Player Features and Ideas Discussion

What if ECM was much higher chance to break lock, but target could relock again right after, but cycle time was increased on the module 30 sec or so, or the reverse... fast cycle time of 10 sec, same strength as now and only breaks the lock with no jamming duration... you would basicly double your attempts to jam over time, but targets wouldn't ever be permajammed

The lower the scan res the target has, the more effective it would be...

Vs small fast locking ships it would become less effective... I really think that's the best change for ecm... a buff to cycle time and nerf to jam duration

In general I like the idea of reducing ECM optimal and boosting damp range, not sure if a10% change in ECM optimal is really significant.

The sensor strength skill seems a little too much of skill point sink; I would rather see one skill rather than racial skills just like the CPU, powergrid skills.

That said am not sure if changing the too hit chance for ECM is the right approach. As others have stated it is the mechanic that is the problem, I rarely see ECM on non bonused ships now and they should arguably be able to apply the ECM affect against ships that have not prepared a counter. Really I would prefer the mechanic be changed to disable all highslot mods rather than break locks. This achieves the goal of breaking RR and preventing weapons fire while still allowing e-war counters. It also closes the use of ECM drones as a get out of jail free card as tackle could still be applied.

ECCM is a poor mod and could probably be incorporated into sensor boosters.

I actually find tracking disruption worse than ECM. It is very powerful on un-bonused ships especially against small and medium weapons systems as it can maintain disruption within point range. Given that you are boosting tracking disruption on bonused ships by 12.5% I do not really feel the 5% initial reduction goes far enough, 10% at least would be better.

there is one problem with this approach, drones. You do not need a sustained lock on a target for drones to do their work. All you need is one lock. If ECM only broke existing locks... then those ships would be hard countered by any ship with a drone bay.

It would make ECM boats worthless.

Can you share a bit about what the vision for ECM is?

Perhaps, depending on that vision, some of the involved skills already exist.



Shouldn't this be a single skill? Like Navigation?

Also, this seems to be a counter skill to Signal Dispersion, any thought to the skill only improving the bonus from ECCM and Backup Arrays?

With regards to ECM ships, as ships begin to be balanced, perhaps look at adjusting what the Caldari T2 EWar ships can do in comparison with their counterparts. The other T2 EWar ships have the capability to generally keep an enemy on the battlefield (Neut/Disrupt/Web) and an additional ability (TD/RSD/TP). Caldari T2 EWar have ECM.

Am I the only one here who thinks adding new skills to counter ECM is a really BAD idea? Does this game really need more "mandatory PvP skills" like this? The game is slow paced enough already without adding 4 more racial skills to train.

Nope.

In fact, quite a few people in this thread have mentioned just how lame this idea is.

I really hope that your longer term plan involves a total change to ecm mechanics but for now my comments would be;

ecm skill changes; I don't think this is enough nor will it make much real difference when faced with ecm. at level 5 the ship would get a 25% increase to sensor strength which works out as typical frigate from 11 > 13.75; typical cruiser from 15 > 18.75; typical Battleship from 23 > 28.75. single ecm module jam strength on an equally lv5 skilled eaf is 10.3.

So the chance to jam a frigate changes from 10.3/11 or 93.6% to 10.3/13.75 or 74.9%

for cruisers from 68.7% to 54.9%

for battleships from 44.8% to 35.8%

It seems that a single ecm mod is still more likely to succeed than not on any of the typical cruiser class and below, this still means a bonused ecm ship will reasonably be able to hope to counter as many ships as it has ecm mods, half as many if it's being more cautious.

Compared to tracking disruptors which also operate successfully still on a 1td to 1 target basis, perhaps 2td per target again if caution is required, BUT importantly still giving the disrupted pilot an option to manually mitigate some of the effect byclosing and reducing transversal.

Compared to damps which work identically at a slightly longer range, still requiring 2-3 damps per target and still the simplest to mitigate as only range matters, not transversal.

Target painters are becoming more useful but as many have pointed work in such a different way that comparisons fail at this level.

So, in my opinion, damps have not seen any significant improvement to date and will remain mostly unused until they truly become effective with a single mod, 2 for the cautious player, or ecm and TDs become as ineffective until they commit as many slots to achieve the desired result.

Balanced ECM?

Translation = ECM doesn't work anymore.


The name of the game should be changed to Nerf Online...

Concerning ecm, these skills are a good addition to the game. This game in general needs more skills. When you get over 100mil in sp and have decided not to train supercap skills you notice this. CCP has for too long been focused on adding new modules and ships but very little in the way of skills. Skills need to be added since the game is time based skiling.

They will not be mandatory skills. Noone will force anyone to skill them. People don't have them now and plenty pvp. But yes, it would be wise to train them. For most people this will be two racials. And like any skill they are rather easy to train to level 3. Of course then like any skill if you want that last two levels and marginally less useful time investment you have to put in some weeks of training for less reward. Nothing new here.

There has been in the game tracking and sharpshooter skills. There has been long range targeting and signal acquisition. Now there will be racial sensor skills to combat racial jammers. There may come a time where a signature reduction skill is introduced as a partial counter to painters. These are the kinds of things CCP needs to introduce to the game. Skills to fill in omissions in the mechanics.

As for the direct ecm alterations. Granted the range nerf is negligible. But these iterative nerfs are probably best. I wouldn't want some new reworking of ecm that wasn't well thought out. ECM has a place and should have a place in the game. It just shouldn't be as strong as it currently is. I read the Mittani's blog. Some goon I'm sure will repost the link even if I can't be arsed atm. But it is a rather good suggestion. Oh hell, I looked it up again anyway https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=warning&l=http%3a%2f%2fthemittani.com%2ffeatures%2fecm-not-nerf-we-deserve-fix-we-need&domain=themittani.com
It doesn't address the easy frigate jam phenomenon but it does address duration and the light drone jam phenomena. Something like this would be a good iterative addition to address ecm.

ECM has been so incredibly powerful that ecm boat pilots have routinely filled their mids with jammers and lows and rig slots with boosting mods/rigs to make it even better. Ironically if ecm gets cut down a couple pegs it may help the ECM boat pilot fall from his currently top position as primary. ECM targets detest ecm boats, ecm boat pilots detest being the automatic primary. That all can change to the better of each with some of these changes.

Look at the damn TDs. The nerf here was very underdone. The base modules need more of a nerf espcially as they will be acquiring a new ability to fubar missiles. That is the real preasent and future danger. Plenty of folks fitting TDs in an available mid already. That could become even more so in the future even if the TD for missiles is made a second module and not a set of scripts. Regardless, the TD boats could supplant the ecm boats for most reviled ewar pita in the game. All the changes in the op are in the right direction.

ECM drones really need addressing.