so i was talking to a corpie about How ECM has been the ugly stepchild of the Ewar line post changes and within its current use meta… to that end i came up with a spit-balled idea to overhaul ECM and fundamentally change the way we interact with and counter this form of Ewar:
OPs Note; I will be using the Tristan as the example ship during my points below. it has the ability to lock a maximum of 5 targets. (currently has a magnetometric strength of 10.8 with skills at L5)
1 - all ships now have a Sensor strength equal to the maximum number of entities they can target as a base. this number can be reinforced using ECCM Scripts or un scripted Sensor boosters. note that reinforced sensors don’t increase the maximum number of targets a ship can lock.
2 - ECM modules are changed to have no falloff so jams can land if within activation range. Racial ECMs can only Jam 1 Sensor type (removed off spec ECM points).
3 - ECMs can now be Scripted. with either range or strength scripts. Range scripts increase maximum activation range by 100% at the cost of 50% reduced JAM strength. Strength Scripts increase Target JAM strength by 100% but half’s Module activation range.
4 - A ship that is jammed will always be able to lock the ship jamming it. as it can trace the signal and lock the originating broadcast point.
5 - ECCM scripts now Fortify a ships Sensors by increasing the Theoretical maximum number of ships that a target can lock. Sensor booster modules wold now get an unscripted bonus to target sensor strength of 50% with the script boosting this to 100%.
So to my example.
the defender: the Tristan can lock 5 targets, and with a sensor booster fitted and scripted it can reinforce its sensors by 100% giving it an effective maximum of 10 target points.
Jam case 1: a griffin fitted with a T2 Multispectral ECM, with a 75% bonus to strength from ships trait at level 5 would be able to Jam 4.55 targets points of the above Tristan. fitted with and ECM strength script this would be doubled to 9.1 target points and the griffin would need to be within 11.5km. reducing the Tristan to 1 target point+1 target point on the griffin. giving the Tristan a maximum target lock count of 2 (one of witch can only be the griffin)
Jam Case 2: the griffin fitted with a T2 Magnetometric ECM, with a 75% bonus to strength from ships trait at level 5 would be able to Jam 7 target points on the above Tristan, & fitted with and ECM strength script, this would be doubled to 14 target points. effectively stopping the Tristan from locking any target other than the Griffin. The griffin would need to be within 17.25km to activate its module.
A Rook/Falcon/kitsune/Widow should not have an issue jamming any ship in game if fully skilled and appropriately fitted…
No, we keep the ability to lock and engage the Jamming ship. so if a falcom jams 5 ships, thats 5 ships who now have a new primary target. and this is asuming that the falcon is using the strength ECM script, making it have to be a lot closer to its target than under the old system
Sensor strength is also used to determine the combat probe difficulty of the ship, just FYI, and changing all sensor strength values will severely mess up that part of the game.
Bigger ships generally have much bigger sensor strength, even though they are easier to be combat probed, because signature radius increases much faster with size. If you were to give all ships a default sensor strength based on the ‘number of entities they can target’, this means CCP has no way to distinguish between small and big ship probe difficulty anymore.
While I see a downside, I also don’t see the benefit of these changes.
What kind of gameplay changes are you trying to accomplish?
this is specifically a change to ECM, Sensor boosters and Associated Scripts.
the Sensor strength of a ship will not be changed thus not affecting Scan probes. this change would divorce the 2 systems, with ECM and ECCM now using a ships “max locked Target Stat”. all that sensor strength would affect is what type of ECM is required to reduced a ships Max Targeting capacity.
Sensor boosters & ECCM Scripts would act as a buffer to this stat.
ECM modules and new proposed scripts would reduce this stat.
sensor strength bonuses from skills and implants would recieve an additional stat that interacts with the new ECM system. providing additional % buffer to the MAX targeting capacity stat.
this is in addition to thair bonus to the ships sensor strength in relation to lock speed and Scan probe resistance
The fact that jammed ships can continue to target the ships jamming them just boggles my mind. This runs counter to how ECM works in the first place. A good compromise could be that ECM can break locks even on ships targeting it, forcing the jammed ship to reacquire target lock, and ships that are being jammed can fire on the ship jamming it once target lock is reacquired at a reduced effect due to having to use less effective alternate means of targeting. Having to reacquire target lock would also force a respool for spooled weapons like Trig disintegrators.