Interesting statement if I compare this to your previous replies in my other thread, which are showing resistance towards real nerfs to ratting and mining. How to make ratting space less safe? - #18 by Brisc_Rubal
Then what’s the point of removing nullification from the game (your declared goal)? Don’t start telling me anything about the entosis ■■■■. The only effect this change has is making nullsec more safe to live with less effort.
What is being done about the skill:
Signal Dispersion - 5% bonus to strength of all ECM jammers per skill level.
??
Everyone train up, cause we get free skillpoints back? Or does this fall under ’ will probably need a balance pass once the effects of the change are seen on TQ.’ ?
Please explain how these ‘small tweaks’ isn’t just a poorly thought out, rushed agenda being rammed through?
Please explain why I as a player should continue to pay CCP when this is their attitude on gameplay and balance?
Would you, personally, be satisfied if, in response to the FAX balance problem, CCP said they were removing them (since they are younger than Interdiction Immmunity) and would examine how the meta shakes up once the changes go live on TQ to react?
You mean the skill that still does exactly the same thing? Why would there be any refund for that.
So after ECM doesn’t jam any more, and only forces the target to be able to lock only me. stronger jams mean he locks me faster?
It’s exactly the same, don’t fit the correct counter, expect to die without fancy flying. It makes no difference whether it’s a hauler or combat ship. ‘Agency’ doesn’t care about that, just whether you can do anything about it.
That also doesn’t answer why such a half-baked change is being made without rebalancing the hulls given that they were previously balanced around the existing mechanic. It also doesn’t explain why this is a special case where the explicit counter is deemed irrelevant in the mechanic change.
In the future is too late. If this ridiculous ECM change goes live the ships have to buffed massively in the same patch.
Anything else is unacceptable.
What would really help in this “discussion” would be an intelligent and also acceptable explanation by CCP with real arguments and not the laughable ones we have seen in this thread and the Dev Blog about the reason why ECM is removed from the game.
@Brisc_Rubal
While you are certainly entitled to your opinion, I just do not agree with you.
Based on the description of the ECM changes in the devblog, I do not think that ECM is the automatic “win button” as the devblog states that they are looking at ways to make the ECM behavior more consistent - which seems to imply that this is currently not the case.
As for who wins the roll it is all or nothing for both parties. With the proposed change it seems that it only matters that the victim does not feel helpless but noone seems to care about the frustration when ECM miss or that it is no longer a viable option in any situation (solo players).
While I certainly understand that the mechanic should be balanced, for me the suggested change is too one-sided. CCP could have done this in other ways that would have been more balanced, e.g. reduce the chance to jam by reducing jamming strength or improving the strength of ECCM scripts or reducing the lockout time after a successful jam.
While you may think this is a minor tweak that may be easy to implement technically, I think that it has a significant impact and quite a few people think so (as Jin’Taan noted in an editorial on INN, he was surprised about the amount of backlash against the ECM change), and to dismiss these people as “whiners” is just too easy.
Additionally, in order to be balanced the changes to affected ships should be out along with the ECM change. If CCP does not know what the outcome of the change will be they should test it thoroughly before releasing as a patch (that is why the test server is there).
And as I noted in a previous post, if the mechanic is as bad as you describe it, CCP should develop a replacement scales better with the other types of EWAR and that is not “the winner takes it all” (and use the necessary resources) rather than this one-sided change.
@CCP_Falcon @CCP_Darwin are any of you actually going to give us a reply or do we just have to suffer the responses from the VERY one-sided opinions of the CSM member?
@CCP_karkur @CCP_Habakuk (only two members a post apparently - see above).
@CCP_Fozzie @CCP_Turtlepower (only two members a post apparently - see above).
As matters stand, you need to fit many lows an use a good chunk of your ships calibration to have a half decent chance of jamming a ship. This explicitly precludes fitting a solid tank to the ship, since you need to use multiple lows, mids, and a good chunk of your ships calibration to have a decent chance of jamming you target.
Now, while you and others may complain that getting jammed out is not fun, the thing is that a hybrid or laser ship being neuted out is in the same boat. There are, of course, counters to these means of play. Cap boosters and batteries for neuts and operating capacitor heavy ships. Sensor Boosters and Signal Amplifiers for combating ewar.
Thing is, fights often last a lot more than twenty seconds. Even if I land a jam, you will likely still be alive, albeit hurt, by the end of that 20 seconds (Exception is probably in frigate/destroyer combat, where neither fits great tanks). If I miss that jam, I’m screwed. I’ll be dead very fast because, as I mentioned above, I just plain don’t have the slots available to fit a tank, since in order to give myself a half decent chance of jamming you, I had to use all those slots to boost my ECM.
It needs to be noted that no other form of ewar is subject to such requirements in order to make it functional. A Damp will damp at the same strength, without needing anything in your lows or rig slots. A Paint will paint the same way. Neuts, Webs, Scrams, Tracking disrupters, all of them take a single slot and operate at full and effective power without needing all those other support modules to function reliably. Furthermore, it is divided into faction specific modules that further limit it’s potential for use, so the ECM pilot has to plan ahead and only engage when they are explicitly fit for countering the ship type they are engaging.
And then a Sensor Booster with an ECCM script gets added, and I may as well be pissing in a river for all the difference I make. My jam chance against your ship falls from maybe 90% (Which I had to sacrifice most of my slots for) down to about 40%, and I am boned. It says a lot that you apparently don’t think a pilot who fits their ship specifically to kill a target person, and manages to catch them, should be allowed to kill them so long as what they fit with was ECM, especially given how easy it is to utterly screw it with a single module.
But lets say that, for the sake of argument, 20 seconds of no shoot back is too much. How about cutting the cycle time of ECM modules to 10 or even 5 seconds. Would that not address the issue? Neither of those would kill ECM as a solo PvP option. We get to roll more against your sensors, and you get more chances to break the jam, especially if you fit a sensor booster.
Don’t like frigates jamming out carrier fighters? How about changing it so that each jam jams only one or two fighters in the squadron, cutting the DPS but not eliminating it until the squadron gets drowned in ECM? It is already set up so only one fighter is lost out of the squadron at a time to incoming damage.
The change proposed here is ridiculous overkill and makes multiple hulls completely useless, for instance the griffon navy and rook. It also kills off solo ECM based PvP entirely.
brisc only responds to arguments he thinks he can win. he hasn’t landed a qualifying blow yet, to any of the arguments against the ecm or nullification changes. his idea to replace hic rolling with PORPOISE rolling was comical. he is not here to argue legitimate pro’s and cons. he’s here to suppress (or try) anyone who is irritated by yet another fail-pass poorly cloaked as 'balance.
he has ignored the reality that there are Already things you can do to ‘their opponent besides die’. He has said some really really ignorant things about the current state of ecm and nullification. he’s been quoted as such. multiple times now. its important that people just entering this thread don’t fall for his crap.
there is nothing small about whats being done to ecm. its being outright broken. period.
these things are being done haphazard, with no regard for the various other means of use to the module or the ships involved. the overall beneficiaries to ALL of these changes reside in NS. that is the truth. any misdirection meant to lead you to believe otherwise is probably coming from Brisc himself, or arrendis, or 1 or 2 others unworthy of mention. yw brisc and arrendis 
you need help with other things also…
effectively, it IS. more misinformation.
you mean rethink the SHIP they choose to fly. nice try tho.
please explain how a success jam on a target = I WIN
no wait, plz don’t. we already Know it DOESNT.
…unless ships are spontaneously exploding upon successful jam? no. they aren’t. your telling fables. almost everyone that’s played this game knows who your shilling for.
after these changes, the only things spontaneously exploding will be jam ships; whether they land a successful jam or not.
when did ecm start landing final blows? when did it start doing damage? you kno it doesn’t.
there is nothing minor about this change, and you kno that also. I KNO you kno, because we’ve collectively told you about a dozen times. each time, you ignore the facts and move on to poorly formed arguments about subjective topics; like whats ‘fun’ or what provides ‘agency’. your too funny bruh
this illustrates what you don’t get about ecm; sometimes jam ships Try to jam Multiple ships, knowing their overall effectiveness is greatly reduced. they do this on the off chance that the successful jams will actually make a difference in the fight, you kno, before the jam ship is primaried by EVERYONE, and it dies. now, spreading jams is even more suicidal than it ever could have been before.
it sure wont be used for its jam bonus…that we can predict