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General Coochie
The Bastards
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Posted - 2009.04.28 13:22:00 -
[1]
Edited by: General Coochie on 28/04/2009 13:26:02
If you compare dps loss from using ewar drones with the dps advantage you gain over ecming one ship the same size as you and 5 ecm drones of same size, the ecm dones doesn't give that much of an advantage. If you are in a bigger ship facing a few smaller ships, dps drones would be much better. If you are in many small ships vs a big ship ecm drones are much better.
In my opinion thats quite balanced.
But as you wrote in OP its very hard to blow up ECM drones when someone who knows how to use them field them. Personally I killed every ECM drone thorax I met in my dps drone thorax. Ppl don't realize you should scoop ecm drones when they did their work and only let em out for a new cycle when needed.
That said the ECM effect of the drones doesn't need a nerf.
What could need a change is
Small and medium smartbomb damage, make it so if you sacrifice one high for a smartbomb it would post a very serious threat to the drones.
ECM drone structure, armor and shield hp, make it so if you sacrifice one high for a smartbomb it would post a very serious threat to the drones.
AND/OR maybe make drones unscoopable during their ECM cycle, for 20s. So you can't deploy, ecm, scoop and keep em safe after they did their work.
As I said I don't think its the drones jamming strength thats the problem, but that if used correctly almost impossible to kill while still giving the user maximum effect.
Also. BUFF the other EW drones!
Got Cooch?, solo PvP movie
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General Coochie
The Bastards
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Posted - 2009.04.28 13:47:00 -
[2]
 Quote:
Would giving all sizes of smartbombs the same range but obviousy less dmg for meds, smalls help?.
I dont know. I know I tried opping ecm drones with a med smartbomb sometime ago, and it was nor worth the sacrifice of the highslot. Something I think it should be. I think just a few cycles of a smartbomb, maybe 2, should pop the drones.
Quote:
Do you mean less HP ect ect as you are a little unclear. Or do you mean giving smart bombs a kind of reverse effect that bombs and missiles get. IE: small targets like drones get hit harder?.
Since buffing smartbomb dmg can prove imbalanced in other scenarios it might be a better idea to reduce the ecm drones hp. The reason for reducing would be for them to die quicker from smartbombs but also from any other direct fire.
Quote:
Thats not un reasonable although you could force them to be unresponsive in general during the jam cycle as ships at range could call them back to orbit outside weapon/web smartbomb range.
yes I guess thats a very good addition to my idea. Make them unresponisve for 20s after attacking. Otherwise if you are fighting at a bit of a range you could just recall them.
Got Cooch?, solo PvP movie
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General Coochie
The Bastards
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Posted - 2009.04.28 13:53:00 -
[3]
BTW I see some ppl compares ECM drones to the ecm modules.
I can't be arsed to read the whole thread
but 5 med neut drones neut as much as a t2 med neut I think. 5 large drones neut as much as a large neut etc. So if 5 large ECM drones ecm as much as a ecm module I don't see that as a problem.
Got Cooch?, solo PvP movie
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General Coochie
The Bastards
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Posted - 2009.04.28 16:14:00 -
[4]
You are correct. I remember comparing neuts and drones. And I must have compared it with small neut!
So yeah 5 med neut drones = a small neut.
Well that sucks a bit  , buff em! 
Got Cooch?, solo PvP movie
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General Coochie
The Bastards
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Posted - 2009.04.29 17:13:00 -
[5]
Originally by: Christina Bamar
Threads like these make it blatantly clear which posters actually pvp and which posters know how to EFT and do math.
Heavy ECM drones are very underpowered.
Ewar drones in general are very very underpowered.
Medium/light ECM drones are good, but situational, fine as they are.
Anyone who actually pvps knows that ECM drones aren't overpowered, if they were then everyone would use them. When at least 95% of drones you see are combat drones how can you claim that ECM drones are out of balance? Please BOOST other ewar and utility drones to bring them in line with light/medium ECM drones so that there's actually a decision to be made when picking drones beyond thermal or explosive.
Agree. Still I think there should be a better counter then there already is to dispatch ECM drones. They are very hard to kill atm in the hands of an experienced pilot. As someone else said maybe also lower their base effectiveness and with maxed skills you get that efficiency back (maybe even more efficiency at maxed skills then you get atm).
And I fly gallente and thorax which probably is the ship benefiting the most from ECM drones of all ships in the game. So I'm not here cause I got pwned by ECM drones.
As I said ECM drones ARE beneficial against heavy ganked ships. But its circumstantial. When I undock in a thorax I always have to make a hard choice between dps drones and the ECM drones, depending on what I expect facing. That I think indicates that they are quite balanced.
As with ECM it sucks not getting a kill cause the target jams you and warps out. But thats the way Ewar should work. Its a trick in you sleeve you sacrifice other things for.
Got Cooch?, solo PvP movie
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General Coochie
The Bastards
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Posted - 2009.04.29 20:13:00 -
[6]
Edited by: General Coochie on 29/04/2009 20:13:14
Originally by: Endless Subversion
They need a silly-hard nerf.
The biggest PITA are the small variants, the hornets and the lights.
Fighting outnumbered with opponents using ECM drones (or ecm) means you have no chance. You're removed from the fight with 0 piloting options available to counter this.
When you're fighting heavily outnumbered you're taking advantage of bad blob piloting. You get your kills off of enemy players making mistakes. You can still do this versus any form of ewar EXCEPT ecm. If they have enough ECM or ECM drones you can't do anything.
Breaking lock, tackle, dps and your own ewar (including neuts) is an umbrella that bad pilots hide behind that removes any options smaller gangs and solo players have of capitalizing on piloting and tactical mistakes. It's bad for small gang and solo and needs to be reworked.
And, tbh, it's the mechanic.
This aint a solo PvP game. I see no reason why 1 ship should be able to compete against 10 other ships. That sounds really imbalanced to me.
But changing how effective smartbombs are against ecm drones, by for example the suggestions I made would reduce that problem a lot, since you could actually counter ecm drones. Mean you had to fit a smartbomb, fair I think.
Got Cooch?, solo PvP movie
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General Coochie
The Bastards
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Posted - 2009.04.30 00:56:00 -
[7]
Edited by: General Coochie on 30/04/2009 01:02:16
Edited by: General Coochie on 30/04/2009 01:01:02
Originally by: CCP Nozh
2. An extension of the first point, the opportunity cost of bringing ECM drones is very low. Most ships aren't losing out on much by dropping combat drones, and in exchange for a little DPS they gain total ECM superiority without compromising the ship fit at all. Specifically, it takes 0 modules to jam the enemy.
You are exaggerating the advantage of bringing ECM drones. And neglecting that a huge part of dps is often from drones.
If we take the classic brutix fit as an example with lv V skills vs the same ship but with ecm drones. Its a ship with pretty much dps in comparison which means that it is good to use ecm drones against it.
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
2 Medium Armor Repairer II
Damage Control II
6 Heavy Electron Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M
Hammerhead II x5 vs 5 EC-600 drones.
dps: 615
guns: 456
drones: 158dps
The drones has a 35% jamming chance. So they will roughly reduce the incoming turret dps with 35%.
0.35 * 615 = 159dps.
Which is exactly the same as the dmg from the hammerhead II's.
Note that thats just the sweet spot. If the target has BC/cruiser sensor strength its beneficial with ecm drones if it has more then 456 turret dps. Which is often way more then any cruiser would do, even a ganky thorax would have trouble reaching those numbers. However BC can reach them quite easily. But if you look at PvP fits used very few of them to more turret dps then that, and if they do its not by much. So the situations where ECM drones do help, looking at only the dps, are not that many.
If the ship you are facing is gank fitted you are helped by ecm drones
If the ship you are facing is fitted with tank and less dps you are helped with dps drones
However ECM drones add the option to disengage which is good. However solo PvP doesn't happen often these days and having more dps could be more important so you can gank something and get out quickly. At the same time ECM drones could allow you to disengage should local spike.
Obviously ECM drones are greatly preferred against a gank megathron
And dps drones are greatly prefered should you face a gang of smaller ships then yours.
Seems really well balanced to me.
Except for maybe the fact that there should be a somewhat better counter to the drones. That is the issue, NOT their ECM jamming strength.
The reason I think ppl are not interested in a counter like smartbombs is that you rarely see ECM drones used. Ppl don't want to fit a counter for something used so rarely.
Got Cooch?, solo PvP movie
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General Coochie
The Bastards
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Posted - 2009.04.30 10:41:00 -
[8]
Edited by: General Coochie on 30/04/2009 10:44:27
Quote:
*Facepalm* But you bring up one of my favorite nonsense assumptions in a hypothetical situation, namely that a 35% chance to jam (which is actually five separate 7% chances to jam) is equal to a 35% loss in DPS. Of course in practicality it works absolutely nothing like that. It's a 100% loss of DPS for each jam cycle that lands. Considering lots of fights are over in just a few jam cycles, just one jam is frequently the deciding factor of a battle.
Its not a 100% loss in dps if the other pilot has dps drones.... For a normal setup mega the drones make out 30% of the dps. So even jammed its still doing 30% of its total dps.
Practically you actually do not get a jam in time to settle the fight. Maybe to warp out cause you didn't get enough jam cycles but thats all you gain on it generally. If you loose and got jammed one time during 60s, other things settled that fight not the ECM drones.
Quote:
Lets say its over 3 jamcycles or 60 seconds: Probability of 1 drone jamming in those 60 seconds is 0.38: That means a loss of 20 seconds of dps. Total damage : 615*60 sec = 36900. Damage lost 20*456=9120 or about 25%. Probability of 0 jams: 0.34 in this case the one with ecm drones will lose 158*60=9480 damage.
Yeah for simplicities sake I didn't went that far into detail. But numbers are actually even more in favor of not using ecm drones.
Got Cooch?, solo PvP movie
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