Player Features and Ideas Discussion

The ewar changes combined with the damp changes make ewar pretty ****** compared to damps and TDs.

Its damps now that **** you over, when a celestis can damp your solo drake/jaguar/whatever to beneath scram range.

Wait what ?! You *really* think unbonused ship were effective at all with ECM ?

By the way: I also object to nerfing ECM via ECCM strength skills. In my opinion, the long term goal should be to rework ECM completely because the "all or nothing" mechanic isn't fun. Nerfing ECM as short term fix is fine, but doing it via new skills doesn't make sense. In fact, I'm slightly worried that these new skills mean ECM is always going to stay ECM.

The changes to damps, disruptors and painters are welcome, as are the ECM range changes. The new sensor strength skills are terrible however. With the hull rebalance you've been slightly buffing everything's sensor strength already, now you're going to give every ship in the game a flat 20-25% increase. This is a massive nerf and will go too far.

What would be much more reasonable is a suggestion I have seen elsewhere (I forget where now). Currently ECM is a binary thing: you either jam for 20 seconds or you don't jam. Instead, make the length of the jam variable based on the same jam strength vs sensor strength equation. If the jam duration follows a bell curve it will bring it much more in line with the other forms of ewar. This will nerf it but it would be a reasonable nerf that doesn't gut the mechanic to the point of uselessness.

Any ETA for some serious change in ECM mechanics going beyond minor number shuffling? As I see it now this will do little to help resolve problems ECM brings to solo and small gang subcap fights, but might affect ECM suppression of logi ships in big fight where it is already balanced enough and needs no nerfing, in fact might by underpowered in some cases as it can't affect supercarriers and brake their spider reps. Changing ECM mechanics should be priority, something like this, or any of other suggested ECM mechanic changes you can find in F&ID forums.

Also TP still seems suboptimal choice compared to webs in most situations, but that might be more problem with webs being OP. Have you considered adjusting webs in this Ewar pass?

I am a little worried Mr Fozzie tries to turn my beloved Falcon into the new Pilgrim (most useless Recon of the game) ? That would make Caldari have the most worthless Force Recon and Combat Recon. (And on top of that they get a Missile nerf.)

When we talk about game mechanics, it is time to talk about weaknesses of Falcons in particular, because Mr Fozzie wants to change ECM and does not mention that ship, while he mentions some other ECM specialized ship.

1) Falcons have the worst cap of all cruisers. It means after longer warps, the cap of a Falcon will be empty. In kiting battles Falcons run out of cap quickly. It is 100km something and the cap is empty. Then the ship can not follow anymore and therefore no more jam. It has to warp out, re-cap and come back again.

2) Against Drone boats Falcons suck – if the drone boat launches its Drones before you lock and Jam.

3) Falcons have a paper-thin tank. As said, it is better to focus all on ECM, then try to failfit for tank. ECM + Tank will never be possible together. That means, either the Falcon jams all DPS incoming or it vaporizes quickly. It is only useful in small gangs therefore.

4) Falcons are very weak alone. It is the combinations of ships, which makes Falcons appear so powerful. Like Sabre + Falcon. Or Falcon + Black Ops gang. Often these ships are fragile themselves. CCP buffed all Frigs and Drestroyers twice, did not care about Interdictors. If CCP nerfs Falcons, these other ships will be nerfed in their effectiveness, too. However ECM will most likely be replace by Logistics ships. Then no more ECM, but often Remote Rep will frustrate the current ECM haters.

Not everybody wants to do purely in-the-face RVB/Militia frig frag fests. Like get 50 cheap new ships and then throw them away. Especially Black ops teams can not afford to work that way. If you operate in enemy territory in 0.0, you can not afford to lose your ship or get it heavily damaged. It would be the end of the op and cost much time to replace or repair. Unless you do metagaming - there is always a way around.

I am not sure, what CCP Fozzie tries to do here will satisfy me. I am a Vet. I do not want to re-skill to reach a skill level, which i had before. I can afford thousands of t1 Frigs and Cruisers. I avoided the Drake since years now, because I flew it as noobi so often until I was fed up of it. If you buff t1 ships, more exotic ship classes like i.e. Field command ships or Electronic attack ships will become even more obsolet and rare. It will never work to "balance" ship classes in little steps and several patches. You change something, you change relations between ship classes. I doubt vets will be happy about this patch. I see nothing, I can skill for, so I get a new shiny toy or new useful skill. You will just switch FOTM from one ship class to another. If it goes really wrong, some t1 hulls will be better than the following t2 hulls.



You also did not mention the Kitsune. Electronic Attack ships are rare, because they die so fast - all of them. What happened to the idea to allow a Covert ops cloak on them? It would give these t2 Frigs the choice to pick their fights better.


Btw small ECM drones sometimes even jam Falcons. If I see lots of them on the field, I think twice whether I uncloak a Falcon or not. ECM drones can be easily killed by Smartbombs. However a Falcon has heavy capacitor problems already. So most Falcons do not fit a Smart bomb.

That will only happen if the Rook gets back its optimal bonus.

Change ECCM II module to:
* Increases sensor strength.
* Reduces jam duration by 50%.
* Scripts to either increase sensor strength or reduce jam duration further.

It's funny that all other non-damage drones in the game combined does not even begin to come close to the amount ECM drones are used. That says something.