EVE General Discussion

Not all of us have time to participate in 4 hour long fleets which sometimes take just as long to get started.By assuming eve is meant to be nothing but huge fleet battles is flawed and a one sided assumption.

I run a anti falcon falcon, its a falcon with all caldari jammers for the sole purpose of jamming the **** out of any other falcons, and it works well, permajams dual falcons, easy

Spider tanks will still be possible to break — you just have to delay that relock they have to do. Same goes for the small targets. The ting is that this kind of change wouldn't make ECM worthless — it would still be very effective against heavy hitters, and it would also reward combined-arms uses. Comparing it with the bad old days of sensor dampeners is a bit lopsided, because it doesn't change how sensor dampeners work — it just gives people a reason to use them (and using them alone is still as meh as ever).

So no, you wouldn't get the situation where you got damped down to 10km for the exact same reason as why it isn't happening now (in fact, probably less than it happens now, since it would be scan res dampening, exclusively, that everyone would want to do).

You mean this?
http://deadlyintent.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=11971385

It took them almost 5 minutes to kill me. looking back i wish i had just self destructed but i kept hoping and kept hoping that the falcon would miss a jam cycle all i needed was one jam cycle to miss and i would have smashed the sabre and gtfo. But he kept me perma jammed for 5 minutes. thats not broken at all.......

How bout this one?
http://deadlyintent.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=12798232

Here i go 1 v 3 Confident of my chances, although im not 100% sure if the ares is scram or disrupt fit so the chance for losing is definitely there, or if the cane is arty fit i may have to bail out of the fight, but because my wolf is clearly horrifying they bring in a Rook. now that im jammed and the ares has a small neut on me i have no chance of escape what so ever. so i sit here and die slowly, as i try to slow boat away from the rook who is still scramming me at 120km. If not for the rook, this would be no problem, even though neuted out i can still project enough damage to scare the ares out of neut range or make him leave all together. But when the ECM comes into play, its game over. there is NOTHING i can do in this situation but die....

I have a falcon alt that fleis in my fleets from time to time, but rarely use it. Its only used for evening the odds if were going 5 v 10 or 5 v 15 etc. And i flat out refuse to use ECM drones. Personally i feel that ECM is severely hurting if not killing small scale fighting on all levels. It does have its place in large fleet fights, but the way its currently implemented and being used is a broken game mechanic plain and simple.

Everyone trolling in this thread saying that ECM is not a broken game mechanic are just falcon alts who dont want there instant win button taken away.

And where exactly does the ECCM go on a ship with 2 mid slots? Are we all supposed to always fit ECCM and fly around with a full set of race specific sensor implants all the time now because we might encounter ECM? Not that this even works well. Even in a maelstrom with a full set of jackals and ECCM a max skilled falcon pilot can still get back to back jamms on you. A better solution would be to increase sensor strength of combat ships across the board enough to significantly reduce the chance of being jammed while leaving EAS and Logi the same, making falcons anti support, support. Also adding in penalties to sensor strength for fitting remote repair, sensor damp, tracking disruptor, and target painter modules.

Let me come with an example of ECM ruining the day :)
I was heading home in low sec after having been on a fleet the day before, I was flying a shield cane and came across a small gate camp of 2 hurricanes and a talos(with blasters) I figured, 3 options... engage, gate crash or overload mwd away...

Because I love thrills, I decided I wanted to engage, there was at least a chance I could kill the talos before dieing myself, slim chance, but it was there...

I uncloak and start burning towards the gate and the talos, he engages me, and then I engage him.
then falcon uncloaks 100km away, and im jammed on first cycle, I think I managed to get two shots off on the talos...

The fight lasted less than that cycle of jamming...

So heres where I personly have a problem, ECM removes any chance of the target fighting back (unless drones, smartbombs, and "defender missiles" are available)

Problem with ECM is the long duration someone is put out of the fight for at a sucessful jam... how much is it? 20-24sec? that is a very very long time considering that in pvp... fights normally last between 15sec to 5mins (depending on size), unless its a blop vs blop

I think the best way to balance ECM is decrease the cycle time of jams, (increase the cycle time of the module, i don't care)

What kind of 2-midslots ships are we talking about? The kind of ships that can bring heavy DPS to a fight and therefore should be a prime target for ECM? The same kind of ships that trade their lack of midslots for an abundance of lowslots in which they can put Backup Arrays?

You say it yourself: A MAX SKILLED FALCON, that's why. It takes millions of skillpoints to be good at that a single role and you don't bring much else to the fight in the sense of dps, tank or versatility. The #1 role and priority of jammers is to (reliably) lock down DPS (especially something as nasty as a Mael). Anti-logi is a secondary role, because you can't do that if you're dead and you WILL be primary.

Don't touch ECM, ECCM or sensor strength. That's not balancing, that's just taking ECM of the table as a suitable tactic. A MUCH better way to balance EW on the battlefield is to give the players more options to counter it.

- Fix the stupid drones, that will simply sit on their asses if deployed by a jammed ship.
- Make F.O.F. missiles actually useful by having them prioritize ships that are jamming you.

Your (Amarrian?) ship can't use either of these and you're too fidgety about losing any DPS or tank to get your sensor strength up? Well then being easy to lock down is the price you'll have to accept in the name of balance, for focusing on one-dimensional tank&gank.

If drone boats are supposed to be the answer, then the behaviour of the drone AI needs to be fixed. Even when set to focus fire, I still see them attacking two targets from time to time (just had that last night).

Also, what is that nonsense that you have to deploy drones in aggressive mode BEFORE you are aggressed for them to attack? And deploying them while already getting shot to ribbons they just merrily fly around and do nothing? That needs fixing as well. If you are being shot at, they should go for whoever is doing the shooting automatically.

And before anyone says "ZOMG that would be overpowered", they already do that, just not starting with the first target. As in, you have 3 ships shooting you. You target one, and send aggressive drones to attack. When it pops, they will merrily switch to the next ship shooting you without being told to do so, and without you having to target it. The mechanic is already there. It's just the trigger for this AI behaviour is botched.

To the OP,

For what it's worth, I totally agree. I haven't been playing very long, a few months on and off. And as a mission runner, it is INCREDIBLY obvious just how broken some ECM modules are. When I'm fighting Caldari NPCs, it is not uncommon to be permanently jammed for 4-5 mins at a stretch with just 3 jamming enemies, just sitting there and being able to do absolutely nothing because you had to pull your drones back to avoid aggro and redeploying them while already under attack (issue described above) does nothing.

Really poorly balanced game mechanics, IMHO.

I think drones don't re-trigger on every volley because of lag. Checking for drone aggro every single cycle of pew pew (rather than just the first) seems like it would really ramp up server load. But I'm not a dev so I can't comment on the why's and why nots with authority. Suffice it to say that if you have combat awareness, you can whack a falcon in 2-3 volleys with sentries, often before they realize they need to warp.

I'm not sure you know this or not, but "Focus Fire' almost exclusively fails in the PVE. If you're getting jammed out by a single ECM boat and you've deployed correctly, the odds are extremely remote that they will split their aggro. That said, focus fire definitely needs some fixing. Even a remote chance of failure when you're counting on them as a counter to ECM is too much. ECM will never wander targets, why should drones?

As for your assessment of ECM: You admit to having only played for a few months. Your opinion about the game is far from expert, despite your ability to formulate some promising questions.

Then suddenly Target Dampeners become totally OP.

Please try again; this time taking into consideration the entire game, not a problem in a box.