Originally by: Alanea Winddancer

---

Change the way ECM works altogether...right now you have different kinds of ewar options which will affect sensors in a multitude of ways and then you have ECM which stands way above the other types - which is just plain silly cause the obvious pick would be the latter.

Instead of breaking locks, why not have ECM's disable modules for X number of seconds instead? The stronger and/or more bursts you get on you, the bigger the chance that one/multiple modules are knocked out for a short period of time. Some of your weapons might die, some of your whatever may die but you will still have a targetlock and with a bit of luck still be able to do something although not as effective. As it is right now, a ship that cannot lock onto other ships is effectively done for unless it happens to be carrying a huge array of drones of it's own...and I am a bit doubtful as to how often FoF missiles are used, but unless someone else can say otherwise, not too often. On top of that, not every ship uses missiles. Turrets have absolutely nothing equivalent as far as I am aware.

Some modules would of course not be affected by this kind of ECM, like say armor (dunno about shield extenders but probably not for the sake of balance), but any other modules from weapons to damage boosters to resistances etc can all be affected temporarily and completely at random.

As to how it would work, well...replace the sensor strengths with a different value - but the calculations for success/failure should remain mostly the same - or rather chance of success should be lowered somewhat.
Low grade ECM's would only be able to affect one module while gradually stronger ones can knock off 2 or more. The traits of this ECM would be chance of success and max number of modules it can potentially take out.

So basically for every cycle, the ECM will do 1 check up to the max number of modules it can take out. So if an ECM can take out max 4 modules, 4 checks are made per cycle. If one fails and three succeeds, then it means that 3 random modules of the ship shut down AFTER they have completed their current cycle and are then unable to be activated again for X number of seconds. The affected player should on the other hand get a visual on which modules are affected so that he at least knows that these modules won't start a new cycle for a while. Reason for why the effects should apply after the cycle is completed are obvious. Some modules have really short cycles, others have long - some modules are active throughout the whole, others (weapons mainly) are only active during a new cycle (same effect though). No point in having the ecm timer apply immediately and run out before a big weapon module have finished it's current cycle, right?

Basically you could call this proposed system a soft version of the current ECM. You will not render a ship entirely useless now, but on the other hand if the right modules are disabled at the same time, could still prove devastating, however, despite such a scenario it would still give the affected player at least some chance to fight back one way or another. If said player is ganked by ECM spam so that most or all modules fail...well, such players are generally screwed anyhow, right?

Where would this put ECM drones then?

Well, they would basically become drones with an ECM that can disable max 1 module per drone.

As for the ewar alternatives - well, now you have the option of either picking something which can randomly and with some luck disable parts of a ship - and which may require more than one pilot if you really want to make sure that you take him out; devastating but relies on luck, but let it keep it's full sensor strength (unless you happen to disable sensor boosters or similar), or you can use the usual remaining choices which will guaranteed reduce certain stats and which can be applied by a single pilot, but generally have a somewhat weaker effects in comparison as a result.

---