Where Each Race’s Ewar Bonuses Stand Today
Amarr: Energy Neutralizers and Tracking/Missile Guidance Disruptors
Gallente: Sensor Dampeners and Warp Disruptors/Scramblers
Minmatar: Stasis Webifiers and Target Painters
Caldari: ECM and uh… ECM Burst? (lol?)
Looking at Ewar Bonuses in Light of the ECM Changes
This week, CCP announced that targeted ECM would be nerfed from a global lockout to a limited lockout, a taunt-style effect that makes it so a jammed target can only target the ship that is jamming it. For most applications, this may not change a lot. After all, a Falcon that is hitting logi from 80km away isn’t at grave risk from dying to that logi ship any time soon.
However, as pointed out by the community, this leaves a lot of holes in the lineup of Caldari ewar-bonused ships. Specifically ships like the Griffin Navy Issue and Widow, which are commonly used at short range and even in solo/duo/nano groups, now find their ewar bonuses all but useless. It’s clear that balancing ECM both for long-range fleet use and short range solo/small gang use isn’t feasible, unlike most other ewar bonuses.
This raises the question: Should CCP introduce a new, second type of electronic warfare balanced for smaller-scale play, allowing them to design Caldari ewar ships into a greater variety of roles/directions than just “long range fleet taunting ship”?
Yes. In addition to solving problems such as the GNI and Widow, this would also create new design space both for existing and new Caldari ships, plus future faction ships that use Caldari skills.
Ideas for New Types of Electronic Warfare
The following are some concepts that may or may not be suitable additions to the Caldari ewar lineup. They are included here for exploratory discussion, but feel free to share your own concepts!
THERMAL PROJECTORS: An ewar module that, when activated, applies heat to the target’s high, mid, and low racks. This would apply heat to the racks, not the modules directly. In essence, it would increase the heat damage multiplier of the targeted ship, causing overheated modules to damage and burn out faster. This could be instrumental in limiting target performance and even causing stressed pilots to destroy their weapons, props, or tanks. Could be scripted to focus on high/mid/low instead of even heating.
INERTIA PULSE: We have modules that slow targets’ maximum speed down, but what about a module that drastically cuts their agility? This ewar platform would not affect a target’s speed at all, but would make turning painfully slow. In order to prevent it from being completely brutal when paired with webs, it could be fired like a pulse with a short duration and a long cooldown.
TARGETED KINETIC VULNERABILITY: In many RPGs, there are debuffs that temporarily lower a target’s resistance to one type of damage. This module would do exactly that, create a short opening during which a target’s resistance is decreased by a small amount. This would be a niche ewar system, but even with a 2% reduction, it could make the difference for a target with say 96% Kinetic resist. For a few seconds, it would go down to 94%, increasing kinetic damage getting through by 50%! Essentially this would punish higher res ships. It might also be a way to “work around” a tiny bit of the “kinetic lock” of Caldari ships. For balance reasons, this effect would not stack, other than in duration.
SHIELD EGRESS SIPHON: There currently exists no mechanic in EVE to counter passive shield regen, other than brute force. This module would cut the target’s passive shield regen by X%, and increase the user’s passive shield regen by Y%. If desired, you could design ships bonused for this type of ewar by giving them stats that encourage a passive shield regen tank.
FOCUSED ENGINE LIMITER: Right now, we have warp disruptors that are long range and prevent warping (and nothing else) and warp scramblers that are short range and also shut down MWDs, MJDs, etc. What about a tackle module that was long range and shut down MWD and MJD, but didn’t prevent warping? In essence, this would be more of a mobility denial tool than a warp denial tool.
TARGET OBFUSCATION MATRIX: This one is simple: ships that are effected by this module no longer see their own targets’ current shield, armor, and hull HP. Optionally, it could perhaps scramble overview information about the target: no pilot name, no distance, speed, transversal, etc. Your victim would still be able to fight the target no problem, but would have to use visual cues, fleet comms with, and personal gut instinct to guess how quickly their targets were or weren’t dying. This would pair very well with new ECM: Taunt a target and obfuscate it. Now they can only fight you, plus they have no idea if they’re even successfully killing you.
PLEX Siphon: Hit them where it really hurts, their wallet! Every cycle of this module, you drain 1 PLEX from the target’s PLEX vault into your own. The perfect tool for pirates and misanthropes. Just kidding, I only put this here to see if you’re still reading!
Anyway, those are my ideas for a second Caldari ewar system, but I’d love to hear yours. What do you think?
