ECM Change in Oct 2018 update is just wrong

There are two enormous threads dealing with this very issue where the means to counterplay ECM have been brought up repeatedly. They fall into two broad categories. The first involves fitting solutions, and the other involves piloting solutions.

Fittingwise, you can use smartbombs + prop mod to rush and smash an ECM ship. Likewise you can be missile fit and load Auto-Targeting missiles. Other options including using a MJD to get out of range of the jamming ship exist as well. Fitting a scripted sensor booster more than halves their existing chance to jam you, and their ships are incredibly fragile if they are fit for the kind of jam strength that can reliably jam a t1 cruiser.

Pilotingwise, you can burn out of range of the jammers weapons and/or jamming modules. You can perform a point to point warp, either to another point on grid or to a celestial. Doing this will immediately break the jam. Obviously these require a little bit of skill and thought.

Obviously, many counters can, themselves, be countered. And there are some counters for those counters as well. Mainly though, the issue has been that people don’t want to compromise otherwise DPS/Tank fit ships to fit a sensor booster or two.

Possible solutions other than what has been done include shortening the cycle and jam duration of ECM modules so they don’t lock a person down (And the jammer doesn’t get locked out by bad rolls) for as long. Other spitballing includes allowing ships to fire “blind” at unlocked targets with massive accuracy penalties. Making ECM land an increasing debuff to your maximum locked targets until you are completely jammed after a few cycles, etc. Wide variety of possibilities, but all evidence indicates that this was not a well thought through change, and more a brain fart that they followed with great enthusiasm blind to the consequences.

I mean, hells, Structure ECM is confirmed to work the same way as ship based ECM at the moment, so if your Astrahus is defending itself with jammers, it actually isn’t.

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