ECM Question

I recently returned to eve after some years of inactivity.
I heard the ECM System got updated and now it’s besides ecm drones not a defensive option anymore since the ECM ship can still be targeted.
Is this true? How do the drones perform? is it possible to jam a frig or cruiser with 25m² ECM drones?
What drones are the best? light, medium or heavy?

I always liked ECM for a “last escape option”. I think eve will loose a lot of fun without the chance to break a target lock. If your mining vessel or noctis get’s attacked by an assault frig it will only be a matter of time until you blow up. With ecm it was possible to still escape (and if it worked it was the best thing ever^^)
ECM was a little frustrating back then and it needed some improvements, but why remove one of the few possibilities to run away once engaged? :confused:
what should i fit now? warp core stabs? sensor damps? (OMG)
use all drone slots for ecm?
ecm was the only option that COULD work to get out of trouble once engaged. Now it seems like there is none except for the battleship target-spectrum-breaker-thing.

I don’t get this decision from a game design perspective. Is the only defense option more Tank/DPS?

What some people like to disregard is that all ECM modules got a nice bonus to ECM strength, so a successful jam is more likely.

Also, you still break target locks like ECM-bursts do and in the heat of them moment, some may even forget to lock you up, giving you time to leave.

Yes, you can now lock a ship that is jamming you but do that to a Scorpion, which is jamming you at 185km away - good luck with that.

If you fit 5 racial ecm jammers and cycle them carefully, you can even even have someone permanently jammed, since you could depending on the situation and the ship you are jamming, break an opponents target lock every 4 seconds.

What most people also like to disregard is that from a Rook or a Falcon a racial and linked ecm jammer has an ecm strength of about 21 points and with heat there aren’t many subcapitals that won’t get jammed.

That depends on your drone bandwidth. They are pretty good all together but they were nerfed and they only jam you for 5 seconds, so be careful.

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Thank you. So the ECM Burst still works like in the old days, that’s very confusing but i actually like it :slight_smile:

ECM is no longer a viable option for solo ships. It is more of a fleet support module now.

Yup, they nerfed the entire sandbox to balance PvP in their amazingly lame 1v1 instance PvP with a queue that involves a PvE site.

In the lame 1v1 instance the ship with ECM won.

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ECM is imo in kind of awkward state in regard to jammer being targetable: to be precise if the target haven’t had you locked before jam landed - he cannot lock you after it - the only thing that seems to have practically changed is that normal ecm modules do not break the locks on the jammer himself.

Well at least that’s how it works when NPCs are trying to do that to You, would have to test it to make sure wether it works for pvp interactions in same way

it was a tradeoff mostly. the ECM ships and modules got increased in bonus and strength but it got a clear drawback rather than being just based on RNG (and no, using scripts on a SeBo or using SigAmps wasnt a good counter either).

now the jammed target can fight back at the jammer but it still limited from targetting someone else, basically a Taunt. so the ECM ship has to be properly tanked which is something people was basically angry about. they cannot stack mids full of ECM and be unkillable, now they have to focus on jamming the specific target and still have enough modules to survive being focused.

this change was specially heavy on some ships that were considered for solo fights like the Navy Griffin, Widow or Falcon(?). but its because they were so used to stack several ECMs and tank with that, their brains cannot get with the idea that they now have to carry only 1 jammer at a time and fill the rest of the slots with modules that can help to their survivability

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This is not true. In PVP, if you jam someone they can lock you even if they did not have a lock on you before you jammed them.

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I’ll need to test it against players but I am quite sure that I’ve got the error of “you have 1 out of 0 targets locked” when attempted to lock guristas frigate that had me jammed… but then who would be surprised by bugs that CCP does not care about at this point xD

EDIT:

oh boy if only you could get consistent permajam on singular target with only one jammer…

I find it strange how MMOs like WoW never made taunt work like that in pvp when it too is a target based game.

in swtor, iirc, if you taunted an enemy, his dps was reduced if he tried to hit one of your allies instead of you. It does not seem very different from the “ecm” taunt here

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