Make ECM a single module that acts as a multispec, but can be scripted to target a specific race when the pilot has no combat timer.
Right now a successful jam on a target breaks their locks on any target but the one that is jamming them.
Instead could a successful jam break the target’s locks, and then randomly pick up to a number of ships on grid and duplicate them on the target’s overview.
I say a “number” of ships, as obviously there would be client issues if 2,000 ships were immediately duplicated in a big fight, so limiting the number of duplications down to say 5-10 would help avoid this.
Here’s an example.
I get tackled by a sabre and a falcon shows up to jam me.
In this new iteration of ECM, i’d lose locks on all targets, and my overview would now show 2 sabres and 2 falcons to lock up.
I can lock any of these 4 ships on my overview, but two of them would be phantom ships, they would only exist in eve on my overview.
Initially these ships would have the same information such as location, name, corp, distance, velocity, direction of travel, etc as the original ship, and for all intents and purposes would act like a regular, real ship, locking and showing aggression indicators to match the ship they are duplicating, essentially they would be indistinguishable from the original ship on grid.
I would be able to lock and fire on these phantom ships as well as the real ones, i would even see them them take the relevant damage i am outputting (however the phantoms would not be able to deal damage back to me.)
No kill marks or killmails would be generated for any kills, obviously, and if the original ship leaves grid their phantom would disappear as well.
After the module fully cycles, any phantom ships would disappear from my overview, even if the module lands another jam on the next cycle.
The second successful jam would just repeat the situation outlined above, breaking locks and providing a new set of phantom ships to deal with.
fitting strategy: do you fit all multispec, rainbow or more of a certain type to counter popular ships or counters your fleet comp?
rewards intel: if your scouts can tell what you are about to fight you can optimize your ECM fit
Interesting choices: do you jam the Amarr ship with your yellow jam or do you use it against the currently more dangerous Caldair ship despite lower chances?
With your change:
no fitting strategy, just bring all scripts
does not reward intel, you can swap on the fly
the only ‘choice’ you have is to match yellow scipt to yellow ship, red script to red ship etc.
Scripted ECM is a regularly recurring request and I get it, it would be more convenient. But as you can see it also loses a lot of gameplay and turns ECM gameplay into a game of matching the right colours, just like my toddler is learning now.
You might as well respect the intelligence of your mostly adult players and remove all but the multispectrum ECM jammers and buff those to reach essentially the same outcome.
And I disagree that this loss of interesting gameplay aspects is an improvement to the game.
Number 2 however seems interesting to me. How would those ‘duplicate’ ships function for that player and how would they figure out which ones aren’t real? After a (wasted) offensive action? Or closer visual inspection?
No. That would totally destabilize Smallscale PvP, as you can always perfectly counter your opponents small gang. We’d come back to the old days of everyone having his “personal Falcon alt”.
In large engagements your solution offers no benefit, as you will always see the opponents coming with scouts and fit accordingly to their doctrine. You’ll have spare modules in cargo and there will be Nestors, Odysseus’ or FAX nearby. Or go docking at a nearby station or just drop a Mobile Depot at a safespot. Doesn’t take longer than like a minute to adapt to the enemy fleet and you will always have that minute if your scouts don’t mess up horribly.
I don’t see the benefit? A good game design should reward quick and correct decisions while in the flow of battle, that requires somewhat reliable information about what is going on around you. Adding “decoy targets” that you can’t apart from real targets any more is only punishing good players and cause frustration, for no real gain. EVE is complex enough, often overcomplex already. Don’t make it worse.
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The only possible change to ECM that I could imagine is that you don’t “lose” your locks on a successful jam, but the target picture gets “grayed out” or “filled with jitter”. You can’t activate any kind of active module on it, but you could still tag them, broadcast them, assign drones to it. And you wouldn’t have to re-lock once the jamming ends (which currently is in fact a double-punishment, especially if damps are on the field as well…).