ECM Balance Pass - November

EVE Technology and Research Center Upcoming Features & Changes
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Someone remind me: A has ECM and has B locked. B has A locked. If A Jams B does B’s lock drop but can be immediately re-established or does it remain unaffected?

Removing the RNG from ECM would be good, period. Make it a straight success. Increase the time of the jam as well. This is so that ECCM can then be used to reduce the time jammed as well as reduce the effectiveness of other forms of counter measures such as Dampeners and Disruptors. Then ECCM has a more robust purpose and will see greater demand as a counter to not just ECM but other forms of E-War.

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Hey, due to RL time issues I’m a nullsec solo-PvP battleship pilot. I know I’m an extreme fringe case, but the October round of ECM changes literally got me to re-sub. The core issue was that after going to all the time and effort of bringing a big slow ship to fight a whole gang, the moment a Griffin hit grid I was guaranteed zero fun. After a half dozen iterations I just stopped logging in and went to play a game that at least didn’t reliably enrage me.

Not being an ECM pilot myself I can’t speak to the specifics of these changes, but as long as I can reach out and touch the guy jamming me I’m still in the fight. Far as I’m concerned that’s what matters: there’s a hell of a rush in going down fighting against overwhelming odds, but nothing at all enjoyable at seeing a Falcon on overview and going AFK to get another beer.

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  1. Unaffected.
  2. Auto success regardless of strength makes it too good on unbonused ships. A non rng mechanic like reducing sensor strength and/or lockable targets would work better than auto success. And leaves existing modules and skills in the game as valid for counter fitting.
  3. eccm is part of sensor boosters that work vs damps also.
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Then restrict them to Caldari ecm ships only.

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hmmm, the name widow…

How about ropping the ECM completely from the Widow package…

and say give it a bonus to dmg increase vs other Black Ops,is that doable?

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Hello, @CCP_Rise,

Looks like you forgot to give any fitting bonus to the Griffin Navy Issue. Would uou please consider adding 10 CPU to him?

WBR, Tom

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They didnt leave it out. Its sig was lowered and it received the 10% and 20% bluffs all the others got.

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Lol… welcome back. The new meta is super fleets. You thought you had no fun before… believe you me, first time you roam into range of a titan staging point you’ll have 50 of them dropped on you with HAWs fit along with about a hundred supers.

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@CCP_Rise

I think you removed the wrong bonus from the Minokawa in the current Sisi build.
The Cap bonus is still there and the Command Burst range bonus is gone.

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Wrong post, dear

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What? Is 1339dps not enough for you?

It only just so happens that the Widow does the most damage of all black ops in the game, so sure why not give her an extra turret slot for a capital disintegrator gun??

@Lugh_Crow-Slave, I checked and with a proper Widow fit, you are now able to fit a large cap booster without gimping the fit.
The only thing is that torpedoes are kinda huge, so either only bring one or two damage type to have enough room for cap charges or bring less of all damage types.

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Fuel truck can carry all the cap charges you need… 2-3 reloads is more than enough to have in your hold, the truck can just drop more 3200s as they’re needed.

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Right or that :slight_smile:

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As I’ve not actually provided feedback on the changes at hand… I don’t think they warrant bringing ECM to a fight.

The only time where ECM was the clear ewar to bring to a fight (aka not outperformed by literally every other ewar) was against carriers. ECM remains useless against carriers because they can just shoot the ship jamming their fighters.

At the end of the day, I hope you’re asking yourselves “would I rather bring ECM, or RSD to a fight?”.

A lachesis/arazu will beat a Rook/Falcon 10 times out of 10… even more so now than it could before (when it was 9 times out of 10). Because your bonuses encourage the ECM pilot to be at range. The ECM pilot doesn’t even need to care if they lock first and land first, because the RSD pilot will simply lock and damp their range, and then it’s time for GGs in local.

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Dear CCP Rise,

In addition to those changes, please consider giving the Falcon an actual drone bay. 10 m3 is so ridiculously small that it’s not even funny. :frowning:

Thanks in advance!

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Does this mean “good giggles” or “good gank”?

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yes.

5char

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@CCP_Rise
While I have my doubts that the suggested changes will be enough, it does not solve the fundamental problem that Caldari EWAR is useless to solo players. I am by no means experienced with ECM at all, but from the way the mechanic currently works, even I can see that it is of no use to solo players.

If you truly wants the ECM change to be balanced you should apply the same mechanics to e.g. remote sensor dampeners and tracking disruptors, i.e. that the target can always lock the EWAR ship affecting it.

It simply does not make sense that the one race with only one type of EWAR loses its ability to affect its direct target with respects to itself. Generally, I think that various types of EWAR should apply more or less in the same way across the factions, i.e. does the EWAR ship benefit from the EWAR applied to the targeted ship (it may not be possible for all).

There are several ways you can balance this - level the playing field by applying the same mechanic to e.g. remote sensor dampeners and tracking disruptors (as stated above), introduce a second type of Caldari EWAR that can affect the direct target, or change the ECM mechanic itself so that it is truly balance (because of course it needs to be balanced). Plenty of suggestions have been made.

Why not spend time and resources on developing a truly balanced ECM mechanic rather than spend it on one balance iteration after another (which I think will take a long time anyway)? I think the current ECM change was poorly conceived and rushed from the beginning with too great cost and collateral damage to follow.

As I have said before, as long as Caldari EWAR ships are not a viable option for solo players, I personally consider ECM (since it is the only current Caldari EWAR type) to be broken and not worth using.

On a side note: I think it would be a good idea if you would indicate whether you actually follow/read this thread. Otherwise it could be conceived as you are not really interested in the feedback. You may or may not follow/read this thread, but we do not know when we receives no response from CCP!

I also saw a comment somewhere that it seems that there is more focus on inputs on reddit. If this is true (and I am not saying that it is, because I do not know) then you may as well close the forums, because what is the point of forums then?

Anyway, I sincerely hope that you will come up with some reasonably powerful and balanced Caldari EWAR that can make the Caldari EWAR ships worth flying for solo players.

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How is there going to be another balance pass so soon? All the crybabies complaining about it said it wouldn’t happen for years.

Guess they are a bunch of liars that shouldn’t be listened to.

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@Johnny_Punisher
Except that it is very difficult to compare EWAR with remote repairs.

None of the types of remote repairs work in solo situations since the ships are designed that way and it is the same for all factions.

In terms of EWAR the EWAR types of all the factions with the exception of ECM do work in solo situations. If you want to use remote repairs as a comparison to EWAR, you should apply the same mechanic as used in the ECM change to remote sensor dampeners, weapon disruptors, and maybe even target painters.

Some may say that this does not make any sense, and they would be right. It makes as much sense as applying the targeting mechanic to ECM - which is none!

While CCP want the Caldari EWAR ships to work as “taunters”, the ships need to be able to resist incoming damage and so far - even with the suggested changes - I do not think they are tanky enough. CCP is taking away the survivability of the Caldari EWAR ships, but does not seem to give the same amount survivability back.

Therefore, I am inclined to think that currently CCP is just trying to fix what they broke in the first place rather than fixing the core of the problem which is the randomness of ECM with a new balance non-random mechanic. Furthermore, the suggested changes to Caldari EWAR ships should actually have been included in the first patch as per the original dev blog.

Edits: A compromise could be to maintain the old mechanic as it was with the modification to allow any ship with a sensor booster with an ECCM script to maintain lock on the jamming ship as per the new mechanic. By doing this as a player you have a fitting choice whether to fit a sensor booster with ECCM script and there is a valid counter to ECM - but that sensor booster with ECCM script needs to be fitted. Alternatively, a specific “maintain target” script could be made rather than a the ECCM script if this is a better solution in terms of implementation. If a specific script for maintaining ship lock on a jamming ship, some drawbacks for the ship using the script could be added, could this be used as a balancing point rather than have to balance every Caldari EWAR ship while still giving the jammed ship a chance to fight back?

1 Like