Ships & Modules

Hi all, now for a story.

3 of us in alts were out looking for a fight 8). We jump into a low sec system where we find a bellicose, tornado, and arazu just off grid. We three are hurricane / drake / harb. We decide sure we'll go for it, might not get there but what the hey.

We engage the arazu. the tornado runs to range and hits us hard. the bellicose and arazu launch full flights of light ecm drones. Drake perma jammed. Hurricane scrammed at 20k no mwd. harb still fighting strong. Soon 6 more enemy land on us.... meh whatever we knew it was a hard fight from the beginning. Maybe we can take down something with us. So 2 tempests, drake, and few other things land. All launch light ecm drones, my overview flood with them. 30 Ish in total. Roughly ten on us each. All three of us now perma jammed. Literally, Perma jammed but light ECM drones.

I dont mind dieing, I dont mind being ganked if I can fight back and go down swinging. However this rash of ECM needs to be addressed please!

I dont care how it is handled, stacking penalties / strength reduced / speed reduced on drones so they cant catch moving targets........

Whatever the idea I am begging CCP to look into ecm. It is completely ruining the fun of this game. Everything else in game has a counter other than ecm. ECCM does not work.

Thank you,

Wild

Out of curiosity since I've not tried it, how do FOF missiles do in PVP?

I would think they deserve mention as a counter to ECM. We use them to counter ECM rats in PVE.

I can think of some good defenses that players could use, like rotating ranges to spread out the damage, but think they'd still be useful under these circumstances.

I have two main issues with ECM, and Liang has more or less touched on both of them.

1.) There is no way to completely counter it, only to reduce the probability of it happening. I can name several occasions where I have been jammed by 5 light ECM drones while in a Domi with 2 ECCMs or 1 ECCM which was overheated; on all such occasions I was mad, bro - and why shouldn't I be? Fitting 2 ECCMS is a considerable fitting sacrifice to make and to be jammed in a BS hull by an unbonused set of light drones is a real kick in the teeth.

2.) The effect of being jammed is greater than that of all other types of EWAR. Not only this, but it's by a considerable margin as well. Neuts can be crippling to some ships, sure, but they still don't prevent you from firing cap-independant weapons at your aggressor(s).

Solutions? Not sure, but reduction in the amount of time spent jammed would be a start, even if it's just scaled so that light drones jam for less time, mediums for longer, large drones for longer still and specific ECM boats for the longest.

Or something.

I dunno.

-Ed

A cap booster and a nos both have utility aside from merely countering neuts. ECCM doesn't, Furthermore, ECM prevents far more than neuts ever thought of.

-Liang

Use a ******* smartbomb.

Well one simple solution might be to simply alter the effect, so it no longer prevents you from locking targets for the entire duration. One alternative might be to make it so, that it has a chance of making the target lose all target locks with a slight delay before they can start relocking. The chance of the delock effect and/or the duration of the relock block timer could be influenced by relationship of jamming strength vs sensor strenght. You could even make it so, that an ECCM unit outright removes the relock delay.

The main positives of such a change would be that ECM in general becomes much more reliable and predictable, the affected player can hope to do something even when under the effects of ECM and relatively weak jamming strenght becomes a manageable minor annoyance instead of a RNG game changer. It would also provide a mechanism where stacking penalty can be applied to it just like with most other EW and allow ease of tweaking, since using ECM is no longer a all or nothing proposition.

There's also a very considerable difference in the range of that ewar. A medium neut functions at approximately web range. A heavy neut barely reaches out to point range. A Falcon, on the other hand, can jam you out to 66+54km. And that's the short-range version. A blackbird will do it (less effectively but much more cheaply) from 103+77km. That is frankly absurd.

And of course, even ECM drones will function out to your drone control range.

not on gates or near stations but aprt from that 2 cycles of a med smart bomb does it

Although correct, you are missing the fact that a Falcon/Blackbird pretty much lose all there tank to fit ECM mods wheres fitting a nuet to most ships does not, hence why ECM ships need a long range.

A dampened BS against a cruiser won't be able to hit it, unless the cruiser is really stupid.

And when you are ECM jammed you can use your drones, just put them on aggressive