huh do you mean add a cooldown I don’t understand
Yes a jam failure results in exactly that
well only doing it on a fail is a bit strange and difficult to code. i’m also not 100% on how you are imagining it working
a similar idea that IMHO is a little better than this one that has been brought up before is have the jams last say 15s and the cycle time of the mod last 20s. This alleviates the issue a bit and is not as much of a nerf to the pilot but you have to remember CCP recognizes that ECM is a poor experience for both pilots involved so making it better for one at the expense of the other is a very crap way to go about it.
ofc because ccp wants to make a change for the sake of change rather than balance they are doing that same thing here. I mean over 1.5 decades and we can’t wait a little longer to get a more fleshed out idea? maybe set up another focus group. though they would need to be carful who the brought into that considering ECM isn’t exactly understood well by a lot of eve players. most either saying it is horribly op while the others saying its is extremely under powered
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That is the problem, even if you fine tune it so everyone says it is both horribly op and at the same time under powered, there will still be the perception that you can do nothing against it, which seems to be the basis of the changes 
but that is just it. the change will not fix it
ECM drones will still take to long to kill most ecm ships sit well beyond the range of the average ship. the BB for example jams at over 100km
so there will be just as much frustration from the jammed and even more from the ecm pilots. in just about every way this change is just a bad one
again damps are what ECM should be and that is one of the biggest factors making ecm so difficult
we need a new e-war and that may be a better center of a focus group.
maybe a drone one that has a chance to lower you mbs by 25% this would still be chance based if it worked or not. then add a script that would change it to a guaranteed reduction in Drone control range
if we wanted to remove RNG all together maybe it increases the sig of a ships drones or lowers the DCR so they become either easier to kill or further limited by range
lore wise it influences the link between the host ship and its drones. so that it can either interfere and limit its range or piggy back off it to help weapons and friendly ships acquire lock
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Oh I don’t disagree.
ECM functions surprisingly similar to a turret. It has an optimal and falloff that affect accuracy. Instead of tracking, it uses the ECM strength compared against the Sensor Strength of the target.
Part of the feeling of helplessness is it doesn’t have a damage table, so there are no Wrecking shots, just as there are no Grazes. This is one of the legitimate complaints about ECM currently, that you can get lucky even with an infinitesimally small chance to jam.
The other issue, perception, could be fixed if you allowed players to lock targets, and just disallowed active modules that were other than local. Active tank still works, hardeners work, smartbombs (and duimb bombs, for that matter), and prop mods/etc/etc would all work. It would be functionally not very different from current mechanics; I have a feeling the coding required to pull such a feat off is the main reason it has never been considered.
I always thought having to load a cap charge at the end of each jam attempt cycle would put some limitations on ecm. It would still be workable 1v1 and in larger fights ammo would become an issue for the pilot, especially if charge size had an effect on jam strength.
if you need to reign in the effect of a fleet of 75 falcons you will never be able to balance it to work with a single rook as well but I’m like a large number of EVE pilots we never see a fleet fight bigger than 100 ships total - Maybe it should be made to work for the rook and save the nerfs for the way the big boys use it in big fleet battles.
this would have a huuuuuuuuuuuge gameplay effect.
right now ECM is a very poor e-war unles syou are just using it to run away or to swarm you enemy
in most fights Damps work better and the main strength ecm has in the cam is its synergy with damps. you can jam a target then just before you cycle and risk losing the jam you have you damps scan res damp the target often keeping them jammed for 20-100+ seconds
again this only punishes ECM pilots who are also in a bad place and will not help with the frustration of the person being jammed
a lot of people are trying to find ways to “balance” ECM however even ccp agrees that mechanically it is balanced the problem is that the player interaction with ECM is terrible and simply not fun
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maybe rather than a new E-war make caldari unique and give it the only fully dedicated support ship
T1 gets bonuses to to the much needed remote guidance enhancers
T2 also gets a bonus to remote tracking computes
I haven’t done the math, but it makes me wonder just how well/poorly it would shake up ECM if a jam chance of less than 5% would never succeed.
To use a d20 comparison, many gameplay modes use a roll to determine a hit, and you can always hit on 20.
Since this isn’t a weapon attack, and we do have critical hit rolls (for damage turrets), requiring the player on offense with ECM to be able to hit with a 19 or better to succeed (greater than 5% jam chance) might actually relives some of the complaints of the oppressiveness, since you wouldn’t be able to get lucky with an unbonused/‘emergency’ jam vs a prepared target.
And the 5% was just a number I pulled out of thin air that worked with my d20 reference; it could easily be a 4 or 7 or 10% threshold that you needed before a jam would be successful.
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Valid point,. and it seems to complicate the issue if you try to adapt it to my previous example.
the problem on the chance side isn’t really the having a chance even against all odds but the fact that you can have a 100% jam chance. otherwise what you are doing is making them useless against many ships with even a single sebo. to compensate for that you would have to buff them until you have to have a sebo to stand a chance
That is the perception though, not the reality.
ECM has a falloff, if the ship jamming you has a 100% jam chance, they certainly don’t once you move further away from them (into falloff).
umm the black bird can get over 120km optimal
very few ecm ships fight more than 10k into falloff and at that range you still have over 100% on many ships
again with this change you just pass the frustration onto the one using you do not remove it
Some players are only too keen to prove my Griffin cannot kill them. usually a griffin cannot solo kill anything with more than 2 drones including spares. The griffin navy was released and this engagement envelope flipped open to any frig or destroyer. Fighting a worm or an Algos or a succubus it’s really not a bad fight but a lot of the time ECM ships are just there to cork block
that’s great?
it doesn’t counter what I said however. that feeling that “my jams never land” is just as prevalent as “I am always jammed”
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They have to make fitting sacrifices to do so.
I would be content to bake a passive ‘ecm resistance’, similar to how cap batteries interact with neuts, into sensor boosters (unscripted or eccm script), signal amps, and perhaps the Sensor Compensation skills, so that if you are fit to counter ECM you reduce their optimal/falloff by a percentage.
If your jams didn’t land, you were either not adequately prepared with a strong enough ECM fit, or you were countered.
batteries just lower the amount you are nueted by it doesn’t effect the range of the person using the nuets?
and that doesn’t solve any of the problems I pointed out on the end of making anything under 5% useless only that over 100% isn’t much of a problem