These changes are not the final solution for ewar by a long shot.

So scripted TD will be at 40% rather then 50% on unbonused ships?

@CCP Fozzie why can't the scorp/all bs be a proper battleship and actually focus on killing stuff instead?

YES!

Nerfing TD's!

Also, I like the thought of being able to skill up to be more resilient against ECM. That's going to be nice.
The range nerfs also aren't bad, that'll be nice to force them to be a little closer.

I like that Damps are getting fixed... but they can be really farking annoying. Unlike ECM, they almost never miss.

The TP's are nice. Still not as useful as other Ewars in most situations, but when they do get used, they'll actually get used to better effect now. No complaints there.

We have a bunch of long term plans for battleships, but in general we are ok with the unsual role the Scorp plays.

*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)

Hello everyone. Another set of changes to get feedback on for Retri.

These changes are not the final solution for ewar by a long shot, they are incremental changes that will build towards the more complete changes we would like to make to the mechanics.

It's a moderate change that we can make with the resources available for this expansion and that won't get in the way of our more comprehensive changes down the road.

CCP Fozzie, It would be great if you could comment on why are you doing changes and what you're trying to archieve with them because without such explanations changes may look like nonsense to some people. You know, like some other game companies do when announcing balance changes.

Oh Hell yes.

47.5%. Multiply the effectiveness by 0.95, rather than subtract 5. I'll see if I can clarify the wording.

Thanks for these changes Fozzie. ANd as you say the whole thing is a work in progress. Also, I'd like to think I was the originator of the sensor integrity skills idea, but I honestly can't remember if I promoted the idea after reading someone else's suggestion for it way back when. Regardless, this addition evens the situation accross ewars. The only thing that would be missing at this point would be a skill for decreasing one's own signature radius, which could also only be effective if one is painted. But painting is still the weakest ewar so not a significant issue.



Agreed with TDs. Not sure if the 5% reduction is enough to stem the recent heavy use of unbonused TDs on ships with plentiful midslots. But at least it is something.

As for damps, and I have an alt that specs in it, I'm somewhat surprised by the optimal bonus. I almost figured a falloff range bonus would be more apprpriate, but I'll take the optimal bonus. The extensive falloff on damps operates as their chance component. But the current max skill ranges for a damp II are 45km opt and 90km falloff. How exactly is that 20% optimal buff going to affect that? will it be 54km optimal now?

edit - and ditto for wondering how the 5% TD reduction will exactly operate. Will it be the actual reduction in the percent of optimal or taracking disruption? or is it the percent change to be applied as a multiplier of the current strength?

You don't think its range and tank are too much for a e-war ship?

You don't think its range and tank are too much for a e-war ship?

It would be cooler if a ship's sensor strength played into more then just ECM.

So does this mean unscanable tech iii is back?

It would be cooler if a ship's sensor strength played into more then just ECM.

ECM is currently the only EWAR (excluding neuts, nos) which does not have a stacking penalty associated with it. Damps, TPs, and TDs all get a stacking penalty applied against their net effect on a target.

Is or was a stacking penalty being applied to them ever under consideration in addition to the changes you outlined? And if so, would it also apply to ECM drones?

Was expecting a LOT more for the ECM changes..

how about JUST fixing ECM drones? I can deal with the rest.. its the drones that drive me up the wall.

Here's what we currently have on our plate for Retribution:

ECM
*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)

smartbomb.

Will these skills function like shield/armor compensation skills and only be effective when fitting a sensor strength module, or more of a blanket skill where training it grants an instant bonus to sensor strength?

There's a lot of reasons why (small and medium) smartbombs are a bad solution

-ECM drones will finish their jam cycle if they die in the middle of it, so even if you blow them off in the first cycle that's still 20 seconds of being jammed. More practically, with a medium SB, it's potentially 40-60 seconds of jamming

-They use shitloads of cap

-You can't use them on gates or stations, which are popular places for fights

-They take a long time to kill drones anyway

Unless you mean smartbombs on a fleet scale, which makes sense 'cause you're in scrub legion and only fly in blobs lmao

Dayam, Marlona and Gavriel, I thought I had a hate of ecm. You guys would remove it from the game, whether in module or drone form.

I recognize a need for such a mechanic though, espcially as a counter to logistic support. It just shouldn't be a 20 second forced time out from the game.

We have a bunch of long term plans for battleships, but in general we are ok with the unsual role the Scorp plays.

So it's fine that Caldari only have two direct combat battleships forever, while everyone else has three? Well, right now, Caldari only have one valid battleship for anything and that's the Rokh. Gallente have Megathron and Dominix, you can fly pretty much any Amarr battleship, and any Minmatar one.

I'm not sure I understand the reasoning behind this decision.

So it's fine that Caldari only have two direct combat battleships forever, while everyone else has three? Well, right now, Caldari only have one valid battleship for anything and that's the Rokh. Gallente have Megathron and Dominix, you can fly pretty much any Amarr battleship, and any Minmatar one.

I'm not sure I understand the reasoning behind this decision.

We are aware of the effect the new skills will have on probing, and we're going to be keeping our eyes on it and have a few tricks up our sleeve in that regard.

Dayam, Marlona and Gavriel, I thought I had a hate of ecm. You guys would remove it from the game, whether in module or drone form.

I recognize a need for such a mechanic though, espcially as a counter to logistic support. It just shouldn't be a 20 second forced time out from the game.

mm.. i would like the scorp to be a high dps bs like the drake will be ROF and 5% dmg bonus

47.5%. Multiply the effectiveness by 0.95, rather than subtract 5. I'll see if I can clarify the wording.

At least the Rokh is really cool when you put railguns on it?

ECM
*Reduce Optimal Range and Falloff of all ECM modules by 10%
*Add to the Optimal Range and Falloff bonus on ECM range bonused ships by 2.5% for the Blackbird and Tengu Obfuscation Manifold (bringing it to 12.5%) and 5% for the Scorpion (bringing it to 25%)
*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)

I know it isn't popular to bat for the ECM team, but here's my problem with the range reduction on ECM modules: slots. It is a plural thing. On every other ewar ship, you can fit your ewar module(s) and a tank. A reasonable tank. That is not the case with ECM boats. You can have a tank or you can be effective as ewar. You can really only pick one with the way ECM is currently designed.

Now, I will agree that the ability of ECM to perma jam a ship is a pretty terrible mechanic. However, that is a solo or extremely small gang warfare situation. A situation that would not be impacted, at all, by a range nerf. The range nerf means ecm has to move in closer for pretty much every other situation, which means they are more likely to be shot by something.

ECM would probably be more balanced if the modules had long cycles, and only jammed for part of the cycle (i.e. a cool-down period).

On every other ewar ship, you can fit your ewar module(s) and a tank. A reasonable tank. That is not the case with ECM boats. You can have a tank or you can be effective as ewar.

TD changes: solid, especially if you're considering making TDs affect missiles.

As a TD fetishist, I think the nerf to unbonused TDs is okay. I don't think unbonused ewar should be really weak, though, especially since that is essentially what armor tankers are trading damage and speed for. Well, that and sig radius.

As a guy who thinks ECM is a terrible, terrible mechanic, I'm all for the nerf, but I don't think it actually addresses the problem. It just makes ECM worse.


Rooks and Falcons are both capable of fitting an okay shield tank + prop and still have 4 jammers. ECM pilots choose not to tank their ships at present because there isn't much of a reason to.

Stat tweaks are great, but I urge you to keep looking at the core ECM mechanic itself, rather than simply its application. I still love reducing jam length with sensor strength, bringing ECM into more of a lock-breaker role that can be combined with Scan resolution dampening to create a synergistic permajam effect that relies on player skill, not slot machine probability to be effective.

Making ECM drones break locks only would be a great place to start, as they'd be a nuisance at the 1 vs 1 level but not completely imbalance a fight, and could scale up to a fleet level where a CLOUD of drones can create the permajam effect, but not a simple wing of EC-300's.

I'd also look at the sensor damp drones at this time too, there might be a tweak or two there that can make them more viable and dovetail well with the rest of the iterations you're working on here.

Also, as we've discussed internally, you really need to address the scannability factor in conjunction with increasing sensor strength through skills, if thats the way you go. Having a penalty built into command links would be a great place to start, but command ships are by no means the only ships that people want to hide from probes, so please consider this if you must go with a skill buff so we're not fixing one problem only to create another.

most people plate falcons or rooks

Just remove ECM Caldari completely.

Damps will still be useless.

Fixed that for you.

Any chance on making the signal distortion amplifier effect all forms or E-War and not just ECM?

Most falcons I've seen have been DC tanked, followed by armor tanked (as have most Griffins, Blackbirds and Scorpions). I've never actually seen a Rook in combat. My point is that aside from Griffins/Kitsunes, ECM pilots make a deliberate choice to forgo a decent tank in favor of MOAR JAMS, because ECM at a distance is a better tank than actual tank modules.

Fixed that for you.

If ECM drones are not being addressed that's a real pity. Currently fitting a cloud of light ECM drones is an adequate alternative to bringing an actual jamming ship.

I am very much of the mind that ECM drones should reduce sensor strength with a stacking penalty, not actually jam on their own. They should not be a viable escape mechanism, but they should be a useful tool to complement a dedicated ECM ship.

Are you implying that without ECM in its current form Caldari has a worthless ship lineup? Are you seriously saying this?? Do you even play the game????

I like that Damps are getting fixed... but they can be really farking annoying. Unlike ECM, they almost never miss. Damps won't miss either way after this.

ECM
*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)

Still way to powerfull, even whith skills at lv3 and lv1 ewar drone you can permajam anyone(in a griffin!). Strenght and Cykle time is what you need to adjust! And why all Ecm- drones have the same stats after all these years i dunno.



Good idea but it wont help when a fully skilled falcon uncloaks and gets lock on anything whitin range. + for effort tho!

The ewar changes combined with the damp changes make ewar pretty ****** compared to damps and TDs.

Its damps now that **** you over, when a celestis can damp your solo drake/jaguar/whatever to beneath scram range.

I like making unbonused ships using ECM less effective, and feel that's a good change. I also like the range tweak to damps, which for many pilots using them essentially translates to a strength bonus, given that I see many damp using ships using their EWAR well into that EWAR's current falloff range.

I'm more of a fan of a sensor strength skill that affects all ships with a higher rank attached to the skill. That said, I'm also more of a fan of nerfing ECM strength across the board rather than requiring pilots to devote skill training to nerfing the effects of that EWAR.

By the way: I also object to nerfing ECM via ECCM strength skills. In my opinion, the long term goal should be to rework ECM completely because the "all or nothing" mechanic isn't fun. Nerfing ECM as short term fix is fine, but doing it via new skills doesn't make sense. In fact, I'm slightly worried that these new skills mean ECM is always going to stay ECM.

well you have to remember that the other e-war has skills that help against them so it is long overdue and as fozzie said only part of the solution they are working on.
i know its painful having to wait for so long for just some of the things that need fixing but at least they are doing it..

ECM
*Reduce Optimal Range and Falloff of all ECM modules by 10%
*Add to the Optimal Range and Falloff bonus on ECM range bonused ships by 2.5% for the Blackbird and Tengu Obfuscation Manifold (bringing it to 12.5%) and 5% for the Scorpion (bringing it to 25%)
*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)
...

Target Painter
*Set the TP strength bonus on TP bonused ships to 7.5% per level for T1 and 10% per level for T2

...
We also want to reiterate that we are not looking at these ecm changes as a complete solution to the problems with that mechanic. It's a moderate change that we can make with the resources available for this expansion and that won't get in the way of our more comprehensive changes down the road.

I am a little worried Mr Fozzie tries to turn my beloved Falcon into the new Pilgrim (most useless Recon of the game) ?

Why do TDs not affect missiles like you proposed...?

Why aren't you deleting ECM drones?

Several Adjustments:

Amarr = EW Optimal
Caldari = EW Duration
Gallente = Efficiency
Minmatar = Falloff

Sample EW Skill Bonus Changes:

Arbitrator: 10% TP, TD, RSD Optimal Range
Bellicose: 10% TP, TD, RSD Falloff Range
Blackbird: 10% TP, TD, RSD Duration
Celestis: 10% TP, TD, RSD Cap Use

New ECM Role Bonuses:

Arbitrator: 100% Ladar ECM Strength
Bellicose: 100% Radar ECM Strength
Blackbird: 100% Magnetometric ECM Strength
Celestis: 100% Gravimetric ECM Strength

Recons would have their flavors: webs, neuts, drones, scrams, etc.

No Universal ECM Ship. Period.

*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)

Because then TDs as far as the eye can see?

Do you really see no issue with letting one module affect every single non-drone ship in game in a way that makes them almost worthless to fly?

At least ECM needs to dedicate 4 midslots, and their rigs and any lowslots they can spare to doing that. This would be a one module fits all sort of thing.

Do you realize what kind of monster your creating in the falcon?
If it wasn't OP before, it will only get worse now, another 25% to the strength, even with the range nerf, will be just insane.

People will continue to fly Scorpion fleets and Widows just as much as they do now, but Falcons will just get even more OP.

Please, don't add these 5% racial bonus, it will only hurt small gang PVP

Are you considering making T2 EWAR worth taking while you are rebalancing disruption frigates? Right now Meta 4 is better than T2. T2 was cheaper than Meta 4 for a while, but with the whole Technetium business Meta 4 was cheaper and better. With the rebalancing of T2 armour plates, T2 EWAR is the only T2 set of mods with worse stats than their Meta 4 equivalents (I think). What is the design goal for T2 modules over Meta 4 in general? Is EWAR an intended exception?

Meta 4 ECM
Tech 2 ECM

Meta 4 Tracking Disruptor
Tech 2 TD

The activation cost and fitting requirements are both better for Meta 4. This is also true for Sensor Dampers, Target Painters, ECCM, Sensor Backup Arrays, Projected ECCM and ECM burst.

Since we're going to reduce the effects of ECM's can we also get some skills to reduce the effects of energy nuet/vamp?

Maybe a skill which hardens your capacitor to make x amount protected from modules that neut/vamp the cap levels?

Frankly, in the "Oh jesus run" list of ships the ewar ranks pretty low. The energy war ships (I'm looking at you pilgrim and curse) scare the bejesus out of me. I dont see too many solo rooks and falcons. Cant really say the same of pilgrims and curses.

ETA:

Oh, can you buff the tank on the ewar ships if your nerfing the jam abilities. Seeing s the jam chance is the only tank.....It would be nice to have a little bit of backup to the increased chance of failure thats coming.

Are you implying that without ECM in its current form Caldari has a worthless ship lineup? Are you seriously saying this?? Do you even play the game????

Can anyone say "Heavy missile nerf??" And what exactly will a dedicated Caldari pilot be flying after patch?

Either you are wrong or most of the readers of this thread are wrong. I believe most of us read this as applying to everyone in game as a defensive skill against ecm, not an ecm specialist set of skills that buff ecm modules.

furry nerf

nerf furries +1

So you're definition of an "Update" is instead a nerf to those ECM classed T2 Cruisers?

How is that in any way an update?

So not only do you nerf the base effectiveness, you slap me in the face by adding more skills to make the ships more effective?

The Falcon is already paper thin as it is, and now you are going to drop it's range and get it even closer to the combat?

Falcon is long range. Not in the middle of the fight the enemy farts and the ship dies.

What a load of garbage.

Can anyone say "Heavy missile nerf??" And what exactly will a dedicated Caldari pilot be flying after patch?

Not to mention that even if you do kill the drones, just getting jammed once before they die is often enough to lose you the fight.

defens against vamp ? isnt that called a cap battery ?

Stat tweaks are great, but I urge you to keep looking at the core ECM mechanic itself, rather than simply its application. I still love reducing jam length with sensor strength, bringing ECM into more of a lock-breaker role that can be combined with Scan resolution dampening to create a synergistic permajam effect that relies on player skill, not slot machine probability to be effective.

Making ECM drones break locks only would be a great place to start, as they'd be a nuisance at the 1 vs 1 level but not completely imbalance a fight, and could scale up to a fleet level where a CLOUD of drones can create the permajam effect, but not a simple wing of EC-300's.

I'd also look at the sensor damp drones at this time too, there might be a tweak or two there that can make them more viable and dovetail well with the rest of the iterations you're working on here.

Also, as we've discussed internally, you really need to address the scannability factor in conjunction with increasing sensor strength through skills, if thats the way you go. Having a penalty built into command links would be a great place to start, but command ships are by no means the only ships that people want to hide from probes, so please consider this if you must go with a skill buff so we're not fixing one problem only to create another.

Dear CCP Fozzie,
concerning problems with the following skill: Long Distance Jamming. It gives Bonus to optimal ewar range.
Could we possibly somehow fix that skill?
I mean if I train it I have better range so I can jam at longer distance but otherwise I destroy my good jamming and tracking disrupting abilities at short range. Right?
That means otherwise: If I train this skill I decide that my char isn-¦t good at short range but and long range FOREVER, because I can-¦t make it undone.
Couldn-¦t we switch the nonus somehow on falloff?

do not believe that long distance jamming has any effect on attempting to jam an opponent at closer ranges. All it does is extend your optimal.

*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)

Tracking Disruptors still get about 88% fully bonused up at 190km range on t1 ships... problem?

1 tracking disruptor at that range can reduce a 300km railgun (about the max range a rokh can go even though it can't lock) down to 36 optimal.... that's the most extreme example of how OP the module is, especially if you introduce it to missile warfare eventually rather than make another mod. Even if that's not the case... any normal range ship getting screwed offensively by 1 module is pretty insane.

*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)

If anything you might want to take this further - drop ECM optimal significantly and leave the falloff untouched, so that ECM is more focused against point-blank gankwagons and of diminishing value against even mid-ranged targets. Of course, you might also need to look at further incentivising those point-blank gankwagons in the first place...

Fozzie, we need a serious buff to the tank of the falcon to go with this general nerf to it's only tank: ECM.

Otherwise I'm looking at yet another ship to spin in my hanger.

*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)

Can you just nerf EC-300s?

Also, I don't know what you're thinking about for ECM...

But seriously one of the first things that should be looked at if you're not doing a total mechanic overhaul is STACKING PENALTIES for multiple ECM mods on the same ship.

Hey Fozzie. These are all good changes. I have only one critisism.





I think this skill should not affect ship sensor strength but the effectiveness of ECCM modules...

That's it. Good work though

*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).

Absolutely wrong. What you propose is buffing ECCM to make them mandatory just like these new skills, but unlike skills ECCM can not be put onto any ship requiring it.

Why the hell anyone still insists on making fights determined at the fitting screen?

ECM needs a radical overhaul. As it is it's abused and no fun at all and has been for a long long time.

A single module that totally negates jamming 100% similar to triage would be nice.

Or a sliding scale system based on sensor strength. jamming strength 24 cannot jam ship with sensor strength of 25. Taking the chance element completely out.

ECM drones should have same penalty reducing them to anti frigate/tackle only.

As it is 0utbreak condemns the use of ecm in our own gangs favoring tactics and strategies over jamming. We like our prey to be live and kicking!

Adding four racial sensor strength skills doesn't strike me as a good way to balance ECM. The skills will become mandatory for everyone to train to at least level IV, which means that you're effectively just setting a new, lower baseline for ECM. Furthermore, the skills do absolutely nothing for you when you're not being jammed. That is a problem tied to the ECM mechanic, but it's still a huge problem. Tracking skills / modules help me track in all situations, sebos / targeting skills always help me lock faster, but sensor strength gives me a slightly higher chance of not being rendered useless.

It is a bad concept for a module and it's no better as a skill. Unless you already have a plan of what you want to do with these skills with regards to a future overhaul of the ECM mechanic then you should reconsider if adding them to the game is the right move. Otherwise you may very well end up in a situation where you need to redesign the skill or just reimburse everyone's SP. ECM is a broken mechanic, don't feed the monster by having everyone invest more SP into it.

If what you want to achieve is a slight ECM nerf, then just change the jam strength on all the jammers. Weeks of training time to maybe get jammed less isn't going to solve any problems.

Why the hell anyone still insists on making fights determined at the fitting screen?

Total newb question: How/why do these changes effect probing?

May be because unstopable ship is bad concept ?

What I don't understand is that people don't mind having kiting ship hard countering brawlers but hate EWAR even though EWAR can be countered the same way Lr fit counter SR fit.

Of course, ECM is a bit screwed mecanic, but the concept of fitting to protect against some threat should stay.

Total newb question: How/why do these changes effect probing?

I'll just leave this here.. http://themittani.com/features/ecm-not-nerf-we-deserve-fix-we-need

ECM needs an overhaul, nerfing range, adding a bunch of skill to effect will do nothing and might even cause more problems along the way.

Does scanning really need to be made harder?

That website is **** and that article just proves it.

Website is indeed ****, but article is pretty much in line with what has been suggested repeatedly over the years .. not by me mind you, I want the jam mechanic gone as cinematic mechanics have no place outside of single player games, but I have no idea what to replace it with.

Makes a lot of sense to create a variable jam duration, smaller ships will unfortunately still be raped by ECM as they generally get the full cycle, but for larger ships lock times takes the place of part of the duration and if/when damps are sorted an ECM/Damp combo will be the way to go against larger hulls.

Problem for me remains the effect itself and that my precious light ships can be removed for the entire duration of a skirmish .. frig/dessie battles rarely go beyond 30s unless it is some gayass kiting contest.

Damps will still be useless.

The real issue is people trying to keep the complete loss of locking. That is a terrible, terrible way to start. Any suggestions or ideas need to start from the ground up. Forget everything about the current form of ECM and do not begin to make a suggestion that is based on a 'all or nothing' mechanic.

Damps are good now, they'll be even better after the ship changes and damp changes. A celestis can shut down two snipers like tier 3 battlecruisers at 100km with good skills each damp is -51% locking range, how is that useless?

Because fitting a LR ship to kite SR ships doesn't immediately gimp me against every other possible gang comp out there. Fitting an ECCM gimps me against everything that is not ECM. This is why people are happier with damps / TDS: naturally, people fit modules to maximise the stats these types of EWAR affect.

The second reason is that there is only one place to counter ECM: before you undock. Every other type of EWAR can be countered in space (stay outside of Point / Web / Neut range, burn close to your target against damps, fly to optimise your tracking / range against TDs). The only thing you can do against ECM is blap it, which isn't really a counter because you can't do it if it's affecting you.

Maybe ECCM could buff scan resolution .

see sensor booster

So what happens to the Griffin/Kitsune/Falcon? Those aren't listed as getting the new hull bonus..

Also.. What about the skills? You're taking away about a month worth of training overnight by nerfing the optimal and falloff. While giving all other races that free month of training basically since they now get the equivalent of 2 skill ranks.

What makes CCP think ECM needed a nerf anyways? I'd like to hear the reasoning behind it. Because so far. it seems like Caldari is on your hitlist.

What he's saying is that ECCM provides ZERO boost if there's no jamming on the field, while a SeBo does provide benefit in addition to countering one of the other types of ewar. Changes to ECCM could provide additional benefits outside of just being the rock-paper-scissors against jamming.

Another thing to consider is every race, with the exception of Caldari, has two forms of EW. One primary and one secondary. I know some of you will scream Caldari should have all of its EW bonuses piled onto one type of EW, but perhaps having their bonuses split between a primary and secondary will be healthy for the game. Then it would open up the door to moving away from an 'all or nothing' mechanic and move towards something more fluid and consistent type of EW.

*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)

on grid probing is the problem to take full effect of the mod... as you said 100km but snipping used to mean around 180km which will result in you getting probed and interdicted and die to close range ahacs...

so damps are great they just need to fix on grid probing...

/me looks at wiki for my main's alliance for the TP bonused ships, finds only the huginn being used, and that without any TP.

I imagine someone will theorycraft a TP build for the huginn or rapier that might prove to be useful in certain situations.

Drones are way more a problem than falcons and such. Pissy little EC-300's seldom miss getting a jam sometime during a 30+ second engagement, even with an eccm'd sensor strength of 40+. It's a bit much.

A falcon being a dedicated ECM ship means a small gang has one less DPS ship also - they're one ship down to bring that utility to the fight. If a gang has one or more of their ships jammed out because of this then so be it.

If you're a solo ship and you get owned because another gang has more than one ship then welp.

Hello everyone. Another set of changes to get feedback on for Retri.
Here's what we currently have on our plate for Retribution:

ECM
*Reduce Optimal Range and Falloff of all ECM modules by 10%
*Add to the Optimal Range and Falloff bonus on ECM range bonused ships by 2.5% for the Blackbird and Tengu Obfuscation Manifold (bringing it to 12.5%) and 5% for the Scorpion (bringing it to 25%)
*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)

Target Painter
*Set the TP strength bonus on TP bonused ships to 7.5% per level for T1 and 10% per level for T2

May be because unstopable ship is bad concept ?

What I don't understand is that people don't mind having kiting ship hard countering brawlers but hate EWAR even though EWAR can be countered the same way Lr fit counter SR fit.

Of course, ECM is a bit screwed mecanic, but the concept of fitting to protect against some threat should stay.

I'll just leave this here.. http://themittani.com/features/ecm-not-nerf-we-deserve-fix-we-need

ECM needs an overhaul, nerfing range, adding a bunch of skill to effect will do nothing and might even cause more problems along the way.

Four rank 3 skills to help stop ECM is punitive and punishes the people on the wrong side of the problem.

ECM drone suggestion- halve their strength, and extend ship-based drone damage bonus to cover all EWAR drone effects, and change their jamming times:

EC-300: 0.5 / 5s
EC-600: 0.75 / 10s
EC-900: 1 / 20s

A few thoughts:

1. I believe that the proposed sensor compensation skills will cause more balancing problems in the future, inasmuch as they affect separate game mechanics - ie. ECM and ship scanning.

In fact, the biggest part of the ECM nerf is the new skill which also work for ECM drones.

I think though the skill should only apply to ECCM modules.

CCP Fozzie, It would be great if you could comment on why are you doing changes and what you're trying to archieve with them because without such explanations changes may look like nonsense to some people. You know, like some other game companies do when announcing balance changes.

The issues as I see them:

1) This does not address ECM scaling problems. Frigates and Destroyers are still completely nullified by ECM, while medium and large ships are inherently stronger to them (although still get jammed more often then not).