Originally by: barvo

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Let's actually look at the Ewar bonuses, and ship's targetting range for my alt, for the force recons.

Falcon - ECM range, ECM strength, 180km
Rapier - Target Painter effectiveness, Web Range, 125km
Arazu - RSD effectiveness, Scram range, 140km
Pilgrim - NOS amount, Tracking disruptor effectiveness, 130km

You'll notice the falcon is the only force recon that gets both ewar bonuses directed at the same item. That's part of the problem; whereas Arazu pilots will (for example) fit points as well as remote sensor damps, making use of the ability to hold people at extended range as well as damping bs's out of fights, falcon pilots can use all mids (or more likely all minus one for mwd) as ECM slots. Also, the falcon seems to be able to lock a long way past all the other recons, without adding any sensor boosters or signal amps.

Now, the falcon is a specialised ship, more so than the other recons; it only has one purpose and one way of affecting the battle - ECM. I'm not sure any purpose would be served by splitting up the bonuses - I'm not sure it would make sense anyway as there's nothing else in the 'Ewar' arsenal that isn't already covered in another race's force recon. My proposal to deal with the issue of falcons ruining everyone's day is twofold.

* Firstly, reduce the targetting range of the falcon to 110k after skills, so that in order to use it past 150km you would need 1 sensor booster and towards 200km you'd need two sensor boosters. This reduces the number of ecm slots (or sig dist amp slots) that the falcon pilot can utilise from extreme range, without compromising the effectiveness when it gets a jam off. It should have the ultimate effect of reducing the number of ships a single falcon can knock out of the fight at range closer to that of the other force recons.

* Secondly, a 10% improvement to ECCM effectiveness would go a long way. My preference would be to do this with a skillbook, 2% improvement to (each) ECCM module per level. No amount of ECCM should ever make you completely immune to jamming. The whole foundation of ECM in the game is based around chance. I don't support the whole warp core stabs vs. warp disrupt points analogy, because then what's the point of a specialised ECM ship, if people can totally counteract it? CCP would have to then invent the ECM equivalent of dictor and hictor bubbles, and everyone would just cry all over again, only slightly louder this time as the player base increases in size.

FOF missiles, on the other hand, do not need a buff. The only boost required for these is to people's memory, so that they actually remember to stick some in their hold before they find themselves on the field, jammed to hell ;)

In the meantime, ECCM *does* still increase your chances of avioding a jam, drones *do* still go after stuff that engages you while you're jammed, and FoF missiles *do* still shoot the nearest target while you can't lock anything. Oh, RSD's *do* still damp the range of falcons if you have capable pilots to get you in range, target painters *do* still light them up like guy fawkes on bonfire night for your one non-jammed BS to alpha them into next week, and when all is said and done, even if a velator locks the falcon, it can no longer cloak. ...

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