Player Features and Ideas Discussion

This is a concept for how I think ECM could work in order to make combat less binary and more interesting when involving ECM. I thought it worth putting here on the F&I forum in case CCP may be interested in ideas on how to go forward with rebalancing ECM in the future.


Proposal - Modulated ECM Effects

As we know ECM currently is a simple dice roll dividing the ships sensor strength by the ECM strength of the ECM ship. If you are successful you get a jam off and the opponent is jammed for the duration of the ECM modules cycle which is 20 seconds. If you fail the target is completely unaffected.

Now my proposal is simple, ECM continues to work in a similar manner to how it does now, but instead of being a binary result of yes you jammed the opponent or no you didn't jam, the effect is instead modulated depending on the result of the dice role.

To keep things as consistent and simple as possible the best variable for the result is to use the duration of the jamming effect. Currently this is set to always be the same length as the ECM modules duration. What I am suggesting is that with a modulated ECM effect this could instead result in any outcome in the range of the target being jammed for 20 seconds, the target not being jammed at all, or anything in between.


The Calculation

So let me give and example of how this could work:

Lets say you have ECM with a strength of 10, and the targets sensor strength is 40. Currently you have a 25% chance to jam the ship out (10 / 40 = 0.25 ) . Let us say we have a dice with 100 sides to it (theoretically of course). Currently if we roll anything below 75 then the jam is unsuccessful, with anything else being the jam is successful for 20 seconds.

With the modulated ECM effect by altering the calculation we could make a full jam more difficult to achieve, but at the same time a partial jam less difficult.

So first lets take the calculation to confer a full 20 second jam effect onto the target. To do this we would simply divide the current formula by 2. So the formula would now be ( ( 10 / 40 = 0.25 ) / 2 = 0.125 ) . Under the modulated system you now need a score of 87.5 and above to get a full 20 second jam as opposed to the 75 currently.

This isn't the end of the calculation though as you may get a partial jam. So next you need to work out what would constitute a failed jam. To do this you would take the result of the old formula again and multiply it by 2 which would give a 50% chance to get a partial jam. ( ( 10 / 40 = 0.25 ) * 2 = 0.5 ) This means you need to roll a value of below 50 to completely fail a jam attempt as opposed to the current value of anything below 75.

The next part of the calculation is the part which modulates the strength of the jam. So in the previous example we had the maximum score required as ( 1 - 0.125 = 0.875 ) and the minimum score required as ( 1 - 0.5 = 0.5 ) . We then take these two value and subtract the minimum from the maximum to get the range. ( 0.875 - 0.5 = 0.375 )

That is the calculation over, now just time for the fun part which is rolling the dice and seeing the effect. So we roll the 100 sided dice again. In the example above anything below 50 and it is an automatic fail, and anything above 87.5 is an automatic 20 second jam cycle. Lets say we roll 70 on the dice which means we get a jam. To work out the duration of a partial jam we take take the score which we rolled and subtract the minimum value ( 70 - 50 = 20 ) . We then take the range and work out what percentage of the range the score which we rolled (as a decimal value ) constitutes. ( 0.20 / 0.375 = 0.533 ( 53% ) )

So now with this in mind, knowing that a full jam cycle is 20 seconds, all we need to do is work out 53% of 20 seconds to calculate the duration the target ship has been jammed for. In this case the jam lasts for 10.7 seconds.


Conclusion

This method of jamming would be a lot more interesting for both the jammer and the target. First of all it won't be a black and white binary result, a jammed ship will still have a chance to fight on after the jamming effect has ended provided its sensor strength gives it a good chance of only receiving a partial jam or no jam at all.

Also the ECM ship would need to play more skilfully, it would be wise to keep a spare ECM module ready to activate if they want to keep a ship fully jammed as in the case above the target would regain its sensors after 10.7 seconds wheras the ECM module will still be cycling for another 9.3 seconds.

In the example I gave above it is actually easier for the ECM ship to jam its target although harder to fully jam it for the full 20 seconds. I believe this would be a balanced approach although the numbers given above are purely for example to illustrate the concept and the actual numbers if this were to be actually implemented would need to be finely rebalanced.

I hope this suggestion may be of some use to CCP as I believe ECM may be in line for a balance pass at some point in the future and so throwing this idea out as it would be something I feel would make combat a lot less binary and more interesting.

Thanks for reading.

The problem is that this synergizes with sensor dampeners too well...

There is a huge difference between breaking a lock and not breaking a lock. Keeping someone jammed out for an extended period of time is really great, but I would trade the ECM we have now for ECM that guarantees a lock break with no jam cycle in a heartbeat.

Consider a falcon jamming a Zealot... my Falcon on racial jammers has a 13.451 strength vs a Zealots 25.2 sensor strength:
13.451 / 25.2 = 0.5337
0.5337 * 2 > 1
this means that my falcon is guaranteed to at least break the lock of the Zealot meaning all I need is 1-2 sensor dampeners on him and he's completely unable to lock anything ever.

This is aside from the fact that jamming someone and taking them out of the fight for a length of time is bad game design which allows for no counterplay.

Hacking minigame for ECM pls.

Your math is off as you can never have greater than 100% probability*, but the gist of what you're saying is 100% true. An instant lock break coupled with enough scan-res damping means that the target can never, ever get a lock. If you increase the chances of ECM providing even an instant lock, joint ECM/damp wings would become incredibly powerful.


*Chance of 1 jammer landing: 53.37%
Chance of one of two jammers landing = 1-(1-0.5337)^2 = 78.26%
Chance of one of three jammers landing = 1-(1-.05337)^3 = 89.86%
etc.


To the OP: I like the idea of making ECM not binary, but I don't think this is the right way to do it.

Of course a 20 second jam is better than a lock break, but Ill take a guaranteed lock break over a 30% chance to jam every time because I can bank on that lock breaking when I need it to, and I can guarantee to keep someone perma jammed if we do it right instead of having to pray to RNGesus.

Also, ECM bursts suck because they have crap range and effect your allies; it has little to do with their jam mechanic.

Bear in mind I am suggesting an overall concept here and using the numbers for illustrative purposes as mentioned in the OP. I did not want to go into the specifics of overall numbers as I am not in a position to know how to balance this effectively and so did not want to detract from the overall concept with a discussion about specific numbers. As an overall trend though Id like to see ECM toned down.

As you bring it up though if we were to tweak the numbers then as an example we could lower the ECM strength to a degree where a guaranteed lock break is almost impossible. So with your Falcon example we could reduce the ECM strength to half of that so that a guaranteed break is only possible vs ships with a sensor strength of 13.451 and below, ie destroyers and frigates which have a high scan resolution and so would not be effected much by sensor damps. Also bear in mind under the current system a guaranteed 20 second jam is possible vs those targets, under my proposal it would only be a lock break.

We would also have the option of modifying the calculation to set the range. So instead of multiplying and dividing by 2 we could reduce this to 1.5. This again would have the effect of making a guaranteed lock break only possible on the smallest of ships which have an innate high resistance to the sensor damping tactic you described.

The problem with ECCM is you are making a large sacrifice in terms of a mid slot or for a lesser effect a low slot, and even then I have seen ships jammed out fairly easily.

Using a modulated effect the ECCM will always be worth fitting against a jamming ship as even if you don't stop the lock break completely you will be reducing the lock break duration.

It would be nice if the duration of the cooldown was based on the ships sensor strength for example rather than an arbitrary period which is identical for every ship.

In my example one of the results of tying the sensor strength directly to the result of the effect is that it means every unit of sensor strength has a meaningful effect, and so fitting that ECCM will be much more likely to benefit you when against a ECM ship.

Because currently the 20 second jam is not gerrintied but with your idea mixed in with a few famous a permanent jam is

I support this proposed change. This will not only make flying ECM more interesting, but make flying against ECM will actually seem a lot more do-able. This would be a nerf, but a welcome one -- and it could introduce a new skill that grants 1% increase in ECM cycle time.

Furthermore, I think this could be another welcome addition:



(I sometimes fly Rooks so I'm not just hating on ECM)