EVE Alliance Tournament Discussion

Ban racial ECM mods.

That is all.

Tests and analyses indicated that ECM can be quite dominant in this tournament format.

In fact, for our first match, we fielded 12 ECM modules (out of 13 availabe midslots in our team), complete forgoing things like tracking disruptors on a Sentinel. Even though our enemies were flying high sensor strength ships (T2 Cruisers and T2 EAF mostly), they still won the match for us.

This is something that commentators also didn't seem to understand. "Why don't we see more TD's, they are good against Amarr ships" they asked themselves.

Well, it is because any number of TDs on one ship can be disabled by one ECM. That is besides disabling tackle, dps and sense of what is going. If you are flying frigs and you put in a TD and the enemy puts in ECM, you are going to lose. It it that simple.

We saw many ships compositions forgoing prop mods, tackle and other ewar and fitting exclusively ECM in mids. Simply because of its power.

I'm not saying that banning it is the solution, but just be aware that many small ship fights will be dominated by ECM. And the ECM mechanic is, as it stands, not particularly exciting for a neutral viewer, and similar for participants, since it effectively reduces ships to 'doing nothing'.

That is still my biggest issue with ECM. That mostly you are left twiddling your thumbs and hoping a die rolls the right way for you. Tracking disruptors are so much more enjoyable to use and to try and counter.

Damps, when used in a tournament kind of setup (with scripts), tend to have the same effect as ECM. They tend to neuter one side unless it specifically prepares a counter for it.

it should have been banned when they said 'amarr only ships'

just saying. thats like tournament design 101.

Even in t2 shps with high RADAR skills our fleet was near permajammed. Tristan in a Vengeance literally fired 2 volleys total.

Implants to increase RADAR were against the rules....

And they were fighting ECCM slicers in the actual match.

I think the deciding factor in the slicer match was that the winning team did a better job holding together positionally rather than the ECM.

Edit: Though again, I would *love* to see white noise taken out of at least the small ship matches next week!

I'll chat with some other members of the team about the option of further restricting ECM, but I can already say that even with no extra restrictions the formats most vulnerable to ECM are behind us.

I think a big problem with ecm in this format is that in most matches it calls for ecm to beat ecm. For example tracking disruption wOuld likely have been better than ecm in our all retributions match, but if we brought tracking disruption and they brought ecm then our tds wouldn't work a lot of the time. So because of that, we brought ecm. It was in every match. Although it probably wasn't the deciding factor in every single one, the fact that it showed up so often means its presence will heavily influence fittings and lead to a less creative and fun (both to watch and participate in) tournament.

Also, CCP Rise about the Slicer fight:



Zero microwarpdrives in the fight, heh.

For our first match, we were all in tech 2 ships with the stronger sensor strength naturally, so we didn't bring ECM, as the replay plainly shows. Coupled with a command ship that could have brought links, it was decided that TDs was the better options. For round two against Elise Randolph, we basically used a double ECM no prop mod. It was either bring ECM or bring ECCM, thanks to the relatively low sensor strength of the Retributions and ECM is always better than ECCM.
Without ECM, I think we still would have won, but I am a little less sure on that. Still, as long as ECM is allowed, that is going to be the meta, since you know exactly what you want to jam.
The Caldari in me whines when I say this, but 'get rid of ECM.'

I don't think any of us *wanted* to use ECM, but rather since they were allowed it would have been stupid not too. I don't care for ECM, it's not Amarrian, so I would be fine if it wasn't allowed for the upcoming weekend. Beating the dead horse, ECM is way out of balance with the other racial ewar as implemented.