ECM and RSD

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
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So in answering a different thread, I decided I wouldn’t hijack their thread. Making a new one for a thought.

What’s the difference between RSD and ECM?

An armor Lach with 4x scripted RSD can reduce your average ship’s lock range to less than 10km. You can be scrammed from 15k away, webbed from 60k away, and you’re utterly ■■■■■■. The same counters for RSD exist for ECM, so that’s yet another similarity between the two.

The only difference? There’s no RNG for RSD. You’re damped out and totally ■■■■■■. ECM otoh can miss, and then you’ve got a slim chance.

Interestingly, RSD is Gallente and ECM is Caldari. Mortal enemies.

So, why not make them work in diametric ways?

Make RSD have a very short optimal, no falloff. You have to brawl with an RSD boat. In doing so, your fleet can be safe and you can simply catch reps from the fleet that they can’t put pressure on.

As Gallente are about hybrids and drones, it kind of fits. You damp out their ship, they can’t shoot your drones which orbit - your blasters are already good to go cause you’re in brawling range. Counter is to shoot the damps which are almost assuredly to be in range of your guns. Being generally armor tanked, the RSD boats should be able to take it.

Make ECM have an inverted optimal. The farther away you are, the stronger the jam is. 100% chance to jam at optimal range, 0% chance to jam at 0km, with an exponential approach to 100% as you approach optimal.

As Caldari, typically you’re all about the missiles. Which are known for their exceptional range. Maintaining range becomes valuable for them. Counter is things like MJD, MJFGs, prop mods.

I’m not married to the idea, it’s just a thought.

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cool.

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Sorry, forgot to talk about ECM falloff. Strength as you travel into falloff would follow current falloff formulas.

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Theyre changing ecm because too many people cried. Im sure damps will be hit too. Ive flown jam ships. They are paper for a reason. Yes, you land a jam hell yea. You miss a jam and you pop.

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No silly, you warp off and warp back and jam again (or not). No need to yolo your Falcon, if you can just warp off and try it again.

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how many times have I had the argument with you that RSD and ECM are almost identical but RSD don’t have rng. I can remember one very distinctly where you kept accusing me of lying when I said you could get a battleship to a sub 3km lock range with a single damp ship.

well at least you figured it out eventually.

as for this idea you make ECM the far far better choice as it will always be more beneficial to have your e-war ship farther away there is no real balance in this suggestion.

fixing ECM simply needs

removal of 100% jams
add an ECCM effect to ECM
drastically reduce the optimal of multispec
depending on the balance of the above raise the base jam strength of ecm

however it seems CCP and a large amount of players will never be happy with the ultimate effect of ECM
. at this point it would be better to remove it and find something else for caldari. hell removing ecm even without giving anything back to caldari would be better than their current plan.

some ideas is anti drone E-war. maybe one that has a chance to reduce drone bandwidth by 0- a multiple of 25%. and another scriptable one that can effect a ships drone tracking/speed/sig/ect

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I don’t recall those arguments… are you sure it was with me? I tend to remember our arguments because you’re always well-informed and I’m frankly disappointed when you don’t show up to my threads to poke holes.

To my knowledge I’ve always been of a position that RSD is just a 100% chance ECM. Regardless, as you say, here we are.

Not entirely. I’d expect RSD bonused ships to get tankier hulls, and as mentioned they should generally be armor tanked being gallente.

Basically, RSD would become a brawling tool. Even blasters can get some great numbers at 15km out. If I were flying something brawly, ECM would most certainly not be a good option because of the ease at which a fast ship could push them off grid.

A single tackle cepter, for example, could burn at a falcon. Its chance to jam diminishes exponentially as the frigate approaches (which means it HAS to warp off). The fleet itself would need to be built for ranged fighting so that they can provide suppressive fire against that cepter. Otherwise, it’s unsupported and just pushed off grid.

Thus, ECM would support something like a Cerb, Drake, or Eagle fleet very nicely. Drakes are certainly the shortest range but they’ve still got decent range.

RSD on the other hand, only really would work if you can get in close. Once you do, your fleet is generally safe as long as they don’t get too close.

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… except a rook would just wipe the floor with that.

and I suppose I didn’t understand how powerful you wanted to make damps. so your saying damps would be strong enough to damp a target so low they could not target drones while the damp ship was 15km away? why would it even need tank at that point. and considering you want it to also do decent DPS it would just become damps for small gangs ECM for everything else. considering screening for E-war ships is already common place and its a pita to actually close range against an even semi competent fleet

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Look at the optimals though. Yes, the Rook could deal with that. But could that same RLML rook deal with cruisers? They’d be able to close in enough while taking fire from the Rook, negating its ECM as they approach.

Because maybe they’ve got a friend? Maybe you’ve got a prop-mod and slingshot into locking range? Maybe you’re both scrammed and webbed, and while RSD keeps you from shooting their drones, it wouldn’t be enough to stop you from shooting them?

I agree, which is why you never try and crash on a cerb fleet (or similar). They chew you up and spit you out, all while laughing and moonwalking around. Eagles, Petes, Rokhs (I said nagas, I’m dumb sometimes), there’s a reason ranged doctrines are a thing. They’re damn hard to catch, and just trying to burn into them is absolutely stupid.

They’re the meta right now, by and large, for that very reason.

But we’ve all seen cerb fleets die… probe them and get a bubble on them. Fleet warps in at zero, and now all of a sudden every last one of those cerb pilot’s butts just puckered. Obviously this is hard to do, which is why cerb fleets are so prevalent.

At that point though, are we talking about ECM and RSD and how they can be different, useful, and counterable, or are we talking about the fact that ranged fleets are the current meta, and ECM would fit with them?

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those are not mutually exclusive… and your idea pushes the meta further in the favor of LR doctrines.

they already want to stay away and now your main method of making them ineffective at long ranges has to somehow get close.

not that i’m advocating for this particular idea but if you want to do something along the lines of what you have described here you would be better off adding a minimum targeting range to ships. then making Gal E-war increase minimum ranage and an identical caldari E-war that reduced maximum range.

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Does it though? Think about it. Currently, if I want to support a Cerb fleet with either of these, I’d probably just use RSD. The chance to fail makes ECM uninteresting to me, I always want something I can rely on.

We’ve all had close calls in LR fleets. Where they got pretty close before we warped off. In my idea, RSD was useless to begin with because you were at range, and ECM becomes progressively worse than it presently is (but better if you maintain range).

To be sure, I wouldn’t bother supporting a cerb fleet with ECM… I’d support it with huginns. Which is amusing in itself. But changing ECM in this way makes it more useful for a well flown LR doctrine, and way less useful for a poorly flown LR doctrine. If they get points, you can’t just jam their tackle and warp out. Mistakes = dead, which is what it should be for an LR doctrine.

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except you can no longer damp that LR fleet to either force them to risk coming in closer or deny them the fight. I hadn’t even thought of how much better you made ECM for them considering you idea lets them get 100% jam if they are far enough away.

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To be fair, you couldn’t damp them to force them in closer anyways. They know they’re screwed if they fly into range, and they won’t. If you force them in close, they’re just going to warp off. They aren’t going to take that fight, because they know they’ll lose. LR will always lose to a brawling fleet that gets into brawling range.

Which is exactly what the opposing force, being hit by 100% ECM (which I must say would be at very near the full optimal range of the jamming boats, something easily influenced by the recipients of the ECM) can also do… warp off.

I’ve never understood why ships stick around and get hammered by cerbs 180km away. Just warp off. Or bring something cheaper and trade kills with them, and end up winning on the trades. Or keep probing them down so they’re constantly warping to pings.

To be clear, it seems like you’re approaching this from a smallgang/microgang perspective… so I’ll say outright that I’m thinking about bigish fleets… 100-300 pilots on each side.

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except fleets will get in closer when damped. they are not going to move themselfs into brawl rage but they will risk getting a bit closer if you spread light damps across the fleet putting less space between you and making the catch easier.

that’s why I said they are forced to either risk getting closer or getting the fight denied

yes… i’m approaching it from the perspective of the vast majority of fleet sizes.

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Never have I ever been in a fleet where we’ve done that. If we get damped, we just tell those damped to suffer quietly. If it takes us below critical mass, we don’t close distance because we KNOW why they’re damping. Good scenario would be Cerbs vs Muninns. Muninns haven’t nearly the range, but dat arty strike…

Muninns being supported by RSD makes sense. You encourage them to come into range of your arty, and then you make their butts bleed.

I’m just saying that it’s an obvious trick and nobody should be falling for it. It’s a denial every time.

But in either case, you can deny them just the same by warping off. You don’t need RSD to force them into denying you the fight, when you can warp off and deny them the fight. They certainly won’t have tackle on you unless you managed to REALLY mess up.

With the pending changes, ECM isn’t really going to be worth much of anything in small gang. In large gang it makes a bit more sense… which is why I’m focusing on large gang. I should clarify that I am talking about after the proposed changes.

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the proposed change simply makes ECM worthless in both small and large gang. it actually gets worse the larger the fleets get unless I have miss understood the change. your idea is messier than the proposed change while crippling RSD as collateral.

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