Wormholes

Posting here because it deals with w-space (and maybe to a lesser extent in HS i would think).

The system we (Reconfiguration Nation [EA]) live in and had some former residents which we had to evict and that had us fighting a dickstar POS in a magnetar C4. Everybody that knows anything about w-space and POS-mechanics feels our pain (or quite possibly just asks "in the name of Bob, WHY?!") .

Since we messed up the first assault and gave them some time to react, the POS was transformed from one with just annoyingly amounts of ECM into a a full out Dickstar (12 x 4 groups of ECM batteries). We started with a T3-fleet + a handful of Guardians but had to scale the whole thing up when all the ECM came online.

When we warped in we had doubled the amount of dps-ships and turned the amount of Guardians up to seven. Why we did not redo the whole thing into a drone-fleet, I don't know.

I seldom come across things in Eve I really think is "too hard" or unbalanced at its core. I'm a "deal with it" kinda guy. Dickstars in C4s might be the exception. Especially since you can end up fighting capitals at the same time.

The guys in this particular POS had both a Thanatos, a high dps BS and POS-gunners. I don't want to think about how much damage they could have done to our feet if they dropped just one or two dps-ships backed up by triage - with 75% of our fleet jammed and scrammed, it would have been like shooting fish in a magnetar-barrel.

Since the ECM batteries have a decent chance of jamming also out of their racial strength, if you get 50 of them in the same place they hit very hard even to heavily-ECCM'ed ship you have. And they are close to unbeatable when jamming racially. Even if you get all of your Guardians up to over 200 sensor strength they will STILL be jammed 25% of the time from one single White noise battery. We faced 12 of each kind.

I know this horse is beaten to death, but seriously, whats would be the problem with changing the jam strength of ECM batteries to 45/3 instead of 45/15 as it is now? That way you could at least have a chance to counter them by using ECCM on another race. For example, a set of 12 White Noise would pose a serious threat to Guardians, but Scimitars would only be occasionally jammed and could counter them fully, if fitted for it.

In short: racial ECM is fine, but the (relatively) high off-racial strength of ECM batteries makes dickstars too much of a pita and too hard to counter.

You agree?

ECM like this is the one thing standing in the way between small corps trying to get a foothold in space and large organizations like mine evicting them for lulz.

I would strongly oppose any change to POS ECM strength as it presently functions.

Additionally, you yourself said you a) messed up and gave them time to re-fit their POS, and b) could have used drone boats, but you didn't.

Working as intended. Build a dread in-system next time. The week of POS guarding is well worth the lulz.

Reo-timer doesn't stop alliances like mine from waiting the 2 days and then taking down the rest of the tower, sans any defenses.

ECM will stop us from trying in the first place.

Next time, drones and stop yer bitching.

ECM is broken in it's current implementation. All or nothing type effects are either useless or game-winning by definition. While I have been a proponent of POS ECM (re)balancing, I still maintain that ECM itself needs to move away from this all-or-nothing approach.

That said, you admit that screwed up. If you had not made mistakes and given the targets time to strengthen their defenses, it would have been much easier to take down the tower. That they had people online (1), were able to take advantage of the situation (2), and had the capability to defend themselves (3) means they should have made it difficult or impossible for you to beat them. That is being prepared.


Many, many things in EVE have one "best" way to fit them; sometimes there is another that is almost as good, but that's not the norm. POSes actually have two really good setups, and one that is situational: the Dickstar and Deathstar are used very effectively, and then the Resistar is an annoying little ball of love. I think Talocan has used the Resistar to great effect as a bait POS.

Just as there is more than one way to set up a POS, there is more than one way to take it down. If one way doesn't work, you use a different way. Just because it's hard to throw Oracles and Armageddons at a tower while you are ravaged by the POS defenses doesn't mean that's the only (or best) way to do it. Adapt to the situation as it changes.

You could have gotten some bombers to incap the grouped modules.

Handful of smart-bombing BS?

No, you don't understand! If you want to take over a system, you MUST destroy everything and get them out! There is only one way to do it!

It's both frustrating for the target and a period of relief for the aggressor. During that time, you know you have completely eliminated your target from the fight and there is absolutely nothing he or she can do about it; only drones remain potentially useful to the jammed target. It's the ultimate safety blanket. When it works.

ECM jamming does two things: it breaks any locks the target currently maintains and it prevents the the target from reacquiring locks for the duration of the ECM jam cycle. It prevents further locks by reducing "max target" count to 0. That was likely a coding shortcut by CCP, but it could inadvertantly be part of the solution to a balanced approach to ECM.

What if ECM broke locks and then reduced your maximum targets to a number relative of how successful the ECM jam was? A highly-successful jam on that Guardian might mean he gets his cap chain buddy and only one other for the duration of the jam cycle; maybe he only gets one target, and has to choose cap chain or the ally who is in structure. Perhaps a very weak ECM jam might not even break his current target locks.

You could even be fancy and make it a continuous contest between attacker and target. Each (shorter) cycle, the jammer tries to increase the jams applied to a target; a skill check is made against the target. The target also has a cycle that attempts to remove the jams, with a skill check made against the attacker who is trying to maintain them. The difficulty increases for the attacker as the number of maintained jams increases. The current (now-mandatory) sensor compensation skills would boost the target's effectiveness at doing this with specific targeting system types and could, perhaps, boost the attacker's ability to maintain the jams with specific targeting system types. The attacker could receive some sort of feedback, such as "x% of (target)'s targeting systems are jammed".

ECM modified in this manner would still be very powerful, but it suddenly becomes useful at mid-ranges, instead of an all-or-nothing action. It gives the target more to think about in the heat of battle, instead of making him twiddle his thumbs for the 20 seconds he waits before he can try to target again. At the extremes, it still matches the current behaviour, but there would be a lot more room in the middle for intermediate successes.

Well, we now have the carrier they had, so the way we did it was working ok. But that OP was just an example. Of course we could have done it differently. But it doesn't matter who put up the dickstar - the attackers or the defenders. Its still bloody OP.

I don't agree with Nathan hardly any of the time but in this we are of the same opinion.

ECM basically halted what you wanted to do which is pick on and blob out what sounds like a smaller corp with your own relatively massive numbers, ergo ECM working as intended unless you REALLY wanted to prove you wanted the hole by staging your own POS, controlling the hole over a sustained period and building a Dread or 2. If you didn't want the system badly enough then again I say working as intended as it was an exercise in lols for you.

Blobbing for the sake of, is just removing viable high value farming ships and possible over-reaction escalations from corps who can be baited but don't risk losing everything. So in essence you move them back to Empire to run Incursions or L4s in relative security and we all lose out.
If you and your compadres have never used a falcon or a scorpion or any other kind of ECM to swing a battle in your favour then maybe you have a case but I doubt this is the case. So in reality, you brought a fleet comp, gave the residents the time to formulate a counter-defense on their POS and they did it. It's no different from any other fleet fight.

Leave ECM as it is and if you want to blob a system may I recommend your local C5 or C6?
EDIT: I notice on the OP you say you live there now and they were removed. So what exactly is the point of this thread? If you removed them then you overcame the obstacle. I'd be much more interested in hearing about that than your whining that something was in your way.
AdW