About ECM strength and formula

I formed a tiny gang of 4 people to fight faction war with me, and I plan to fly a griffin to support my fleet since we have a corax and catalyst for dmg dealing, and a rifter for tackling. however I am a bit confused with the ECM mechanics.

according to eve university, this is the formula I should use for calculating the chance of jamming, so I used 3 magnetometric jammers with 2 rigs, and have a strength of 6.9x3 which is 20.7, lets say I have a hypothetical enemy of a catalyst, which gives me the chance of this:

so does this mean I have 168% chance of jamming a catalyst? or a 16.8 chance? or I used this equation wrong? I am very confused please help me. thx a lot.

You have to use the jam strength per module so instead of using 20.7 you use 6.9.

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wait so it doesnt stack up? then whats the purpose of having more jammers?

That’s the part of the “number of jammers” in the equation, in your case ()³. They each have their individual chance.

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So if I have 3 jammers even calculated using the strength of 6.9 I still have a 94% chance of jamming the catalyst? okay thats good. thx

Yeah, without having done the equation that sounds about right. Do note that people can train the compensation skills under Targeting which increases their ship’s sensor strength.

Funnily enough I quickly checked it in Pyfa and I may have found a bug in that regard, Pyfa’s numbers are way off. No I was a dum dum.

Another thing to note, you don’t activate all the jammers at once. You activate one and wait a few seconds, then you activate the next and so on.
If all goes well, you can jam someone long enough to disable him entirely. Just make sure your Griffin pilots know to keep their distance.
Distance is your friend! And never ever let them stop moving.

Purpose of multiple jammers is multiple separate rolls each with their own chance which you could spread across a number of targets up to the number of jammers you have.

Also you could mix ECM types to have the right jammer in case ships of other faction types show up.

wait that sounds amazing I should definitely do that thx!

unfortunately there are only 4 people in my gang, and I am the only pilot flying the griffin. so should I just orbit with mwd at 20km range? because thats my optimal range, but its kinda dangerous as its inside disruptor range.

okay thx, but just curious, how likely is it to see other faction ships fighting for gallente faction war? so far the only ships I’ve seen are Atron, Tristan, Catalyst, and Comet. and on one occasion I saw a wolf.

I have not yet done FW yet, so you would know better than I what types of ships to expect.

If you mainly fight gallente hulls and the occasional minmatar hull, a rack of mainly green ECM and one multispectrum or red ECM module may work well.

You should have far more range on those ECM, with 2 sig distortion amps you get over 40km even with base skills. On the racial jammers it’s really just experience so that will take time to get used to, just always bring backup in cargo so in case you have to time to dock up and switch you can do so.

Skill Maxed Toon with cheap throwaway fit, derived from my kitsune fittings (I barely use the Griffin itself):

[Griffin, *Simulated Griffin Fitting]
Micro Auxiliary Power Core I
Hypnos Compact Signal Distortion Amplifier I

5MN Quad LiF Restrained Microwarpdrive
Medium Shield Extender II
Multispectral ECM II
Multispectral ECM II
Remote Sensor Dampener II


Small Particle Dispersion Projector I
Small Signal Disruption Amplifier I
Small Semiconductor Memory Cell I

You can install a T2 Power Core which enables weapons to be installed, or go with an AB and a flip the capacitor rig for a power one to get enough PG to support a second distortion amplifier or so. With either a second distortion amplifier or t2 ewar rigs, optimal approaches 50km, and in combination you go well over 50km.

Especially if you range out, I advice a Sensor Dampener (with Range Disruption Script), otherwise just load a Lock Speed Disruption script to force your opponent to spend more time locking once you broke his lock.

Note that in the formula that is posted in the OP, ECM strength / Sensor strength is clamped to the [0;1] range. It’s unlikely for a Griffin, but more powerful jamming platforms, most notoriously the Rook and the Falcon, can be fit to have a Jam Power that is higher then the sensor strength of some of the ships out there… while an jam-strength maxed Griffin will obliterate most drone sensors.

That depends. You should check, if you can see, what guns your target has fit and stay out of falloff range of that gun / launcher.
It won’t matter that much if you are using your jammers in falloff range. Hence, you fit more of them and stagger them, so you account for failing jams.
Your ‘tank’ on your Griffin is your mwd and your jammers. Remember, even in a perfect set of events, your target ship can still lock you up and shoot you, no matter how many jams you land.
If in doubt, stay out to as far away as you can either orbit the target or something stationary else close by, like an asteroid in an asteroid belt or a beacon in a complex.

oh I use all 3 rigs to increase the strength of the ECM because I want high success rates to protect my flatmates. they are all really fragile destroyers mainly DPS. is 20km too short? maybe I will sacrifice a bit of strength for extra few km of optimal then.

OMG how did u get such strong strengths while still having such long range?! I heard multispectrum are weaker in every aspect and the range is insanely short. also is 1 min of capacitor enough? for me, should I switch it to a cap battery instead?

oh just saw the price, nvm. its more expensive than my entire fleet (4M corax, 3M catalyst, 800k rifter) :frowning: thx for the fit though, I would fly it in the future once I have more money from FW. I wasted all my isk trying to become a business person buying and selling stuff in Jita.

does tracking disruptor works? if I get one more person to join my fleet they can fly a crucifier which decreases like 80% of enemy range based on what I saw.

ECM works on drones as well? but sometimes when an enemy, such as Tristan attacks me, I can’t even see his drones in my overview, just some grey dots flying around my ship with an icon. and the ship doesnt lock anything when I try to click those dots(moving super fast)

oh ya so sad, ECM got nerfed. I heard back then a solo griffin navy issue can rekt fleets of frigates.

okay got it, thx!

This might seem sacrilegious to some but you may fit any combat ship of your preference similarly and still have the opportunity to contribute some damage to the tackled enemy.

[Kestrel, Support]
Hypnos Compact Signal Distortion Amplifier I
Nanofiber Internal Structure II

Medium Azeotropic Restrained Shield Extender
Initiated Enduring Multispectral ECM
Initiated Enduring Multispectral ECM
5MN Quad LiF Restrained Microwarpdrive

Arbalest Compact Light Missile Launcher
Arbalest Compact Light Missile Launcher
Arbalest Compact Light Missile Launcher
Arbalest Compact Light Missile Launcher

Small Particle Dispersion Augmentor I
Small Ancillary Current Router I
Small Particle Dispersion Projector I

Caldari Navy Scourge Light Missile x80
Caldari Navy Inferno Light Missile x80

The dispersion projector rig and the low-slot module that looks like a magstab or gyro-stab increases the strength and range of ecm-modules. Unfortunately, I don’t have the client open. However, you can find the modules with the ecm-mods in the simulator.
Having all the skills and the Caldari frigate skill at level 5 also increases strength and range of the ecm-modules.

Once your buddies have trained them, the Amarr and Caldari command destroyer will give you access to information links, which increase the strength of ecm-modules by a lot.

The Pontifex and the Jackdaw will be welcome in any of your endeavors.

oh cool, got it. so its just like a heat sink.

woah I heard command links are really OP. but for alphas can’t use it, even on battlecruisers.

Just to make sure it works, here is the idea of our gang:
I will fly the griffin to ECM enemy while orbiting at 30km, I don’t need tank because the enemy can’t hit me.

3 of my mates will fly corax, catalyst, and thrasher, all three of them will brawl and deal all 4 types of different dmg to counter both armor and shield.

as long as I ECM the enemy, the rest of my fleet won’t get hurt, and as long as they help me web and scram the enemy, I won’t be hurt.

does this look like a valid strategy to you guys?

edit: based on my calculations, our hypothetical enemy is a catalyst. I would have around 92% chance of jamming him if I use all 4 jammers, and around 25% chance to jam him for a whole 1 minutes.

Assume my fleet deals around 450 dps combined, corax = 120, catalyst = 200, thrasher = 130, they can deal a total of 9000 dmg in my one ECM cycle, and 27000 dmg in 1 minute.

is this enough to kill a catalyst? assume we have 3 webs and 1 scram and 1 disrupt.

As long as it is a more or less standard Catalyst fit, you will succeed. The Catalyst with a standard fit is close to flying a frigate without any modules on, so a ship made of glass.

If you still don’t wanna be omegas after that, I don’t know what will convince you.

Only for the losing side of the fight.

Don’t worry about that. I trained those links after 12 years of training most everything else, more important skills like navigation level 5 or advanced weapons upgrades 5.
Only then you can consider putting links in your cue. Since most ships won’t be able to fit them, focus on things that will benefit fit you right away.
Another advice about training skills is that you really don’t need to needlessly train everything to level 5. Like having heavy assault cruiser 5 can be put on hold until you have engineering 5, and it won’t take as long.

After that, you can still train heavy assault cruisers to level 5. The last +5% something bonus will not make that much of a difference.

Okay I got it. but I can’t train much skills to lv5 anyways. 5M skill point limit is not very nice. I am actually not sure if I should get tech 2 rockets or tech 2 heavy assault missiles or tech 2 heavy missiles, I only have enough skill points to train one of them.

got it, time to have my revenge. this guy flying a 13M tech 2 catalyst killed our entire fleet when we were gathering outside an astrahaus. this time we will pin him down and rekt his ship.