EVE General Discussion

ECM is fine imo.

But the Blackbird is too strong compared to the Kitsune (given their relative price points).

ECM is fine at the moment.

Recons are powerful ships and can be worked in many different field of play.

Curse: One of the most versitile ships in the game, capable of nueting at an impressive 80KM it still has that osh*t effect on me when I see on land on grid.

Huggin: Great for camps, shuts down any speed you might of had.

Lachesis: Instalocking fool.

Rook: Decent combat ship. Applying ECM with ok dps, works best at longer ranges.

Pilgrim: I love to solo hunt in this, but it is quite weak in many reguards

Rapier: Frigate killer, amazing solo ship.

Arazu: Can you say Hotdrop...

Falcon: Great small gang support ship. Useless in fleet fights.

Recons go great in gangs, and order of priority is Recons>Logi>DPS, and out of that list is Falcon>Rook>Curse>Rapier>anything else>Pilgrim. This outlines that people hate being jammed, but also hate being nueted.

EWAR as a whole needs to be addressed and balanced, it's not a priority though.

No, I think it is a bad game mechanic.

It's not that I think it is too powerful or too hard to beat, it is simply that it is a terribly frustrating mechanic to be up against for most people, thus removing the fun.

One of the reasons for this, I think, is that it is basically an all or nothing disable, based on randomness to a large degree. Either, you are completely unaffected, or you are 100% disabled. All other EWAR forms only partially disable you, but do so 100% of the time (when applied). If you are webbed you move at a percentage of your speed, if you are tracking disrupted you lose a percentage of your tracking/range, and so on. This still allows the target to adjust his piloting accordingly in order to still be useful in the fight, although to a lesser dergee than if he wasn't affected by the EWAR. If you are permajammed however, you will not be able to do anything at all, except getting out of there, or eventually dieing.

Many people have suggested fitting ECCM in order to counter ECM, but the problem with this is that using a slot for an otherwise useless module isn't viable in most situations for most ships. Contrary to the other EWAR counters, ECCM doesn't do anything useful besides actually countering ECM (and mostly it doesn't even do this very effectively). Especially in small gang or solo situations, it is really hard to find a spare slot to fit eccm because you will need all your slots for other things (and since ECM is by far most powerful vs small gangs/solo, this is where it really matters).

Double post

i will put my 2 cents in on this without saying whether i approve of them or not, but i think it will become obvious what i feel should be done to the mechanic by the end of this summary of my views.



my first view of ecm is that it has very little place in large scale conflicts. we have seen groups attempt to employ it as a tactic: i refer to the northern coalition employing mass scorps fit with racial jams (according to enemy gang comps) typcially to interfere with rep chains.

while in theory this tactic is viable, in practice its almost impossible to pull off. there are a host of problems including but not limited to coordination of jams, the fragility of the ships they are typically fit on and the fact that 40 extra sets of hard hitting guns will usually project the same kind of force but with more certainty.

an idea that has been toyed with is fitting them on regular fleet ships, however i suspect similar problems would be encountered and again there is more reliance on dice rolling than player skill or command decisions (which i feel should be the way pvp in any game is decided)

the issue im trying to get at here, is that in these massive scale fights, brining more ewar is not necessarily going to win anything for you, typcially these mass number setups depend on who is slightly more coordinated (or brought way more people to the battle) so it comes down to these two things more than what ships you bring. for an example of this we saw band of brothers take a 200 man assault frig fleet up against 150 assorted ships and mop the floor with them back in tribute old days. so in this scale of fighting where people are dumping more and more people into systems just to mass numbers, the effectiveness of ecm gets weaker the more people rock up (on both sides)



the viability of ecm in small gangs is almost the inverse of this. ecm inclusion into an already stronger fleet almost completely mitigates the need for competence. the more people you bring to fight smaller numbers (and the more ecm you bring) the stronger it gets. because the probability of successful jams becomes insanely high. as it is, ecm drones are almost required on nearly every class of ship. their ability to break locks over a prolonged time and allow people escapes or easy kills (and again their exponentially increasing effectiveness in numbers) serves to again promote risk adverse pvp in eve.

if there were no smartbombs i would say ecm drones are the single most game breaking item in eve (even so they are still up there in terms of over poweredness)

something important to note is the relation of the strength of ecm to other ewars. while i personally believe the other ewar drones have their place and uses (despite no one else giving a **** about them) however i would be a fool to suggest they are even in the same league as ecm drones. especially in increasing numbers. again its the nature of the mechanic being chance (and its increasing frequency with greater numbers) that makes ecm a much more attractive option. i feel the same relates to the modular versions.

the last point i want to make relates to the recon class ecm boat. the fact that falcons can warp cloaked essentially means that despite how strong they already may be, there is no way for a pvper or fc to know (perhaps before its too late) if there is a falcon or 2 or 10 in the area. are pvpers just meant to assume the worst in every situation? i am sure particularly in solo pvp it is difficult enough to try fighting 1 falcon and a flight of jam drones, but with its increasing popularity will there at all be a place for solo pvp in the game? or has this time already been eclipsed???? it makes it more a game of chance (will i engage wont i... is there a falcon hiding here) rather than again... relying on skill and knowledge (ok i know that curse will likely have 2 med neuts... can my tank hold till i down a couple of people etc) and letting that be one of the core components.

while sure you can say a good pvper can snuff out where a falcon might be... there really is no way of telling what might be cloaked and ready (a bomber or perhaps a rapier or an arazu... ANYTHING BUT A MOTHER ****ING FALCON!!!!)


(as a closing point, i would like to point out the probability of a first time jam on most bcs if you are in a falcon and activate all your jams on them is around 80-90% in a competent pilots falcon. this seems... very high. and once you start cycling them after your first jam... **** just starts to get silly.) so solo pvpers need to fit to be very very resistant to ecm and then still it will come down to pure luck.

so tl;dr

ecm is not viable in larger scale combat.

ecm in smaller scale combat is very VERY strong and it seems to promote more of its use rather than finding a happy balance.

ECM offer the weak and womanlike a chance to feel superior and powerful, therefore we will always have to tolerate a numerous mob who wish to see it continue as long as CCP can make payroll each month.

Maybe one day CCP will have a DEVS ONLY thread where they discuss ways to change it and brook no outside interference, that might be the only way the ECM fans get to understand why it's a terrible mechanic.

i do also want to point out... that all the other ewars tend to do something along the lines of disable one 'class' of ship.

tds - turret ships
neuts - cap reliant ships
damps - snipers and kiters
tps - sig tankers

it can even be said of warp scrams and webs aside from their obvious tackle (anti escape mechanics):
warp scram - mwd fits
webs - sig tanks/ab fits

but then you get to ecm...

counters everything.

What do you mean "From what I understand"? If you do not get it, then your wall of text is irrelevant. Let me guess you are one of those "Fit multi-specs on everything" special snowflakes.

ECM is a good mechanic, and if used properly, and if the user "understands", it can be a good tactic. Plus it is one of those game mechanics that require some actual thought behind it if you wish to be actually effective.

It's a bit lame! But a favorite tactic for fail blobs. Since most pilots fall in the fail blob category, it's here to stay.

Actually now that i've given it a bit more thought, if ECM was shortranged, like I feel it needs to be, we have a opportunity here.

The ECM equivalent of a hictor. Simply a heavily tanked, ECM-bubble ship with little or no offensive capabilities.
With the difference (from existing ecm/ecmburst) that anything inside the bubble cant lock, loses all locks - including itself.
Or a module that works to similar effect.

I mean, imagine it. racing a 100% lockbuster bubble through a enemy gang. It would be hilarious.