Was curious about your thoughts regarding my ideas regarding these two modules. I’m not a PvP’er. I do understand the frustration of seeing the ump-teenth epithal slip away because it had 3 or 4 stabs in the low slots back in the old days.
The recent-ish changes seem to make them semi-useless except for hulls with an inherent warp core strength bonus. (IMHO) How would people feel about them remaining an active, essentially one-use module but the limit of one is lifted?
Second idea. Perhaps leaving stabs as they currently are (because gankers need content ), thoughts on this… If my understanding of timers is correct, if I am scrammed but have not “fought back” I will have a limited engagement timer but no weapons timer. I am in the mode of self-defense. The burst jammer causes no damage… unlike a smartbomb.
So in this set of conditions the use of the burst jammer is not criminal. The cycle time is long enough that is essentially one-use.
Since maybe all transports have no drones (i.e. EC-300) and cloak/MWD is far from fool-proof, would be nice to have a last ditch emergency button to push, hope and pray. Honestly I hope the jammer idea has people curious. I think it would make things a little more interesting.
With +2 stabilization you ignore most basic roaming and PvP fit solo players that usually only have a scram or point to hold you down, so you can still run off in many situations where you got tackled. Not all of them, sure, but many.
The change that added the maximum limit of 1 gave us a lot more fitting freedom. Where previously you were simply bad for not filling all or most of your hauler’s low slots with WCS, you now have real fitting choices. More agility, tank, speed, cargo… plenty more options now next to that one double-strength WCS module.
Burst jammers break all target locks of ships around you. That is an offensive action, because it can be used offensively as well as defensively.
Would you like it if someone came to your mining fleet in high sec and illegally broke all target locks every 30 seconds, without getting a criminal timer?
The idea here in my imagination… under those conditions… it would be criminal. The list of conditions for the logic to function properly can always change so that things work as intended. So to use a burst jammer without criminal penalty would be something like:
You’ve been aggressed and have (I looked it up this time) a Capsuleer Log-off Timer and no weapons timer…
Warping would reset this “okay to burst” status. So if you were “aggressed” by someone, like my alt, and warped into a belt. Still a no-no. It was a no-no originally (as far as I understood your reply) because you won’t have any log-off timers.
The list of “fine print” conditions could grow… If no capsuleers that have a weapons timer with the individual are in burst jammer range, not okay if it mistakenly hits someone.
Maybe some geofencing around gates. Person activating jammer must be within 20km of gate. For any accidental hits.
As you pointed out it can be used offensively or defensively. The idea was to get some list of conditions that would indicate the person is on the defensive and under these conditions it would be okay to trigger it… trigger it once and any following cycles… trigger it once period?
Could be another condition used in combination with the above… current incoming dps of aggressed ships > active tank. Would be okay… Weapons timer of at least one aggressor is greater than (max - weapon cycle time)… another idea.
Miners could use burst jammers if they are in the same corp and friendly fire is okay. IDK if hitting a drone triggers this normally. … I don’t think this is a thing but it would be nice if friendly fire could be toggled in fleet.
Maybe under some set of circumstances instead of being criminal it would be suspect but not possible around gates. (I know gankers would find a way to exploit something.)
I actually found the non-fitting solution to my problem. But I think jammer changes might be interesting if setup properly.
I think it would be more fruitful to find a solution to your scenario of low risk hauling within the constraints of the game than to attempt change the constraints of the game to fit your scenario.
ECM burst jams are often a coin flip anyway, chance based, and the agressors can severely reduce your chance if they expect you to be using one, with sensor boosters and ECCM scripts.
Next, ECM jams aren’t only an offensive action for high sec criminal rules, they’re also considered an offensive action for your weapons timer, which disables one of your main defences as hauler: to simply burn back to the gate and jump through.
Any agressor won’t be able to follow you if you use that trick, because of their own weapons timer, but using your ECM burst jammer disables that option, so now you’re stuck on the wrong side of the gate with a hostile ship.
Talking about options that an ECM burst jammer disables, it also disables nullification. As I often fly my haulers in parts of space where warp disruption bubbles are a common sight, I would never choose a chance-based ECM burst jammer over a reliable interdiction nullifier as defensive option outside high security space.
It’s a lot more fool proof than an ECM jammer though.
Cloak/MWD failure
ship spawn location is unfortunately close to another ship or object (very rare, in my experience)
hostile pilots are capable, awake and know how to decloak you (rare in my experience)
pilot error: wrong timing, bad fit, wrong MWD size, cloak tier or ship agility (common, but can be reduced to 0% chance if you aren’t bad)
ECM burst failure
any time you get tackled from >12 km (pretty common, considering you can get pointed at 24km with an unbonused warp disruptor)
chance based (uncommon-common to fail)
If they happen to all be within your limited range, what would that chance of failure be?
T2 overheated burst jammer (1.2x7.2 ecm strength) against single T1 Catalyst without targeting skills (1x11 sensor strength):
8.64/11
Chance of success: 79%
Chance of failure: 21%
Same overheated T2 burst jammer against a single Catalyst with level 3 Magnetometric Sensor Compensation and compact sensor booster with ECCM script (1.12x11x1.88 strength):
8.64/23.16
Chance of success: 37%
Chance of failure: 63%
Now three of those Catalysts:
0.37^3
Chance of success: 5%
Chance of failure: 95%
While an ECM burst jammer may frequently be succesful against a single unbonused small T1 tackle, that chance goes rapidly down against multiple or higher tier ships with the right skills and equipent, if they even are within your range.
It’s a last resort indeed.
Just not for high sec, as using one means you will likely get CONCORDOKKEN.
Maybe in a non-Gallente transport this is possible. Scram disables MWD yes? Disruptor does not? Scram/web … not making it back to gate. 13k EHP not much to burn through.
The game changed at some point before my return (and hence constraints) and that change allows for me to have a very small risk as long as I have a ship with cloak. I just didn’t think of it when I first posted. But I still think the jammer thing would be interesting.
#1 I’ve encountered this early on. Waited until my cloak timer nearly expired. The person never moved. Also happened to be the same person to gun me down.
I’m tacking my last loss to #2. Since in our conversation afterwards the individual went on to get a couple more MWD/cloak peeps and proceeded to post the kills.
#3… wrong timing… pretty easy for me. Pressing the buttons in order… too fast. That messes up the process for me far more times then I can count. I press at a slower tempo, probably finishing the sequence in ~1 sec, maybe slightly over, and it seems to alleviate any issues. Similar but less deadly issue when not grouping turrets and pressing F1-F4 simultaneously… I never get 4 turrets on target. Always have to toggle the ones that didn’t activate.
You only need enough DPS off the board to survive. And if scram ship loses lock… escape then possible. Escape… cloak… sit for whatever timer needs to go away to dock. You can counter saying with such and such chance to lose lock you need ‘x’ more ships in the gank fleet to counter the jammer… which would be true… But it also alters the economics for the ganker and therefore decisions.
Honestly I always felt having 3 stabs in the lows was a bit much… but flying around low-sec collecting PI you really just needed two friends online that wanted to gank epithals. They’d have enough points (2 faction scrams, 1 long point, 1 web) and all epithals would be toast… but I never came across two friends doing this… only one person and their alt. Constraints of the game at that time.
), thoughts on this… If my understanding of timers is correct, if I am scrammed but have not “fought back” I will have a limited engagement timer but no weapons timer. I am in the mode of self-defense. The burst jammer causes no damage… unlike a smartbomb.