Thursday, March 26, 2009

Its All About Power

I've spent the evening internally digesting the proposed ECM changes.

The thrust of CCP's effort appears to be addressing the range of ECM which is commonly refered to as "jamming from 200 km away" in a high pitched whiny voice. Its a slight exaggeration; more like 150 km away but for most pilots that fight in the 10-30 km range it might as well be on the far side of the moon.
Dee Carson of the Miner with Fangs blog whose opinion I mightily respect is strongly opposed to this approach as chronicled here, here, and here (in chronological order). In his last post:
No matter how loudly the checker players whine about Falcons sitting out at 200km 'permajamming' and how emphatically they support the currently proposed changes, their real beef is with jam strength.

And the proposed changes do not affect that at all. Falcons are still going to jam an interceptor with one module everytime and have a 94% probability of jamming a cruiser sized hull with 2 modules.
I agree. I've written before how the issue with ECM is the design of the ships and their midslots not being used for shield tank/tackle/MWD and electronic warfare but rather being exploited all for ECM. The proposed changes in effect will mean that ECM ships will still jam with a certain degree of consistency, range be damned.

It will be nice for people up against Falcons and their ilk to have them closer to engage with but in small gang fights I still think people will be screwed when the Falcon uncloaks and negates the firepower of half their gang in one fell swoop. Not to mention what two Falcons can do.

In the end, CCP will do what they feel is best and I will adapt. I'm actually looking forward to a Rook with a drone bay and more "grrrrr" to it, like a sibling to the Cerberus with less tank but ECM instead.

2 comments:

  1. Actually, 200km is very common and many pilots are better. I jam at 212 optimal with no jam strength loss. The bottom line is that ECM (not just falcons, but the actual mechanic) is overpowered. However, I mostly don't complain any more and just jam those who do. ;)

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  2. I hope they rather do it properly. 'cause if my Falcon gets screwed by changes, the only ship I could fly as Caldari into fleets will be Rokh. All missile boats are useless for PvP and only option Caldari support pilots have was EWAR. Who really needs Basilisk, when most fleet are armor tanking...

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