EVE General Discussion

Wall of text warning. tl;dr in the second post.

"Nerf ECM", "because of Falcon", "ECM kills small gang PvP" are all among the tired, old statements that people use to complain about ECM. It is, of course, responded to by ECM-preferring pilots with "ECM ships are made of wet tissue paper", or "Use ECCM", or "bring more race-uniform ships", etc. It keeps going back and forth like that, with arguments about whether it needs to be weaker, stronger, or as-is.

Having flown with, against, and in ECM ships, I agree ECM is not okay, but not with any of those arguments. Rather, it is because it is a no-skill chance-based "all or nothing" mechanic. In this manner, it is completely out of place among PvP mechanics.

All other Ewar applies its effect always when activated upon a target, but cannot result in immediate, complete, and uncompromising shutdown of the target. Move closer, speed up, lower transversal, overheat, there are several things you can do to counteract any other form of Ewar. Some examples:

• Tracking-TD'ed? Load better tracking ammo, burn in a straight line, TP/web your target.
• Optimal-TD'ed, or Optimal SD'ed? Speed up and move closer.
• TP'ed? Speed up.
• Neuted? Keep range.
• ECM? Nothing.

In other words, the fight is not determined by the fighters' in-combat abilities, but by their pre-fight choices (fittings, etc), and a random number generator. The fact that fitting ECCM does not help you at all outside of countering ECM (which cap boosters, tracking enhancers/computers, and sensor boosters do), and the fact it is not 100% effective at even its job, leads to fewer people fitting it and putting more emphasis on the "dice" aspect of ECM.

It is often said that ECM ships are made of paper, and that missing a jam spells death -- which is very true. However, this is not the fault of the ship, but again of the "all or nothing" mechanic. When missing a jam is so dangerous, ECM pilots naturally want to maximize chances of jams -- by forgoing tank.

The Falcon, for example, is not naturally squishy. It actually has more base EHP than the Rapier. However, because the Rapier's Ewar has no chance of failure, the Rapier does not necessarily need to fit 5 webs and 1 MWD in its mid slots. This leaves it free to tank. If a Falcon were similarly tanked, and ended up missing a jam because it didn't have enough jammers, it would just become an useless floating hunk of space metal. This again encourages relying on the dice and on pre-fight decisions to win things for you instead of actual in-combat decisions.

A 6-jammer Falcon is meta, while a 5-web Rapier or a 4-TD Pilgrim is failfit. You can't explain that.

The bottom line? It's not fun for anyone. Jamming someone isn't as satisfying because it was completely at the mercy of a random number generator, and really says nothing about your own skill. Being jammed isn't fun because there is nothing to do right now to counteract it, and even if you fit ECCM beforehand, the random number generator might still decide to hate you. Missing a jam isn't fun for the ECM pilot because there is nothing he could have done to do be successful. Catching an ECM ship that missed a jam on you isn't satisfying either, as it wasn't because of your own skill, but because of the random number generator's mercy.

The solution? People need to stop whining about how ECM is OP, and to stop trying to find "tweaks" and "balances" for it. Instead, try to find a way to revamp or overhaul ECM so that it is no longer a chance-based "all or nothing" mechanic.

Any ideas? Discuss.

For whatever it's worth, I wholly agree.

Regardless of whether or not ECM is overpowered, underpowered or perfectly balanced it's downright boring as hell.

It doesn't open up new and interesting tactics, something even Target Painters can achieve in coordination with Torpedoes.

And each cycle is a loss-loss situation, either the jam lands and the target pilot is disappointed whilst the jammer feels nothing because his ship is doing nothing more than expected or the jam doesn't land and the target pilot feels nothing as his ship is doing nothing more than expected whilst the jammer feels disappointed. Every single cycle one of the two ships turns into a useless hunk of space metal.

When it comes to stuff like this don't some games use a twitch based mechanism where you have to hit the button when the little dot is in the proper spot? Just a thought...

Counters to ECM that don't include ECCM

Bring friends.
Drones.
Attack from range.
Fleet with high alpha damage.
Fleet with same racial ships.
Some ships have high natural sensor strength (usually Ewar ships)

ECM is very fun and not boring. Things that are chance based usually aren't boring because you don't know what is going to happen. Am I gonna Jam everyone like a boss or die in a fire?

Did... you even read the OP? I'm not arguing that ECM doesn't have counters, but rather it has nothing that the jamming ship or the ship being jammed can do to affect its outcome or effectiveness. It's about as fun and skill-involved as this. Ed: To the curious, that is an almost perfect simulation of a Falcon activating a Multispectral jammer on a Drake. Exciting, right?


To be fair, I called it "not fun". One opposite of fun is "boring". Cpt Gobla called it boring.

That is a very good analogy. Thank you.

Is... is that a stealth "jamming" pun? I am in awe.

'Save or die' mechanics have pissed people off since the first guy got polymorphed in D&D in the mid-seventies. ECM has pissed people off in Eve since its inception.

OP, give a suggested mechanic for ECM for us to mull over please.

I'm trying to, but drawing a blank. That is, I can't think of anything where ECM would still possibly have the "die" consequence of breaking the lock and jamming locking, but without the chance-based mechanic. These ideas have been proposed before:

• Reducing scan res or targeting range? Damps already do that.
• Selectively breaking locks (just breaking, not jamming)? Sure, but how?
• Denying new locks? Maybe, but with a couple SeBos we're back to the same old problem, possibly worse.
• Reducing max locked targets? Maybe, but the balancing on that is very hard.
• Turning the target's mods off? That is just really weird.

I don't know. Your thoughts?

Bring back the Castor ECM.

ECM is unique

It's chance based and either 100% or 0%

If you compare other modules and made them just like ECM, people would never play the game

Web stasisfire - depending on skills, will web 1 time in 5 but if it webs, target is instantly at 0 speed for 15second

Web Drones will be 1 in 7 chance, but 5 of them and the same effect, instantly 0 speed

So tell me (using that cited example), why ECM is fine?

Why can't it just lower the number of targets you can lock?

Why can't it be balanced and fair like the others?