So using that logic, the only ECM change needed is to ‘lock out’ the ability to use any module that affects a ship other than the players, not remove the ability to lock ships?
Perhaps even prevent a player from agressing with drones, yet allow them to assist them to a fleetmate.
That change would make the experience less frustrating?
No because the meme will still be there
Had it been that way since the star it probably would have helped
Lets face it - the reason the Developers decided to make ECM ships lockable by the ships they are jamming is because its an easy fix.
It would take too much time (money) to code and test:
And they couldn’t just leave it alone because interested in-game parties had to have something that causes ire fixed (but only irksome in the way they play the game - fixed). So they threw something in & threw away design practices (suck it and see is not part of agile development)
Edit : don’t want any upsets
A $425 million company - if the ***** ***** buyout is anything to go by - tightening the belt to squeeze money out of its investment.
Careful with that last statement, I had overzealous ISD members remove my post when out of game actions re CCP/BP were included.
Yep just like i posted earlier that can be attributed to how they handled all the October changes. Particularly the hic that they themselfs proved was an easy fix if they only put a tiny bit of effort in from the start
It appears there are few in disagreement that it seems a terrible double standard to rush through the changes that aren’t an easy fix, but then delay the FAX changes for the same reasons?
It’s almost like they have favoritism
I would assume that the FAX changes are being pushed thru an AGILE scrum
Design - Develop - ( test-review cycle) - deploy - monitor
and the suck it and see changes were not
I didn’t exaggerate the numbers to bolster my own position. I am at work and didn’t bother looking up the number so I ballparked it.
This doesn’t change the fact that it still locks you down for that entire time period, and ECCM only reduces the chance to lock you down, it doesn’t lessen the time or otherwise make it possible for you to take actions.
My present position is that being jammed and unable to shoot back because you lost a roll feels bad and it shouldn’t be that powerful. Even fitting ECCM won’t ensure you don’t get jammed. At best it can lower the chances, but if the jam lands, you’re twiddling your thumbs. Neuts are different - they take time to cycle through, they are shorter range, and your counter - a cap booster - works every time to increase your cap. You can still fight back. The two mechanics are not the same and I don’t know why folks keep trying to pretend that they are.
That’s in one, single scenario when you’re fighting, and it assumes a literal one vs. one PvP experience. We all know that’s not the majority of the situations where ECM is being used. For every other engagement - small gang, big fleet fights, BLOPs and entosis warfare - this change is meaningful and makes the game play better.
Your “explicit” fit works against literally everything. Theirs does not and it doesn’t always work 100% of the time when they use it. Back to your neut analogy, if I hit my cap booster, it always boosts my cap. If I hit my ECCM, there’s still a good chance your jam lands and then I’m screwed.
I agree that you’re taking it to a ludicrous conclusion, and it’s not necessary to go that route. This change will require you to adjust how you fit your ship or fly them differently - just like every other balance change out there.
In the end, though, a more engaging fight that is more fun for both sides is better for the health of the game.
so? how is that a bad thing? the vexor could’ve tried to fight you with damage drones. suppose he killed you? would that be unfun for you?
more likely, you jumped a vexor, expecting an easy kill, he noted this and dropped ecm drones as a last chance at saving his ship. if they land a jam, he escapes.
working as intended. you kno…you can fit sebo w/eccm script; dramatically reducing the likelihood that a single flight of ecm drones will jam you before you kill that mean old vexor who wont just sit still and die for you. would that be more fun?
I agree with 99% of what you said, but you have to consider that the cycle time is part of the balance. you CANNOT reduce the cycle time TOO MUCH, because as is, a jam breaks lock. re-establishing lock takes time, depending on the size of the ship (scan resolution). If you make the cycle times shorter (esp as short as 5sec), then a jam frig vs a bs hull may get 2 failed jams, but a 3rd successful means the bs will Never get a lock on the frig, because it takes him soo long to get a lock in the first place. don’t get me wrong, bs vs frig, should probly fit a sebo for faster locking, but that aside, my point is currently, the cycle time and activation cost of jams is actually quite balanced. its not broken in the first place. if being jammed is ‘unfun’ for anyone, then they should fit some ewar tank to their ship, to reduce the # of times they are jammed.
ive tried not to suggest ideas for changes, cuz god forbid they might IMPLEMENT them, but if they wanted to nerf ecm AGAIN, they could separate the jam effect duration from the cycle time. ie; you jam cycles in 20sec, but the jam only lasts 15 sec. they could further nerf ecm by building in a buff to the eccm script, giving the user perhaps a 5sec flat reduction in time jammed (10sec).
this is what they would do if they wanted to balance something. they don’t. they are breaking it, for very specific reasons. reasons they haven’t stated in any specificity. instead we get ‘unfun’ and ‘agency’ as though they mean anything in a vacuum void of logic.
Ecm drones would be fine if it was one 5x drone the problem is how broken they are getting 5 rolls every 20s.
Sebos are not a counter to ecm drones considering how many ships can fit them compared to ships in the same class that do not have the slots to fit sebos. Sebos are a good counter to standard ecm but it helps that standard ecm isn’t broken.
Ecm drones get even worse in swarms. Just look at dreads that fit to have over 2k sensors that were still perma jammed
you have done some math. have you done ALL the math? what is the jam strength of a single ecm drone vs your own ships sensor strength? now put the first # over the second and youll get a % chance… times that by 5. yes 5 separate rolls of 5%(ie) each is nothing extraordinary. I imagine the chances are lower than 5% but lets just say. now if you fit a sebo, you just halved the chances per ecm drone getting a jam on you. still too much? fine, then they could adjust the base strength of ecm.
Im not arguing with you, but your citing an example that is ‘woe is me, a target got away.’ well, imagine post ‘balance patch’; the drone jams you and the vexor does whatever he wants because you lost lock on him…BUT! you can lock the drone that landed the jam! woot woot!
so will this fix anything for your case? nope.
will it allow a gank talos or tornado that just got jammed after going flashy red in uedama to maaaayb kill the jam ship instead of the original gank target before concord shows up? yes.
will it allow carrier fighters to still shoot jam ships? yes.
will it allow cit bashers to still shoot the cit even tho the cit landed jams? nothing definitive here, but smells like a yes.
will entosis drakes now be able to fend off 5x jam griffins? sure, but the griffins will never come. nor will the claws.
will a machariel with damps fitted still get to use his damps vs a rook that is 100km away and landing successful jams?? yup. gosh that doesn’t sound broken at all does it?
shall I continue?
edit* I will continue:
they are treating ecm like its a special case ship, primarily functioned for breaking logi locks/chains. ok…lets picture the future here. as is, logi that doesn’t wana get jammed fits a sebo w/eccm. his odds go up, but not as much as im sure he’d like.
post patch the logi will b able to lock the jammer. you know what will change? fleet mates will assist drones to logi, and logi will fit a tp instead of sebo. when a jam happens (IF, cuz random and unfun? lol) the logi will activate his tp and send a drone swarm to the jammer. or if its sentries the jammer is just deleted. how FUN! what AGENCY! added bonus? logi doesn’t need whore drones anymore! the tp gets them on every kill mail while they wait for the imaginary jam ships to show up (but never do bc ecm is being entirely broken here).
this is all absurd. I hate how my ship dies in 1-2 volleys! no I don’t fit tank mods cuz theres soo many other things I NEED in those slots! slots are at a premium you kno, and wasting them on defensive mods is very unfun. but dying almost instantly is unfun too! cccplz nerf damage mods because I refuse to fit counters. and my counters aren’t 100% perfect, so that’s unfun too!
the really hilarious thing is we are talking about 20sec of ‘unfun’ when a jam is successful. well how fun is it to have to spend all the time replacing a ship after its dead? like, its dead, so doesn’t that time = 'cant do anything for x amount of time? go ahead, remind me again of all the things you can do after a ship dies. its comparable to the list of things you can do when you are jammed. jams do zero damage. they don’t affect your defensive mods AT ALL. the list is equally long.
and drone swarms SHOULD jam a single ship near permanently, if your talking about the size of swarms ive seen them used. its either that or 1-2k more dps? I guess a dread would prefer the dps? so, write a letter to the enemy and ask them to please stop countering your ‘fun’ playstyle bc they are making the game unfun.
apologies, my irritation is not with you specifically, but with the madness being propagated in this thread.
ps: drones swarms don’t like smartbombs, fyi.
To be fair, the reason wasn’t because folks didn’t like them or because they weren’t easy to fix, but because they recognized that this was a more complex issue than it appeared at first blush and they wanted to take more time to work on it.
to be fair, the same could be said about ecm and nullification changes. treating symptoms instead of the illness. or a quack diagnosing an imaginary illness. we see it a lot in the states, over-medication galore, etc… surely its not just us?
I should note that the overwhelming majority of my PvP experience has, in fact, been 1v1. Saying that I’ll have to adjust when I engage in solo PvP is missing the point that this proposed change utterly eradicates solo ECM based PvP.
Also, your understanding of how ECM ships are fit is greatly flawed, as demonstrated by your statement:
I need to identify my target via dscan first and refit my ship for the racial jams. I’ll need to plug in multiples just in case a jam fails. Standard operating for a navy griffon in solo pvp is to carry a depot and two of each racial jam, to refit to your target before you engage, along with carrying paste to repair your modules because heating is the best way to ensure a jam lands.
Secondly, if you look at the maximum possible jam strength, very few things get above 16 jam power with rigs and all lows filled with signal distortion amplifiers. Battlecruisers and up already have more base sensor strength than that even before they start training the sensor skills, and fitting a sensor booster with an ECCM script drops our chance to successfully jam them to under 40%. Against pirate or T2 battleships, our ECM may land a jam 50% of the time with maxed out skills versus completely unskilled. When they have a sensor booster fitted, we get up to 24% maybe, assuming jam power is all we fit for.
Understand that these are assuming we fit our ships absolutely for maximum jam strength, to the detriment of everything else. You are grossly overstating the effective strength of ECM against ships without taking into account that it 1, does not get anywhere near as high powered as you are acting like it does, and 2, that we only get to our top degree of power by making our ships literal Ewar glass cannons.
This change doesn’t make for more interesting fights. It absolutely guarantees that the ECM ship either dies or has to run away. It completely and utterly screws over people like myself who prefer 1v1 pvp, all for the sake of making people we caught dead to rights feel less helpless when we catch them.
I also like how you try and conflate taking any action at all with taking meaningful action. When neuted out, or damped to the point where I can’t lock anything more than 8km away, sure I can fire a few types of weapon and launch drones, but I cannot do anything meaningful that would change or even delay the outcome of the engagement, and I feel just as helpless as I would when I am jammed and being picked apart by a navy griffon.
If a person can successfully permajam you, and they manage to scram you, then they deserve to kill you. If they can’t scram or point you and you get away, congratulations. You just won the engagement. Being able to run away is always a meaningful action that anyone can take unless measures are taken to prevent it, and if you aren’t going to try and run when you are outmatched, you do not deserve to be coddled, which is exactly what this change does.
The sad thing is: Nothing I explained here in this post is anything new. It is something you have repeatedly and deliberately ignored.
truth! now tell them all what happens to a gni when a jam fails? and plz remind them that jam boats can be jammed too. and also, if you are Truly Max ECM fitted, then you don’t have a scram. your buddy has a scram for you. now we are talking 2v1, and the ecm boat is playing purely the role of support. the Scram ship is doing the Real work. valid points have been repeatedly ignored. it all keeps coming back to ‘unfun/helpless’ FEELINGS.
if we are going to be balancing this game based on FEELINGS, then I guess we don’t really need the math parts? do we??
I like it better when snowflakes are camping out in parks or protesting somewhere, rather than in their mothers basement playing eve!
Small gangs and blops are going to suffer heavily from this change, this statement makes me wonder if youve ever been on a blops fleet.
Your basic low sp fleets of a blops, bombers, and 1-2 falcons will suffer. This change will force these fleets to upgrade into t3c inorder to compensate for the loss of ecm as now some of the t3c will need to fit links and logi.
Small gangs now will suffer once ppl drop the “oh look free kills REEEEEE” carriers on small gangs. We already have a problem with capital being oppressive and not everyone can escalate when someone drops the “I WIN” super
Your right, but we also want that with meaningful balanced ecm changes too.
Instead of pushing half a change live and seeing how the meta plays out? 
These changes are like trying to do brain surgery with a chainsaw. Slow down, be the scalpel that actually fixes the problem without creating new ones.