Just a quickie. CCP Fozzie, the dev formerly known as Raivi, has posted a set of “tweaks” that are going to be applied to electronic warfare of all four racial types. And most of them do indeed qualify as tweaks. However, there are a couple of straight-up nerfs, and both of them are being applied to Caldari e-war, otherwise known as jamming:
- Reduce Optimal Range and Falloff of all ECM modules by 10%
- Add four new racial sensor compensation skills that increase each type of Sensor Strength by 5% per level (Requires Electronics 4, rank 3 skills in the Electronics category)
The first is being balanced by optimal range and fall-off bonuses being applied to the Blackbird, jamming Tengu, and Scorpion. Notably though, the Rook, Falcon, Widow, and Kitsune are getting no such compensatory bonuses.(1) And thanks to four new skills to train, sensor strength will be going up right across New Eden.
The net result here is going to be to try to push players out of Falcons, Rooks, and Kitsunes, and push players away from jamming tactics in general including ECM drones. While jam strength itself is not being directly nerfed, giving players 20-25% stronger sensors is going to indirectly result in an effective 20-25% reduction in jamming strength. The range nerf, meanwhile, will either force Rooks and Falcons to operate much closer to danger or accept a further reduction in jamming strength thanks to the same factors that reduce DPS as a ship moves out of its optimal firing range.
Put another way, your five jam drones will no longer have a 50% chance of jamming an Ares tackler off you; that chance is being reduced to 42%. Likewise, the chance of a max-skilled over-heated Falcon jam working on a Hurricane drops from 100% to 77%.
Did I say the Falcon is the best Recon in the game? I lied. The Rapier will be taking the title away in about 31 days.
Like taxing corporate jets, the interesting thing about this change is how few people will be upset by it and how happy such a change will make most people. But also like taxing corporate jets, I have the impression that the people that are hit by this one are going to be extremely vocal about it, but will work behind the scenes rather than being public in their opposition.
Another interesting impact is going to be how widely trained those new skills are going to be. It’s a bit of a chicken-egg problem. Will people train them quickly assuming that Falcon pilots aren’t going to get frustrated until they fail jam after jam? Or will Falcon pilots dock their ships assuming everyone out there already has the skills trained? Reality is likely to be somewhere in the middle. This is the first “must have” PvP skill that CCP has introduced in some time and I think we’re going to see a few upset players who either:
- have PvP alts where the player involved had no intention of training them further; or,
- have toons that are too close to some clone-level SP limit and unwilling to train more SP and in so doing break that limit and have to buy the new clone level.
Time will tell.
In the meantime, there are now both defensive mods and defensive skills that you can train to counter three out of four racial electronic warfare types. Scared of jamming? Train the new sensor strength skills, and fit mid- or low-slot ECCM. Scared of damping? Train Long Range Targeting and Signature Analysis, and fit mid- or low-slot Sensor Boosters. Scared of TDs? Train Sharpshooter and Motion Prediction, and fit Tracking Computers or Enhancers.
Scared of Target Painters? You’re shit out of luck. There’s no skill to make your signature radius smaller, nor any mod to do so. All you can do is fly a smaller ship and armor tank it, never use MWD, or fly a Hyena.(2)
Wonder if that will change?
Down with ECM!
"…have toons that are… unwilling to train more SP [because they] have to buy the new clone level." Just no. Have you EVER met or heard of anyone not wanting to train a skill because they'd have to pay an extra 10M or 20M for a clone?
"There’s no skill to make your signature radius smaller…" True, but shield rigs frequently increase sig radius. Train shield rigging up and it effectively lowers your sig a bit. Just sayin'.
Lowers the effect the rigs have on your sig, not lowers your sig. I think the point he is trying to make is that you can INCREASE your sensor strength. You cannot decrease your sig radius. You can only reduce the increase brought on my other modules.
If you could decrease sig radius, image how small you could make a guardian.
You can decrease sig with skirmish links. And pills.
Anyway, this is the worst whining article i see since the whining about the amarr noob ship cargo size.
If by skirmish links you mean a ragnarok… Otherwise no.
Not sure if trolling or just stupid…
Jester I don't think is really whining here… his main Riptard is a smallgroup junky in Rote Kapelle around Sydicate so this nerf should help him & his alliance mates alot finding gudfites
By buffing your sensor strength, your also going to make it harder for people to probe you down.
Completely agreeing that the 'unwilling to train more SP due to needing a new clone' point is moot, one of the dumbest statements I've heard in eve.
If you're at such height you either a) can consistently afford more clones with said SP due to the ability to make isk easily or b) PVP on an alt because throwing away £25+ million isk clone on a couple of million fitted frigate starts to get somewhat costly.
Confirming that i'm scared of target painters.
I see the "blapping" dreadnaughts coming back as battleships are swollen to the size of a titan.
They largely are back, but as soon as supercarriers load grid 150km off, they can't do jack because they cant hit them and cant tank them, So they dont get much use
lol Too bad the Micro Warp Drive won't work on dreads :p
Wonder how bad this is gonna fuck with the Hornet EC-300 . Those things have a hard enough jamming. Pretty sure they may be next to worthless after this update. Worse off, it is a drone a lot of PVP people use to almost get them out of sticky situations or turn the upper hand. Pretty sure I'm not gonna swap them for some TP or TD drones. Those are worthless.
Ecm drones do not have a hard time jamming at all, they're overpowered as anything, clearly your not involved much in pvp or you would know otherwise.
Involved enough to know that when they need to count, they won't.
So basically not involved at all? Got it. Please return to f1 spamming in whatever dullsec blueball you are a part of. Kthxbye.
was jammed by the first cycle of 5 ec-300s from a talos yesterday in my eccm fitted dominix. was jammed twice in 90 seconds by 2 ec-300s in my drake the day before. tell me more of how bad ec-300s are
I had my eccm and info linked guardian jammed two straight cycles by a flight of ec300 just a couple days ago. Tell me more about how bad they are.
Well I have lost many battleships in small scale fights to 5 fucking ec-300 drones getting multiple jams through. They are much better than you think.
erm it's eve, adapt or die, nerfs and buffs are a part of the game, there have been countless over the years.
No ship should have 100% chance of jamming another. even if max skilled and overheated.
Too true. I dont think the mechanic needs work, just the calculation they use.
I am having a moment of 'Blondeness' I think. Are new skills being introduced, if so what are they? 'New Sensor Stregnth Skills' ; Have they been detailed somewhere, I had a quick look at the forums and couldnt see anything obvious.
http://evenews24.com/2012/11/03/dev-post-e-war-tw…
5% bonus to ship's sensor strength per level, 4 skills, one per race.
Ah I was reading it as there being a completely different skill in addition to the ship bonus'. Thanks
I'm just wondering what CCP has against higher skilled pointed players?
I use a Falcon sometimes, especially against people in Cynabals and Vaga's, the pick your targets and get out fast if you can't win types and the tears from them is comical, "GF without the Falcon" they say, and I reply "good fight without something that can run away so well." The Falcon is silly in that it has a lower optimal and falloff than a Blackbird, but there is another thing, sometimes when you miss a jam on someone you will find that none of your jammers will jam that person, they have total immunity for a full cycle of that first jammer. I am not against this new skill, personally I agree with it, though it will be a pain training all four races on my main, but such is life. My fit for the Falcon is based on having to tank for at least one cycle so meh, just makes it more valid and a full on jamming fit will soon be worthless…
Perhaps the increased strength should reduce the jam duration rather than the jam chance? ECM ships are paper thin as it is. I think if they nerf their ability to jam, perhaps they should give them a bit stronger of a tank. Now there is probably gonna be some guys say, IT HAS THE MOST MIDS! YOU CAN TANK THE FUCK OUT OF IT! Sure.. You could. but try fitting good jamming platform with it. You essentially have yourself a shield tanked maller of doom.
I wouldn't mind a stronger tank on the Falcon, the fit I use has 4 jammers a MWD, a Invuln and an LSE in the mids, my view is simply that the Falcon will miss a jam so you have to have some tank to survive that and keep on field, but here is the rub, I hate using the Falcon if there is more than 3 people, because I spend most of my time warping in and out… Now my Falcon is used mainly to annoy one or two fast fags or to escort something where my jams will enable it to get out before something meatier gets in.
Finally a nerf I can get agree with. Hell, remove all ECM from the game entirely. Combat should be about skill, tactics, strategy and precision, not a dice roll. I'm here to pew, not try my luck.
Combat should be about skill, tactics, strategy and precision, not a dice roll.
Skill/Tactics/Precision – Knowing who to jam, and when to jam them, and when they're no real threat
Strategy – Using ECM to lower the incoming DPS from your fleet
ECM IS tactical. If ECM was overpowered, don't you think it would be used in blob warfare?
Just because its not fotm in blobs doesnt mean its not OP. Now go get a better argument or cry me a river about how ccp ruined your k/d ratio.
Nerf Alphafleets! Why should someone die in 1 volley, there should be more tactics than F1 all the time!
Thanks, so ECM, which is a tactical application, is apparently more overpowered than 40 guys in Maelstroms.
ECM becomes a non-factor in blob warfare to a degree. What the problem is in a 1v1 fight, or small, even number fights, ECM drones are jamming and completely nullifying a ship's combat capability. A single ship can jam out a small fleet. That is what is overpowered about ECM.
Your right about it useless in fleets, please explain how 1 Falcon can jamm out a entire small fleet?
When I think small fleet I think of 10-20 guys [a gang] in Which Webs/Nuets are just as effective used right.
1 Falcon can jamm 2 guys reliably tops, and with even 6 guys the falcon with even 1 daredevil or Cyna is probably a dead duck.
thats like saying if the hulk was op for mining then everybody would use it for salvaging. 2 totally different scenarios, your argument is totally invalid
I like ECM. I have many chars trained for ECM, always to dualbox. It is frustrating to see the skill time for it being wasted and that so many players argue against ECM. I know most players often never used it and therefore do not know much, that ECM ships have many weaknesses. An ECM ship alone does not kill you usually.
But I also have many chars with 100+ Mil SP so I will just carry on to another FOTM ship. Caldari really get it badly this patch. 100mn Tengus will be nerfed, ECM nerfed. Drakes nerfed. Good that I have trained all 4 races and can fly every ship.
if you realy had any clue about ecm you would know that your SPs are not wasted, but that this nerf will mean nothing to your sissy falcon alt. Of course you "like" ECM, beause it´s OP. There is no reason not to "like" it, besides that it is broken and will be broken until CCP comes up with a deent rework and actually levels it´s efficieny to other forms of EWAR. Then it´s time for you to cry. But not quite yet.
Broken you mean like a 100% chance of Damping my range to 5km vs your buddies who can kite me in a faster ship?
You obviously arent thinking it through, ECM now is nothing, let me repeat NOTHING in Fleet fights, the ships are ALWAYS the first to die and die in 1 pop from a Nado/Mael, 2 from a Naga/Rokh.
You know what is ALWAYS great for Fleets since Rails/Arty/Scorch is popular? Thats right webbers/painters and yes you guessed it Damps, what good is a 150km Rokh with a 80km Locking range? How bout a Rokh shooting at a 100mn Tengu without Target Pianters blooming him to near MWD size or Webbing him to to normal speeds?
So while you bitch about 1 ship mainly the falcon think about ships that used to be great solo birds that now will blow, Rook loses both its rangefrom missiles and its range from ECMand it never got the strength of the falcon anyways, meaning 20-25% will kill its chances.
I agree chance based ECM is a little wanky but guess what its 10x better than a 100% chance Damp/TP/Web and 100x more effective in fleets.
So basically you have forced any ECM to be done in a Scorp, which is getting a missile buff and wont get hurt very bad at all with ECM…..Great you make the Rook/falcon the small gang ships useless win for your team, except you just made a ship that will have Drakes DPS with 3x its range for weapons and have 85% of its current HML tracking matched with a Drakes Tank of 85k+2-3 Solid ECM mods that will perma jamm almost anything still.
You can expect to see alot of Nano Scorps in small gangs, and a true Nano Scorp is very agile. But instead it has more Drones, more DPS than Rook and 4x the tank than all 3.
You have traded 1 evil for another, exiled the Rook a perfectly balanced small gang ship into oblivion, all while what nerfing a ship in which its sole use was small gang exclusively which now in eve lets face it is a dying breed. Instead of bitch and moan they should have made counters to it, just like FOF missiles. I fish for Falcons in my PVP Drake and they die by my FOF missiles before they can warp off, esp in losec.
But how else would ECM be fair? Lock breaking only and no time actually jamming? Or how about a Jamm that makes that combines the others 1/3 1/3 1/3 so damp 1/3 Web/TP 1/3 Nuet 1/3?
Whats your fix to it?
Remember Caldari`s ECM ability was originally supposed to be similiar to how Amarr uses missiles, they ECM was supposed to be a Caldari`s 3rd Weapon platfrom period, where as Minni got super speed with devastating range vs DPS and Amarr with Huge Tank with massive range vs DPS, Caldari is Slow, big tanks and have range with different weapons types but they dont have most DPS at all but range and tank and multiple weapons.
So by right it`s luck any race other than caldari uses ECM of any kind IMO, thay sacrifice enough with shitty tracking on 50% of missile classes. ECM was really what was supposed to make Cald`s "Support role" True and it did after the nerf it was still fair, just alot of legacy whiners IMO. Chance based maybe bad bu then figure something else out better.
Fact is Damp ships in say a 10 vs 10 are effective by focusing range damps to say there logi who had 40km buffer and now needs to be in your blaster ACS range.
Nuet is super dangerous as well to any active tankers or to any laser/MWD boats also it kills Logi very very fast.
Lastly Webs are simply murderers by slowing the 2/10 of the entire team from 30km away, so the DPS ships can move in and hit 2 basically still targets.
ECM lets say has the ability to perma jamm 1 logi overloaded maybe or 50% Jamm 2 Ships.
Sorry guys but this is all pretty equal, the only place it gets bad is 3 vs 4 or 5v5 but how often in Eve is this happening anymore? Not much at all.
Now all those top 3 ships are useful in fleets, where as the lower Called ECM is not, its simply a death ship, doomed from the first targeting. So Unless one side brings 40+ its a waste, and even then at 240 mi la pop and them being 13-15k tank ships it really is retarded to even try, where as the others dont present the most risk in the opening yet and arent target as quikly and simply put are way faster and have way smaller sigs.
"Combat should be about skill, tactics, strategy and precision"
It's pretty obvious you've never flown an ECM ship in a support role. There's more to it than button mashing, all that done from a ship that pretty much gets insta-popped if primaried – and believe me the falcon and scorpion ALWAYS gets primaried…
Now I'm not saying this nerf is a bad thing because I know most EVE players are going to forget about training their ECM defense skills and prefer to train "New Shiny skill V" instead. I'm also glad they made it race specific, meaning that getting level V in all skills will take a fair few months. Frankly if you spent that time training, then you deserve for me to have to put a second ECM module on you… You're still getting jammed, however, and it will still be fun watching you bitch about it until you're blue in the face. Hint: get friends.
Might be worth jams just breaking locks, that would be better, on the drones anyway. Lockbreaker drones, yummie.
Lol those changes , we will still perma jam
, eccm is like a plageu or so nobody fits it
confirming this, nerf won´t do shit. reduing the chance of being jammed is not the way to go. ecm being chance based is the problem to begin with. this nerf will have 0 impact on the use of falons and ecm. you heard it here first.
What is this shit? Dude you're just throwing random words on paper. Ofc it is a nerf, and it's made to balance ecm which has been damn OP. so quit the qq and maybe read your own articles before you post them
bout freakin time..
Okay so bring several failcons…what's the big deal?
// Put another way, your five jam drones will no longer have a 50% chance of jamming an Ares tackler off you; that chance is being reduced to 42%. Likewise, the chance of a max-skilled over-heated Falcon jam working on a Hurricane drops from 100% to 77%. //
I heard that jamming chance is calculated a bit differently.
Jam Chance = 1 – (1 – J/S) * (1 – J/S) * … (1 – Jn/S) * 100%, where
J – jammer strength, S – sensor strength, n – number of jammers.
So for Ares the chance with five Hornet EC-300 will be 34% (41% now before the nerf.)
like already in comments 25% isnt that much , yesterday i killed together with a corpmate who was in falcon a loki with a caracal , it lasted like 7min and he was perma jammed the whole time. That said , ppl dont fit eccm like its somekinda disease , but ye , falcon is kinda OP atm. we will see what thsoe changes bring…
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=150…
I bet he was gutted! Nice kill
and they say it DOESNT need a nerf.
People who plain out dislike EWAR are unable to deal with more than F1. Like playing poker and disliking flushes. Whats to like or dislike? its a rule and part of the game, making it more varied.
I rack it up as mental laziness or lack of intelligence.
Still confirming EWAR is unbalanced between types and ECM drones plainly overpowered.
You are right of course. I am lazy and hate being jammed, it just so damn frustrating, and in a fleet its not my fault if I get jammed, it will be the FC's fault and like you say is just part of the game. But is it an acceptable part of the game? Why should 40% of a fleet just sit being frustrated in a game that is supposed to be fun?
I dont mind being blown up when I can fight back, but dying without even being able to shoot anything just sucks.
Strangely in my experience the people complaining about ECM are the ones who actually know what they are doing and are very skilled pilots. EWAR is not the problem, it enriches the gameplay and opens up new possibities. just sit some well trained guys into t1 cruiser hulls like the arbitrator, the celestis and watch the carnage.
However ECM does not, it actually takes away depth in that it hinders people to do anything at all. Skill doesn´t matter in that situation anymore. You can be as skilled as you want, if you cant get locks and for example peel tacklers of you, you are fucked. There is one way to deal with ecm though, and that is to bring you own falcon with you everytime which even more reduces depth of fights. Fuck it, i could have 2 Falcon alts with me all the time if i wanted to. But where is the point? It just makes fights even more boring. ECCM sounds nice on paper, but really doesn´t do shit in reality. It doesn´t matter if you get jammed 25% less often. Fact is you WILL still get jammed often enough. Same applies to this nerf, it will hardly have an impact on the use of ecm and falcons. The only possibility to finally balance ECM is to redesign the whole concept and get rid of its chance based nature.
in 1vs1 and small scale youare right about eccm and being shit. even with 140 sensor strengh it can happen that a jamcycle hits you and 20 sec can beeverything in a small scale fight.
eccm is a powerfull module in fleet scale fights. as example: the enemy has 10 scorpions each scorpion has up to 5 jammer and each jammer has up to 50% chance to jam a scimi without eccm means each scorpion can lock down 2 enemy scimis statisticaly. having 20-40 scimis means theenemy can take out between 50 and 100% of your rep power.
with eccm its half jamchance. each scorpion can keep 1 scimi locked down. which means between 25 and 50% logis are jammed. it still sucks if you are one of that 10 scimis that are perma jammed, but for the fleet that single modul is a great improvement.
True dat. And i see no reason why ecm used in masses should not have a huge impact. Last but not least it is a tradeoff and the fleet using ecm sacrifices damage and risks loosing their advantage when their ecm gets alpha´d from the field.
However this viable form of EWAR, valid in larger scale fights totally fucks up other forms of PVP. And this should not be intended. This nerf will not change this. I would rather want to see ECCM beeing worked on so that it actually counters ECM which it does not atm. To make it time based would be one idea. use one eccm: reduce time of being jammed to 10 secs, use 2, reduce jamtime to 5 seonds. This would hardly concern ECM when used in huge fleets but would actually make it a decent form of EWAR in smaller scale fights again since a lot of the OPness comes from the fix 20 seconds lockdown. This is just an idea, there are plenty more valid ideas out there which have been proposed to ccp. But they would rather keep the one thing which is really broken with ecm and fiddle around with it.
ECM itself is dumb, the way it works currently, and ECCM is also dumb. But generally the comments are all against, never "fix it like this". Same goes for ewar generally, except points and so on. There should be a counter for everything, including points and webs. A jam cycle does that.
Fixed "on-off" and 20 seconds is stupid. Different effect according to strength is a good way to go, your suggestion is a good step and a good fix for ECCM.
Its equally stupid that 0,001km makes the difference between a 100% neut and no neut, or a 100% web/point.
Target painting works logically – it decreases smoothly. It is stupid in the way it increases sig, why would target painting make something more vulnerable to a bomb (non-targetted blast), but whatever.
What pisses me off are general "get rid of it" comments on EWAR. Not ECM, just appears more often in it. Damping was also reviled at a time. Claiming that they want "skill" – well, dealing with EWAR is an element of skill. Don't dumb it down.
Permajamming in the form that it exists now is completely broken no matter which way you cut it.
Bonus should have been 7.5% at least.
Falcons make solo pvp against certain alliances like AAA or GOONS limited to finding the very rare gang that DOESNT roll a falcon. Nothing should 100% shut you down without any chance of retaliation.
And forget about trying to kill a sabre in a bubble camp, 99% of the time a bubble camp has a falcon somewhere around it.
Time for the Eos to return…
The beauty of EVE is the range of approaches that can be used in a particular situation. Jamming is a key part of this. More tank, more dps, increased sensor strength, point or scram, ab or mwd for example all can be enhanced or ignored.
Jamming is not overpowered, it can be countered, but you have to make the decision to do that, at the expense of something else.
Eve does not need to be made simpler. This will significantly reduce the effectivesness of one of the strategies that can be employed in combat. That is a shame.
If you pull your head out of your ass you would see that CCP is just trying to make it a balanced playing field. ECM ships, such as blackbirds, scorpions, rooks and falcons have ruled the battlefields of new eden long enough.
Absolutely a great move CCP, keep up the good work.
Admittedly ECM makes people annoyed. It makes yummy tears. But it can be countered and that does take skill. I would rather have a fight in which the tactics involved using and countering ecm than yet another blat-fest. Sure ecm stops your locks, meaning you must adapt. FoF missiles, drones, positioning, bait and switch, or just flat out blobbing will all drive an ecm pilot from the field. But complaining because Simply mashing f1 go guns will not win you the fight anymore …boo hoo. Does that mean scrap ecm? I say no, sure build a better counter and or even adjust how it works (interesting idea to have it target specific modules) but making the only choice for pvp be "guns, lots of guns" is flat out boring.
nobody is suggesting removing ewar from the game, but in its current form it is far far superior to all other forms, mostly because of the lack of effective counters.
Is this what Evenews24 is about? A bunch of crying articles about what sort of 'balancing' can happen. This is how every and all games work since the dawn of time. Just adapt and start flying the next new o.p. ship. But seriously if I hear 'Oh noes I actualy have to properly fit my ship with a tank instead of a full rack of jamms! Wut do i do?' any more I will make a personal campain to assassinate all random falcons out there
You can use Halo implants, fleet command bonuses (Skirmish warfare links) and X-Instinct Boosters for reducing your signature radius. But it's right, there aren't skills that reduce your signature.
People need to stop crying – ECM just freakin plan ahead and learn to adapt / pre plan.
They already are screwin up missiles now ECM – How is caldari even going to be a viable race of ships to play?
Things were fine as they were – now CCP is listening to hard to the crybabys – get over it – plan ahead and adapt.
Stagnation is your death.
Stop screwin up my game you wanna be SOE SWG followers
You cry a lot
And thanks to four new skills to train, sensor strength will be going up right across New Eden.
what are you serious
your alliance goes literally NOWHERE without at least one falcon at all times.