that as a playerbase we could discuss potential solutions to the poor mechanic, and then started the discussion off with an idea.

The point wasn't to necessarily discuss my idea, only brainstorm a variety of things. You need a free flow of ideas without judgement to build up a list. From there, you determine the merits and make choices / adapt a variety of changes into one well thought out solution to a problem.

Is it a problem? Well a good chunk of people think the current mechanic is, and a good chunk of people think it isn't broken. I'd like to think the people who think it is fine are just resistant to change, or have little faith in CCPs ability to do it the correct way. Unfortunately, that shouldn't be a basis for a 'its fine bro' statment. :)

Or have ECCM decrease the time you are jammed, not just the probability.

I really like two approachs to potentially change ECM, I think that it is fine the way it is, but I also think that switching it up, provided it's balanced wouldn't be a bad thing.

Reduction of targets: Make it nonchance based.

Sensor Str vs Jam Str will add to or take away from time being jammed

I didn't mean to paint you the goat for the initial low quality discussion that followed, merely pointing out that it's where the discussion was heading and why. I'm sorry if it came across otherwise, the topic itself is not invalid in any way.

As for the actual problems you can break it down into three aspects: tweaking the mechanics, changing the mechanics and dealing with the pre-nerf and extreme-bonus issues tied to the mechanic.

Tweaking existing mechanics, the combination of limiting the effect per ship with scripting the modules is by far the best ideas that has surfaced. It's reasonably easy to implement, won't cause ripple effects and deal with the most discussed issues in a surprisingly effective manner. It's like the variable in the mechanic that should always have been there, but got lost.

Keywords: one effect per ship, failed attempts = indirect immunity for duration, more value to ECCM, no stacking, no counter pre-fitting, no requirement of 6+mods leave room for conventional tank.

Changing the chance-based mechanic require more development attention, and one of the better solutions in my eyes was always one of those Tippia mentioned here: moving ECM over to a lock-break mechanic and balance it per time instead of chance - forcing you to use ECM with tactics revolving around timing.

Keywords: lock-breaking, cycle times, re-designing mods from chance to range- and cycle time, removing counters, removing support-mods, fusing it together with damp and sensor booster mechanics.

Per-nerf and extreme-bonus issues come from how ECM as a system is singular, it's just one bonus on a set of ships with alot of modules very dedicated to a single role (where their brethren usually have multiple systems to consider, ontop of a better tank-damage relation as well). Suggestions related to this involve anything from things that has popped up in this thread, like moving ECM to highslots like Neuts; to changing the mechanic and splitting up bonuses, removing SDA and switching slots in other ways, giving more than a token drone-bay or fitting and slotting for a comparable damage output etc.

Keywords: dealing with the issue of a ~10-slot, single-bonus focused role and it's necessity to be powerful.