Narcil Starwind
Exa Utopia
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Posted - 2009.04.27 21:09:00 -
[1]
 Originally by: CCP Nozh
Ok,
I'm sitting at home reading over this thread. Brainstorming about new ECM mechanics, help me out:
I was going to post this in it's own thread but since you asked, and I hope are still watching this thread I'll post my Idea here.
EWAR in all it's forms is supposed to be about evening the playing field when your outnumbered or tipping it even further in your favor if it's even. In their own way each form gives some sort of bonus through reduction of opponent DPS (turret disruption), increasing your own DPS (Target Painters), and hampering locking (ECM and Sensor Damps). The current problem is that ECM when it hits reduces the opponent DPS to 0 (Sensor Damps can do this as well but only in limited cases since they were nerfed). This is currently counter balanced by the chance based nature of the mechanic. It is possible by reducing the strength that you could bring it's effectiveness in line with other EWAR, but that's not the heart of the matter. The real problem is that the mechanic is not fun, and is overly annoying to both parties.
My proposal is this. ECM should be a deterministic behavior. You should still be able to break locks but it should not be an instant chance at module activation. The first change I would make would be to alter the ships sensors to be a stat similar to shields and Cap that can be depleted and has a recharge time. The level of your Sensors should effect the quality of your lock on a ship. When your sensors are at 90%+ you do 100% damage. 90% and below and you start to have problems with your weapons missing. ECM should damage your sensors and their DPS would depend on the ratio of ECM/Sensor Strength.
So if your sensors have a recharge of 3hps at 70% strength and the enemies ECM does damage at 3dps your sensors would stabilize at 70%. If they brought another ECM module against you to increase their dps to 6dps you would stabilize at 6hps at 55% strength. Like Shields the recharge would increase the lower your sensors get. In order to break your lock the ECM ship would have to drop your strength to ~20%. After the lock is broken your sensors have to recalibrate and you become immune to ECM and get double recharge until you've reached 100%. Once your Sensors are back up to 50% you can begin to re-lock targets.(This is all napkin math and not at all representative of the values I would actually use. It needs lovely exponential functions and graphs)
This type of system would give many avenues for balance, and if actually breaking the targets lock is made difficult enough then the average behavior you'll see is simple dps reduction. In this way ECM maintains it's ability to act as a force multiplier while not taking all the fun out of the opposing fleet. This also allows for a more natural interaction between ECCM and ECM since ECCM will increase your sensor strength and max recharge like extenders do for shields. This could also be balanced so that the net result of DPS reduction is the same between this system and the old where the reduction is over the length of the fight instead of bursts of 0 dps for extended periods of time. This also makes ECM viable on other ships since it will have some noticeable effect even if the strength is low. Focused ships like the falcon and rook, could decide between reducing the dps of multiple ships or focusing all modules on one ship to break the lock.
Finally I would exchange all the ECM modules for scripts and make a single ECM module that is scriptable, while reducing the number of ECM modules that can be fit on the focused ships to like 2-4. this would allow these ships to be effective while still able to fit tanks or other mid slot modules. In my perfect world all the races recons could use all forms of EWAR while being bonused in their respective types. Currently ECM on any ship not bonused for it is mostly for LOLs and those that want a minute chance of escape.
Also the other EWARS need a little love.
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