As per the patch notes for the October release, Solo ECM will be non-existent.
As this is a major change to how ECM works, and it completely eliminates multiple uses of the modules from the game (Notably solo PvP, but also the potential for ECM to be used to escape combat for non-drone carrying haulers and ships), I hereby request that CCP institute a policy whereby those affected pilots can submit a support ticket to have the skills removed and refunded, along with the cost of the skillbooks.
Why should CCP change their standard policy that as long as the skill still has some use (at the same multiplier) you don’t get a refund. Even if the use is dramatically changed.
This has been the policy through a bunch of more dramatic changes, so if you want to claim ECM skills deserve it you need to make a case as to why this case is so different.
The skill itself does though. Just certain pilots dont want to make use of it due to the change.
Which is fine, I’m not making light of the situation for those pilots, but you havent explained why this is different from every other rebalance
While I’ve not looked at ecm boats since the change (and I don’t know if they applied the accompanying increase in survivability), I would say that even the griffin and kitsune are fine if they are used for more than just cheesing things.
Use them in a proper gang v gang fight and the hostiles are forced to try and apply dps to some fast little bastard that can get under their guns.
no griffin and kitsune can not reliably jam outside drone range and drones eat them dead. even before the change they had to ping off and back rather often with this they will simply never be able to stay on grid for a meaningful amount of time.
but yeah over all this change did nothing to alleviate the frustration of ECM and served to needlessly piss ECM pilots off
That helps if you’ve got drones, sure. Lots of boats don’t have them, or they’ve only got heavy drones/ec300s, etc.
I’m still waiting for the survivability numbers; like I said I haven’t looked yet. If it’s there it’ll be interesting. If it’s not, I’ll keep waiting. I do love the Rook, and it’s a good model for how I would love to see all ECM work.
they haven’t added any survivability to these ships.
they said they “may” in the future
most ships have drones. even caldari have been getting more and more. either way the change still effects the griffin and kitsune because they can no longer deal with ships that have them and that was the point I made. I didn’t say you would never be able to use them ever. the next point you were talking gang v gang and unless something really screwy is going on you will never come across a gang without them.
what you used to be able to do is jam a drone or two to mitigate incoming DPS you can no longer do this since the drone can still lock you if you jam it
so you mean always and completely outclassed by damps?
I had thought it a much more concrete thing than that. I’ll go re-read their announcement on the matter. Regardless, increases in survivability will mirror their ability to jam out incoming drone damage from the target they’re jamming.
I mean… that was and still is the case before and after the change. This change doesn’t really change that. In a scenario where you aren’t getting damped, I’d choose to fly a rook over a falcon any day of the week, unless we’re in gang fights where I won’t be able to catch reps.
well no the point is with ECM one ship has the potential to lock down 4+ ships using only one of yours. with damps you can get 2 maybe 3 if your fleet is set up for it. if you want to play to the rooks strength then you get the chance to lock down only 1-2 rather than a guarantee you would get with damps
also forgot solo rook is killed with this change as well and that was a really fun ship
Solo ECM boats are the only total casualty of this change. They’re 100% dead from this, with the sole exception of being able to jam out a logi boat while you kill a dps boat. Certainly not enough value to bother bringing an ecm boat.
That said… jamming out 1-2 logi is still valuable (they did say they were going to increase the reliability of jams). The GNI, the Rook, etc, they’re ideal for that with a brawling comp (anything where you’re in range for reps basically). Especially the Rook, because it can still pump out some pretty reasonable dps.
Jamming out logi can make a HUGE difference in a fight (I know you know this, just saying it). Especially if your other dudes are killing the other logi. Something like a basi/guardian can’t be capped out, so jamming them out instead offers a remarkable way to disrupt them. And in that specific example, I’d say ECM even outperforms RSD.
Edit:
If I could ask for any one thing (other than the increased survivability and reliability) I’d ask for some kind of mechanism to see which of your friendlies is ECMing what. Kind of like how when you look at your fighters, you can see what’s doing some kind of ewar to them.
Would allow ECM boats to coordinate better. A gang of rooks for example, terrifying if they can manage to spread out their jams.
they said they hope to increase it not that they will.
jamming logi is no where near is good as damping them. take Basi for example 2 of them have a sensor of 58+ and three you start to see numbers over 100 and that’s if there are no links/plants (I always ran talons in mine). while sebos also fight against damps you can swap back and forth from scan res to target range to cripple a logi wing.
I would hate this. the communication in the co-ordination is one of the things that made flying ECM fun. Mechanics should be changed to increase the focus on communicating and piloting not to take away from it
Tell that to a 200 man gang against another 200 man gang making heavy use of ECM.
In small gang that kind of communication is fine… in large gang there’s just too much ■■■■to coordinate without it starting to sound like TEST (a whole lot of REEEing while everyone spergs all over each other).
Successfully jamming them is far superior to damping them… they’re anchored so they’ll only be a couple km apart at worst and even if their scan res is poor, it just means their reps land after the initial rep wave and don’t get wasted (ofc the target could already be dead, but if your reps landing were the deciding factor the fight is not going well for you lol). I agree it’s hard to jam them, but I do remember them saying they wanted to increase the reliability of jams. So… again, I’m gonna wait and see on that front.
I dunno. I see potential, so long as it’s paired with increased survivability and reliability.
what’s that it puts more presser with higher numbers actually granting some for of diminishing returns to an aspect of n+1. while we never did it with 200 ecm pilots we did do it with ~25 several times place them into 5 groups all given orders from the support fc. Ie group 1 jam targets a b c group 2 jam d e f ect. then the individual groups work amongst themselfs. we would also add damps to these groups and they would co-ordinate to scan res damp targets that were about to have jams cycle off
one arazu damping a R-seboed basi puts its targeting range down to 8km just because the logi are all on top of each other doesn’t mean anything if they have to put themselfs deep into nuet and weapon range to rep the fleet even if you were duel R-seboed your range is still down to 14km just from one arazu or celestas for that matter. people really underestimate just how strong damps are
The policy has always been that skills are not reimbursed as long as they still have some use in game. Player not wanting to use it does not mean it has no use. As an example, people who had trained through the barges to get to the Orca back when it was required to fly it didn’t get reimbursed when the barge skills because “useless” to them because the barge skill still had use in game.