EVE General Discussion

.....orrrrrrrrr fit ECCM and adapt to the situation.

We are in fact played by the ECM. Unfair? Yes. Because life is unfair.

But you're cool with the current Hit, Smashes, Penetrate, Glance mechanic which randomly generates a variation in dps well over 30 percent.

30 percent variation isn't significant lulz!

You can influence Hit, smash, penetrates Etc? I think not

To your points about ECM - I love it! provides awesome tears for pvp thirsty players :) fit those mids with counter measures that boost your sensors ;)

In other words the counter to ECM is to remove several mid slots from your fit, which will be filled by ECCM. So the only way to do anything against ECM is to generally gimp yourself. Compare this with any other ewar where there is still something you can do, even if not fit optimally. Perhaps eccm should have more of a general in fight effect? Making you harder to scan down isn't that useful.

A previous post put the point very well, players hate losing control of their character, or at least the feeling of control. ECM removes control over everything except your ship thrusters, and most jamming boats will be faster than you anyway.

No, it's not as significant. It's 30% of a single volley. That is nothing like as relevant as a complete shutdown of your offensive modules for an entire ECM cycle.

And if you don' think that you can influence the quality of your hits, then you must not do much turret pvp. Or you failed to pay attention when you did.

It's fine that you like ECM. It's good that someone does. But the question was about why most people don't. And for most people, what I posted pretty much sums it up.

The fact that they hate you means you are doing something good. Keep up the good work

This thread almost gives the impression EVE players believe in fair PvP.

Change it to any other difference in ship power, numbers of ships, knowledge of game mechanics, or asymmetric PvP in general and we hear a different tune altogether. It would be quite interesting to correlate the anti-ECM whiners in this thread with the "grunting neanderthals" that provide the background static in griefing threads, but I CBA /lol.

Instead I'm going to conform to the true spirit of EVE, and change my medium-term training priorities away from Logistics and towards ECM. It's probably a good thing anyway - I'd already started to suspect that as a "combat logistics" specialist the neanderthals would be calling me a carebear behind my back.

Heh

I fly all the EWAR types and ECM is no better or worse in my opinion. There's little difference between not being able to lock someone because of ECM or because my recons have you damped to a lock range of inches.

ECM is balanced by the fact that it is an all or nothing weapon. If you don't have the right racial jammer for your target- that is a completely wasted slot (and fitting space) on your ship. You might as well be flying a partially fitted ship.
But also, spreading out racial jammers to cover the 'rainbow' means you have only one for any given race. That might work against kitchen sink fleets but it's not doing much against any sort of organized doctrine.
Lastly, these are soft ships, always high priority targets. I'm often blapped right off the field in a recon.

So in summary, you are a paper thin snowflake that may or may not be of any value whatsoever...at least until you are primaried and podded seconds into a fight......not exactly the scourge of PvP that players make ECM out to be.

Turret disruption is much the same. All or nothing. Run into a missile boat and you might as well have empty mid-slots.

Everyone thinks about how frustrating it is to not be able to lock someone...but it's often more frustrating to fly EWAR and be flying what amounts to a half-fitted ship because the other guy is immune to you. ECM was the original 'polarized' weapon.

In my experience, even in really large null sec fleets, ECM is not a preferred EWAR type. Damping is far and away more common and was the core of the CFC 'FYF' doctrine.


Having said all that, I think ECM could use a revamp. Perhaps make it a burst effect like a smartbomb. That way it can also affect friendly ships, but those ships can fit to avoid that effect. That would make it a fleet composition decision to bring ECM. Powerful but requires every friendly to fit around having it. It would also be a hard counter to damping. Damping might bring me in close but now you're in my ECM burst range......