Player Features and Ideas Discussion

There are 2 assumptions we have to make before going further:

static game environment is boring (or just bad)
EW affects small-scale combat in a crippling way, while being pretty balanced at blob-warfare.


What I suggest to address these 2 issues:

each ship receives a new parameter, let's call it 'EW adjusting coefficient' for now.
each succesful jam cycle (and each time remote sensor dampener and tracking disruptor are applied) makes further jamming (dampening, tracking disruption) less effective. Effectiveness drop is determined by 'EW adjusting coefficient'.

So the formula for this effectiveness drop is the following one: EW strength curent = EW strength basic * K^(N-1),

where: K - EW adjusting coefficient, N - cycle number

For the sake of simplicity it's surely possible to make K homogeneous all across the board (say, 0.9 for all ships), but I do think that it's a lot better to make it variable across different ship types.

For instance, frigates have somewhat 'fast' sensors, so it takes them not that long to recalibrate and adjust. Hence their K equals 0.8 or something of that sort.
On the other side of the scale we have those carriers with monstrous targeting systems of huge inertia. Carries will have their K set around 0.95-0.99, so that each EW cycle affects them just slightly.
Other stuff is somewhere in between those two.

Some random samples of how it would actually work:

at K = 0.9 sitting there being jammed for a minute (3 cycles) results in target being jammed at 53% of the initial jammer strength at the beginning of the 4th cycle. Hence, jamming is now much more likely to fail.
at K = 0.8, 37% at the 4th cycle, 21.7% at the 5th etc.

at K = 0.8 things might look a bit exteeme (too fast degradation), but then again, these are merely initial values brought here for the sake of clearness and 0.8 isn't meant to be that common anyway.

It's important to note that failing to jam does not reduce further jamming strength.
Other crippling EW (RSDs, TDs) just gradually reduce their effectiveness over time
Target painting doesn't have such a devastating effect on its target, thus it's being left as is.

These Ks are actually separate values for ECM, RSD and TD. So in fact there are of 3 of them - one for each offensive EW type.

Conclusion - how will it affect the gameplay:

Pros:

Small-scale PvP receives a whole new level of dynamic, where it's no longer possible to keep the same things permajammed just cause you happened to bring in a Falcon. You still would be able to jam things and kill them, but your time to do that is somewhat limited, so either kill stuff quickly or just switch targets and ruin something else instead of one single ship over and over again.

Large-scale PvP remains pretty much uneffected at all, since ships there tend to die fast anyway and on top of that each EW boat usually has a great number of targets to choose from, thus running its mods at full strength.

Contras:

I for one can't come up with any. Some gank-tards might get upset, though. But I dare to remind that their victim should stay there alive for quite a long time to actually get any significant benefit. Most ganks tend to be pretty quick ones anyway.



Flame on, but please do note: unlike the majority of people posting here, I'm actually PvPing quite a lot myself and I believe I'm not that bad at what I'm doing. And I don't need to use any alts to post this here.